SOURCE: Cooke, Michael G. “Byron's Don Juan: The Obsession and Self-Discipline of Spontaneity.” Studies in Romanticism 14, no. 3 (summer 1975): 285-302.

In the following essay, Cooke critiques the functions of spontaneity, improvisation and surprise in Don Juan.

The Giaour, at just over 1300 short lines, and Don Juan, at something over 16 long cantos, have one crucial structural feature in common: both are fragments. Once this has been said, it seems necessary to ask whether they are, as fragments, similar in kind (the question of quality need not even arise). Does fragmentariness express the same boisterous self-aggrandizement in Don Juan as in The Giaour, the same difficulty with aesthetic and philosophical ordering, the same misgivings about the adequacy of what has been written and the same compensatory faith that bigger is truer, as well as better?

It would be plausible to say that Byron left The Giaour unfinished, whereas death left Don...