The ROMANTIC DON JUAN is the point where we can think of how the ironic erosion (not the overturning) of romanticism begins. In the face of the claim to authenticity, which he perceives and feels permeating the atmosphere of his work, Byron will summon the machinery of satire as well as the subtler arrangements of irony and will install them within the core of a new poetic self-consciousness.

In this, he will prove to be the least romantic of the romantic poets, and ultimately, in Don Juan, the least Byronic, although there is no doubt that this great comic epic represents for Byron himself – as well as for today's reader – the natural continuation of his previous work, its extension and culmination.

In this culmination, we must hear, embedded within the twists of irony and under the tones of a high viewing of humanity, the echo of a terror that after romanticism will draw ever closer to us: the terror of nihilism, of moral desolation.

That is why this lengthy epic can be both so liberatingly light yet so deeply moving – so crucial for the rest of literature, as long as it endures, both in verse and prose.