![]() Setting aside the humorous parts of "The Canterbury Tales," it is unquestionably the outstanding comic poem in English. But the keynote tone of the whole is this: the poem is funny. ![]() It's true, of course, that Byron employs a rich palette of tones over the more-than-sixteen-canto span of his masterpiece. Just one problem: his notion of the effects Byron is trying to achieve is spectacularly wrong-headed. He knows (or thinks he knows) what complex of effects Byron aims at in every moment of the text, calculates every nuance of his performance accordingly, and realizes those effects with pinpoint accuracy. ![]() Keeble is a superbly accomplished narrator, in complete command of his vocal instrument and of the tonal effects he wants to achieve with it in every passage, line, pause, and syllable. In some ways, Jonathan Keeble's new recording of Byron's "Don Juan" is far and away the best on Audible, being quite free from such impediments of timbre, mannerism, and affectation as detract from the earlier versions by Robert Bethune, Frederick Davidson, and Charlton Griffin. ![]()
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