Don Juan. Gloria y decadencia de un mito literario
Don Juan. The Glory and Decadence of a Literary Myth

Summary/Abstract: Don Juan has forgotten his first author, since distinguished writers did not resist the temptation of dedicating him a drama, a novel, or a poem ( Moliere, Goldoni, Mozart, Puchkin, A.Dumas, Lenau, Byron, Baudelaire, G.B.Shaw, J. Anouilh, H. de Montherlant …) , to become a timeless and unlimited myth. Every period has had its own Don Juan and has recognized itself in it. Or in his victims. The XXth century is not a good period for the myths, it is the time of demythologizing. It will be difficult for the myth to survive after the XXth Century: Gregorio Marañon demonstrates, with arguments taken from psychology and physiology, the sexual immaturity of the hero, Ghelderobe makes him a bourgeois devoured by syphilis, Jacinto Grau makes him follow his servants’ advice, since he doesn’t know how to win the heart of a lady, Montherlant transforms the statue’s intervention in a carnival farce and Albert Camus sees the absence of the statue as a mark of decadence of the human condition.

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