Note 273 — Chapter VII · THE ITALIAN INFLUENCE

There is less of the mock-heroic in Don Juan than is ordinarily supposed. It has little in common with the classical Mock-Epic, represented in English by the Dunciad, the Scribleriad, and the Dispensary, poems which use the epic machinery of gods and goddesses, ridiculing the manner of the Greek and Roman epics through the method of parody. Don Juan, on the other hand, is unrelated to the work of either Homer or Virgil. Nor does it burlesque the Italian epics: its characters, modern and unconventional as they are, are not, even in a humorous sense, heroic, and the matter dealt with is borrowed from none of the Italian romances. The fact that exalted emotions are made absurd, or that fine feelings are jeered at does not warrant us in classing Don Juan with the mock-heroic poems. Indeed, the mere absence of the typical addresses to the Muse—they occur only twice in Don Juan (II., 7; III., 1)—indicates that Byron did not imitate the epic form.