Tintern Abbey by William Wordsworth

Philosophical and autobiographical epic.

Written in blank verse.
Based on naked experience landscape he had seen. It is not a ballad because they are no dramatic
changes, no supernatural items. Setting is pastoral.
It is the myth of memory, Wordsworth revisits the place after five years and compares the memory of it
and the present situation. The other important topic is the insight into personal experience, personal
growing up and growing old, his personal change of attitude.
In the first stanza there are two motifs the passing of time and the description of nature. Wordsworth
is very precise about the time and in describing nature, the description is very mimetic, precise, almost
palpable, he is not using the images of pastoral settings that are always the same.
The second stanza describes different effects that nature has on man. The memory of beautiful
landscape gives him consolation, but nature is also a moral teacher nature makes one better person
who acts kindly, nicely, not for purpose but spontaneously. Nature is described in religious manner, the
poet refers twice to ''blessed mood'' emphasizing the spiritual relationship with nature. Interestingly,
while using many words related to spiritually and religion, he never refers to God. It looks as if Nature is
playing that role in the poem.
In the third stanza comes recognition. Man is part of nature, belongs to the process, logos that exists in
nature and human mind is a part of it. The imagery changed first concrete images are used and now
cosmic, an extension of human mind.
In the last stanza he adresses Dorothy and discusses his relation to Nature he has sober attitude
toward Nature. Also, the fear of immortality, that has been haunting the poem finally becomes overt.
The poem ends with the prayer to Nature. Wordsworth wants to remember this beautiful landscape ,
but also wants Dorothy to remember how much he loved it because he knew that she would remember
it too. So, nature is not only an object to beauty and the subject of memories but also the catalyst for a
harmonic relationship between two people and their memories about that relationship. :)

Don Juan- the character

Don Juan, carefully created for the purpose of mocking and satirizing of some aspects of romantic society
such as religion, relationship between man and woman, marriage etc. He bears little resemblance to the
protagonist of the popular European myth. There is a boy, overprotected from the day one. The turning
point in his life will be the death of his father when his mother will take his education and raising in her
own hands and when his remodeling from mischief-monkey to the perfect paragon will begin. That is
the time when she, Dona Inez, will mold him as the piece of plasticine into her tool for purposes of
gaining attention and ,possibly, love of old Don Alonso. Don Juan was nothing but a puppet in her hands.

His lifepath and views were narrowed and led by her hand (she directed his life as a little scenario (e.g.
choice of women he will ever get to meet. Dona Julia. No toung maids).
Education: He learned various things from fencing to arts which are so complicated and hard to
understand that arent in use anymore, dead languages and similar, but nothing that could have any
practical use, that would serve him in life later and that would actually direct him through life or help
him overcome some obstacles.
Of course, what we must not on any account forget is no trace of sexually free works of any kind because
his mother purged all the literature he was about to read (even the mass book and mythology (filthy love
of gods), so her precious little boy wouldnt grow into a vicious man influenced by such lack of moral.
All in all, through his education, he didnt learn anything natural and to some extent was deprived of
freedom of thinking and free developing.
Thanks to his mother he developed no conscious interest in bodily pleasures, but still the treatment he
had didnt manage to pluck out his instinctual urge for ohysical contact and love, but only to modify
them:
e.g. When he kisses Dona Julia for the first time, he is excited, but at the same time he is happy and
falling into despair because of the embarrassement of feeling the joy. He is afraid of that new emotion
he had never experienced before, but that love exactly is the most prominent experience of all he will
ever achieve.
He is a handsome boy, good-looking, but not energetic, not of good health, more of a book-worm which
can be proven by the scene where hes daydreaming in woods, where that pastoral setting should bring
the emotinal part of his out, he acts quite strange for a teenager and thinks about physics, astronomy (as
with no creativity at all). He is like an old man in body of a child.
Also if we try to make a comparison between him and Spanish Don Juan, we may conclude that our
Don Juan is an antihero, a weak shadow of a traditional one.
While Spanish is the one to whom we may say that Byron wants to ascribe the sun and heat of Spain
with boiling blood and the one who brings passion, the English one, instead of being a womanizer and a
fearless rogue who enjoys killing those womens husbands, is the one who will disgraciously run away
from the battle with Alonso.
One more interesting fact is that in original Don Juan, Dona Inez is his lover and here we have it in a role
of mother. However, in both works she is the person who influenced the major change of the attitude in
protagonist. (if there werent for her, Spanish D.J. would never discover true love and English D.J. would
never be the antihero Byron would want to describe)
Don Juan is more of a passive character. He rather reacts to the happenings in the world around him
instead of being a manipulator and holding all strings in his hands. His weaknesses are portrayed openly.
Parallel with Byron can be drawn:

Byron was also a hansome and educated man.

After gaining popularity had many affairs with married women (Lady Caroline Lamb and Lady Jane
Oxford)
Had affair with his half-sister Augusta Leigh (when public found out about this he was made to leave the
England) -------- Motif of forbidden love and leaving the country (as in Don Juan)
In April 1819 meets countes Teresa Giucioli, married to the 60-year-old count Giucioli and has an affair
with her. (probably the main inspiration for Don Juan)