In English literature, Don Juan, written from 1819 to 1824 by the English poet Lord Byron, is a satirical, epic poem which portrays the Spanish folk legend of Don Juan, not as a womaniser as the character is historically portrayed, but as a victim easily seduced by women. As genre literature, Don Juan is an epic poem, written in ottava rima and presented in sixteen cantos. Lord Byron derived the character of Don Juan from traditional Spanish folk legends, however the story was very much his own. Upon publication in 1819, cantos I and II were widely criticized as immoral because Byron had so freely ridiculed the social subjects and public figures of his time. At his death in 1824, Lord Byron had completed sixteen of seventeen cantos, whilst canto XVII remained unfinished. Composition Lord Byron was a prolific writer for whom "the composition of his great poem, Don Juan, was coextensive with a major part of his poetical life"; he wrote the first canto in late 1818, and the seventeenth canto in early 1823. Canto I was written in September 1818, and canto II was written in December 1818 through January 1819. Cantos III and IV were written in winter of 1819–1820 and canto V was written in October–November 1820. Cantos I and II were published on 15 July 1819, and cantos III, IV, and V were published on 8 August 1821. Byron began to write canto VI in June 1822, and had completed writing canto XVI in March 1823. Given the moralistic notoriety of the satirical, epic poem, John Murray refused to publish the latter cantos of Don Juan, which then were entrusted to John Hunt, who published the cantos over a period of months; cantos VI, VII, and VIII, with a Preface, were published on 15 July 1823; cantos IX, X, and XI were published on 29 August 1823; cantos XII, XIII, and XIV were published on 17 December 1823; and cantos XV and XVI on 26 March 1824. Structure The poetical narrative of Don Juan (1819–24) is told in sixteen thousand lines, arranged in seventeen cantos, written in ottava rima (eighth rhyme); each stanza is composed of eight iambic pentameters, with the couplet rhyme scheme of ab ab ab cc. The ottava rima uses the final rhyming couplet as a line of humour, to achieve a rhetorical anticlimax by way of an abrupt transition, from a