SOURCE: Rishmawi, G. K. “The Muslim East in Byron's Don Juan.” Papers on Language & Literature 35, no. 3 (summer 1999): 227-43.

In the following essay, Rishmawi examines Byron's shifting attitudes toward the East between the Oriental Tales and Don Juan. Rishmawi contends that, unlike the passionate, firsthand accounts that appear in Byron's Oriental Tales, the East of Don Juan is based on readings and observation and, accordingly, is depicted in a more subtle and satiric manner.

The Eastern affinities which Byron developed while he was in Turkey and Greece, and which colored his Oriental Tales (Rishmawi 48-62), are still felt in his later poetry, particularly in his masterpiece. Yet it should be stated that although the East of the Tales is the same East of Don Juan, we notice important changes in Byron's attitude toward it. On the one hand, the East of the Tales offered Byron a perfect setting as...