Byron and P(h)antisocracy
This piece was originally published on Phantisocracy, the predecessor to this site. The name “Phantisocracy” is explained, in part, below. Byron’s Don Juan satirizes fluently and abundantly, often through the art of reversal. The titular Don Juan is no longer seducer, but seducee; Wordsworth the unhired elitist “season[s]” his poems “with democracy.” The poem was celebrated as a liberal masterpiece in its time, and it was reviled. It caused offense in its time, and it still does. Richard Cronin astutely sees it as a poem that “claims the right to give and to take offence, but it is also a poem … that extends that same right to its readers.” ...