7 - Don Juan

Summary

HOFFMANN'S NOVELLA Don Juan (1813) draws on a well-known tradition, and one to which Tirso de Molina, Molière, Mozart, and Byron — to name but a few — have made important contributions. Hoffmann's version, however, stands out from these other treatments of the legend in that the novella itself is embedded in the overall narrative structure of Die Serapionsbrüder (the narrator is recounting his experiences to Theodor) and is played out on a number of different levels of reality, not all of which are clearly distinguishable from one another.

In the secondary literature, literary critics have approached the text from a variety of perspectives, but few have attempted to offer an allembracing interpretation of the story, concentrating instead on certain aspects of it. Many have examined the novella's unusual narrative structure, and almost all of these have felt the need to unravel these different narrative levels in order to interpret the story. Then there have been those who have approached Hoffmann's novella in biographical terms, seeing in it the collapse of the author's tragic relationship with his pupil, Julia Marc. Finally, there are those who compare Hoffmann's novella with Mozart's opera Don Giovanni. Here the main emphasis has been on the similarities and differences between the two, and on the reasons why Hoffmann adapted the legend in the way that he did.