Don Giovanni at the Crossroads of Pleasure and Virtue

Abstract

In a project, like The Don Giovanni Moment, that deals with the reception history of a canonical work, several kinds of questions can vie for attention. The volume's subtitle highlights a general interest in a historical question: the "legacy" it chooses to explore is largely one presented in nineteenth-century imaginative and, to a lesser extent, philosophical works. (The main exception is Ingrid Rowland's discussion of religious ritual and the Don Juan legend before Mozart, "Don Giovanni: 'And what communion hath light with darkness?"') For some essays, the topic of history yields to one of criticism.