David Lurie is a professor of "Communications" at a Cape Town university. His specialty is Romantic poets, in particular Byron. At age 52, twice divorced and finding satisfaction, if not fulfillment, in "orchestrated liaisons" with whores, Lurie is a trivial version of the "Byronic(拜倫式的)" hero he studies. Despite his professorship, Lurie, by his own admission, is no teacher. He prefers the title"scholar." He is in fact a operator, a controller.
One evening he has a chance encounter with one of his students, a 20 year-old co-ed named Melanie. He invites her for dinner and seduces her. Melanie is quickly repulsed by the idea of romance with a man more than twice her age. Lurie, though, pursues her with what he perceives to be heroic passion. Melanie soon falls into depression. Her tatooed, goateed boyfriend-another Byronic cartoon-and her fundamentalist father--another teacher by profession, controller by action--confront Lurie and urge Melanie to file harassment charges against him. In an act of deluded Romantic persecution, Lurie confesses without apology to the affair, practically daring university authorities to dismiss him from his post. They oblige.
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