Don Juan as a Figure of Masculinity: Slovak Literary Appropriations in the Nineteenth Century

This article examines the adaptation and appropriation of the Don Juan myth in nineteenth-century Slovak literature through the lens of masculinity studies. The Don Juan figure, one of European culture’s most enduring archetypes, embodies various models of masculinity that are reinterpreted across different historical and cultural contexts. The study first analyses Don Juan as a cultural archetype of masculinity, tracing his evolution from a sensual being driven by lust, a libertine focused on manipulation and seduction, to an aesthetic being searching for an ideal. In nineteenth-century Slovak literature, the Don Juan figure appears in two distinct forms. First, as an antagonistic predator representing hegemonic ethnic and class power. Second, towards the century’s end, as a romantic cynic embodying modernist crisis and scepticism toward love. These adaptations reveal how literary representations both reflect and produce culturally specific models of masculinity, shaped by national and social antagonisms and modernist transformations. In doing so, the article demonstrates how a small literature engages with shared European archetypes to negotiate its own cultural, national, and gendered specificities.