Don Juan, Town and Modernity, or the Myth Asks for Shadows
Don Juan, Town and Modernity, or the Myth Asks for Shadows

Summary/Abstract: The greatest myths emerging from Western literature during the Modern Age are, in my opinion, limited to four: the myths of Hamlet, Don Quixote, Don Juan and Faust. Without any doubt, there are other protagonists in great world literature whose stories are well know in the international cultural space: Romeo, Juliet, Othello, Desdemona, Shylock, Gargantua, Robinson Crusoe, Oliver Twist, Jane Eyre, Emma Bovary, Roskolnikov, Anna Karenina, Dorian Gray, and many others. They hardly amount to a myth. These are, above all, stories of some imaginary characters created by talented writers. They represent an idea, a theme, a type of a person or a universal motif, but there is a lack of anonymous obscurity and philosophic ambiguity that since ancient times have characterized some of the most celebrated myths of Western culture, like those of Ulysses, Orpheus or Oedipus. These four great cultural myths, created, respectively, by Shakespeare, Cervantes, Tirso de Molina and Goethe, share, indeed, a certain darkness in their very origin.

• Details
• Contents