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Wright, Sarah. Tales of Seduction. The Figure of Donjuan in Spanish Culture. London & New York: Tauris Academic Studies, 2008. 285 pp.
Yet another book on Don Juan? Approaching this book might feel somewhat akin to what Don Juan himself must have experienced with each new seduction as he unpeeled the wrapper, admired the cover, allowed his hands to caress the interior, feasted his eyes on the contents, savored the taste, thrilled at the conquest, and basked in the after-glow of successful consummation. Is there anything left to say about Don Juan, who has been dissected, psychoanalyzed, interpreted, and performed by countless scholars, critics, theater and film directors, essayists, novelists, poets and perpetrators of consumerist culture since his first appearance in Tirso de Molina's El bufador de Seviüay el convidado de piedra (ca. 1630)? Indeed, there is. Sarah Wright's engaging study looks at the phenomenon of the great master of seduction from his genesis to his reappearance in contemporary spaces as unexpected as internet chat rooms and modern operas mounted by crazed enfants terribles.
Don Juan's infinite ability to become all things to all people gets a new reading here as Wright looks at Don Juan as a cultural phenomenon whose "discourse of seduction" turns him into a transnational myth. "Don Juan as a sign here becomes understood as a cultural icon - a site for the projection of a variety of (often shifting) meanings and national obsessions" and the author studies his avatars mostly...