Tales of Seduction: The Figure of Don Juan in Spanish Culture

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Don Juan is one of the intriguing creations of Western literature. A subject of countless revisions over the centuries, he seems a perpetual source of fascination. In the popular imagination he exists as the legendary seducer of women, charismatic rogue and trickster. A potent icon of male sexual energy, he crosses cultures, from east to west.The twentieth-century has viewed the figure afresh through the prism of its own cultural terms of reference and social concerns. Using an interdisciplinary approach, "Tales of Seduction" focuses on those fascinating intersections between myth, culture and intellectual inquiry, yielding new connections. Don Juan is a figure of transnational and transcultural interest. Sarah Wright takes Don Juan back to Spain and examines the confluences of Spanish culture with aspects of Western intellectual history. Intellectually promiscuous, transgressive and iconoclastic, Don Juan constantly plays at the limits of culture. Whilst Don Juan's antecedents lie in tales of blasphemy or repentance, by the twentieth-century the figure often takes on explorations into the limits of gender as a framework for other, more general, questions about the limits of culture.Wright explores how Don Juan has entered into and been received in different ways in aspects of Spanish culture (opera, cinema, theatre, photography and virtual realities) and Western theory (nationhood, medicine, psychoanalysis, consumerism) in the twentieth century and at the start of the twenty-first.

Reviews

"'It is by far the most exciting and original book on the subject of Don Juan to date... a really sparkling read.' -Jo Labanyi, Professor of Spanish, New York University 'An uncommonly intelligent book that brings to light long-neglected authors and works and fits them into a cultural matrix whose dynamic character is brilliantly captured in the liminal figure of Don Juan. The book makes a significant and exciting contribution to many fields (Spanish Literature, Spanish Cultural Studies, Don Juan Studies, Film and Opera Studies).' - Dru Dougherty, Professor of Spanish Literature and Theater, University of California, Berkeley 'The extraordinary scope of Sarah Wright's engaging study narrates a varied take on Don Juan and his cultural descendents...Wright moves effortlessly from the historical past to the modern-day present in charting his many disguises and transformations...Wright's incisive treatment indicates how successive generations of cultural 'ambassadors', like Salvador Dali and Calixto Bieito, have reenvisaged the perennial seducer to suit the demands of the age. Tales of Seduction brilliantly interrogates both a national emblem and a transnational legend in ways that demonstrate his continued relevance to Cultural, Hispanic and Performance Studies.' - Maria M. Delgado, Professor of Theatre and Screen Arts, Queen Mary, University of London"

Author Bio

Sarah Wright completed her PhD at the University of Cambridge and is currently Senior Lecturer in Hispanic Studies at Royal Holloway, University of London.