Set Love Free: Female Sexuality as Subversive Agency in Lord Byron's Don Juan

Set Love Free talks about female sexuality as subversive agency in Lord Byron’s Don Juan. What Byron would like to show in Don Juan is the exploration of human feelings, especially human passions and the nature of love. Set Love Free also features seven different poems written by Cheng-Fen Chen. These are all true feelings from Love. Believe your emotions and enjoy the lovely ride.

Cheng-Fen Chen (Emily Chen) is a poet and a writer coming from Taiwan. The poet Emily writes her poems with a sincere mind and special imagination. The literature of Romanticism, including that of Lord Byron, has been a major influence on her writing. Set Love Free is Taiwan’s first book that presents a unique, engaging perspective on Byron’s masterpiece as well as collecting Emily Chen’s own poetic works in English—even with wild sublime as resonant languages. the tranquil time,

The appearance of poem was taking shape.

Love, Abject, and Romantic

Poem / by Cheng-Fen Chen

When I met you in the tranquil time,

The appearance of poem was taking shape.

Your name, I have not asked in person,

About the Author

Cheng-Fen Chen(陳正芬) was born in Taichung, Taiwan. Chen received some awards for writing articles at the school stage. She graduated from National TsingHua University with a Master of Arts degree in English and American Literature. She likes to listen to a variety of music and has achieved some musical performances with her band. Also, sheparticipated in several dressing and styling competitions andwon the championship.In her earlier working experiences, she was a digital columnist, writing for interior design columnist, a music magazine, other business, etc.Now she is a language advisor and an English teacher, teaching English and working as a consultant in some technology industries.

Special Awards

Emily Chen attended the classes in the National Touring Arts Camp in Taiwan and while there, got the creative writing prize for her poetry.And shejoined a music video production event, which was organized for promoting a concert by the famous Hong Kong singer Khalil Fong. She has both acted in and been a screenwriter for a music video. She also did the songwriting. Andthe video work won the selected creation.

Recommendation

The author, through her analysis of the rhetorical and formal characteristics of Byron’s Don Juan, is able to reveal the importance of Byron’s view of female sexuality and female emancipation. This is an aspect of the work that is often overlooked, and I believe that she is able to convincingly demonstrate its importance and even, in a sense, its centrality for the work’s overall vision. She supports her arguments with references to a range of contemporary thinkers, but continually anchors her conclusions in careful examinations of the various female figures in the poem and in Byron’s view of them, both explicit and more subtly implied. Her appreciation of the poem’s well-known digressive form also adds credence to her argument. Ultimately she is able to reveal a previously unsuspected dimension of this work, namely, Byron’s view of the importance of female sexuality and female emancipation. In doing so, she throws a new and interesting light on an otherwise familiar work which, I believe, will make it even more interesting for many contemporary readers.

—Steven Frattali,Former Assistant Professor, DFLL, NTHU, American Writer

The author leads readers to reread and reinterpret Byron’s Don Juan from highly creative viewpoints. Through the analysis of Byron’s unruly freedom claims, she also thinks deeply about love, female autonomy, and the consciousness of resisting patriarchy. In the complex narrative structure of Don Juan, the author has mastered the factors of travel and time, together with post-structuralism arguments to demonstrate the relationship between lovers and the stranger Don Juan. Their love has a complex mental framework, which reveals the personalities of Romantic Poets: they are eager to grasp the passion for love. This is indeed a poetic dissertation full of brand-new arguments.

—Wen-Wei Shiu, Poet, Professor, Department ofChinese, NTNU

作者以相當具有創造力的觀點，帶領讀者重新閱讀與詮釋拜倫的《唐璜》，透過分析詩人不羈的自由主張，也省思愛情、女性的自主與抵抗父權的意識。在《唐璜》複雜的敘事結構中，作者掌握了旅行與時間的因素，以後結構主義的論點，論證戀人與異鄉人唐璜的關係，有著複雜的心理框架，呈現出浪漫主義詩人個性的張揚，歌頌與把握愛情的熱切，是一本充滿嶄新論點的詩學論述。

—須文蔚．詩人．國立臺灣師範大學國文學系教授

Praise for Set Love Free

A must-collect book for any Byron admires. Set Love Free and Emily’s poetic works give you all the affectionate insight you can feel in love. This book is really a unique artwork.

—Chiou-Ling Shi

The opinions and research results provided in this book are precious. Beautiful, passionate, and sentimental to know.

—Leslie Chang

Emily Chen has achieved an enlightening discourse on Byron’s Don Juan. Also, her works are so sincere that you can feel the distinctive romantic spirits. Emily is a diligent writer, and she could write various articles. Absolutely emotional and rational!

—Kevin Chuang

If you are attracted to the Byronic Hero, you must not miss this book. I got strength from the outstanding discourse and from the romantic poems: both artistic and enlightening.

—Redmuhly33

Preface

Byron says that “Man’s love is of man’s life a thing apart,’Tis woman’s whole existence.” It is clear that Byron’s love affairs occupied most of his life; moreover, such a personal history of love inspired him to create a variety of works in which women played a crucial role. Byron’s Don Juan not only shows colorful romances but also reveals women’s desires and sexuality in a positive way. This book is a representation of how women become more individualized and sophisticated through their active pursuit of love in Don Juan. Meanwhile, the inherent tensions of the satiric tones are the narrator’s rhetorical means of compelling readers to see reality from different perspectives. Within a larger framework of satire, the issue of female sexuality and the concept of love are easily assumed a darker color. In fact, Byron’s usage of a comic tone does not satirize women; instead, he describes how wonderful love is in the world through images of women in love and the emotions that are the original desires of human beings. Love is spiritual enrichment of one’s daily life and a kind of symbol of energy and happiness. In addition, the author presents women’s gradual getting rid of social constraints and developing their confidence.Their experiences of love offer unlimited possibilities for shaping their own identities and result in a kind of spiritual transcendence from which the new thinking and meanings of life are generated.

What Byron would like to show in Don Juan is the exploration of human feelings, especially human passions and the nature of love. In the context of Byron’s arguments against despotism, he thinks that one’s sexuality and desire about love must be free. Traditionally, women’s connection with love is conservative and supposed to be passive. Women become a target for men to choose as part of their lives. However, Byron transforms such a fixed stereotype and depicts female’s active performance in the quest for love. Using satire, Byron presents more accurate concepts of love, human beings, and true freedom. Implicit in the poem is that the nature of love is a kind of desire which exists in everyone’s heart. Based on Byron’s devotion to liberty, female sexuality is worth admiring and should not be regulated by external limits from society, politics, and morality. Under such a revolutionary intention, the spirit of “carpe diem” is also revised and given a new meaning: it shows not only the hedonic aspect of life but also the extreme effort to change one’s condition. There is no hierarchy in the world of love; women also can dominate men for the sake of true love and happiness they want. Time and physical beauty are fleeting, so just makethe most present pleasure and fulfillment count. Thus, Byron’s revolutionary and rebellious spirits are obvious here: he adopts ironic tone to criticize orthodox ideas. He portrays an ideal equality between men and women.

This book is divided into four chapters. And I put my own romantic poems in each chapter foreword, showing a proper fusion of lovely thinking. Byron tries to tell readers that seizing the time to love is very important. Especially as a woman, she should bravely chase her happiness regardless of gender, class, race, and other oppressive elements because love is a kind of strong feeling which happens in a sudden moment without reasons or explanations. At last, Byron’s attitude toward love echoes the typical thinking of Romanticism—“Sentimental emotion is over everything”—an extreme value of love whose strength can save both men and women. Therefore, true freedom and fulfillment for women do contribute to equality between men and women.

Contents

Preface

Chapter One

Introduction

General Introduction

Women and Erotic Love

Critical Review

Chapter Two

Female Erotics

Introduction

Female Sexuality and Sexual Pleasure

The Reversal of Gender Role

Chapter Three

Female Identity

Introduction

Stranger, Speed and Space

Women-Juan Relationships: Chora and Abject

The Recognition of Female Identity

Chapter Four

Conclusion

Works Cited