Don Quixote
Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
1605

Introduction

In 1605 a novel appeared that has become one of the most beloved stories of European literature. It was the history of Don Quixote, the tall, gaunt knight-errant astride his fallible steed, with his potbellied, illiterate squire, Sancho Panza. These eccentric characters are as famous as Sinbad, Tarzan, Odysseus, Hamlet, or Superman. Don Quixote was immediately embraced by his countrymen; it is a testament to the novel and Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra's vivid characterization that the character of Don Quixote is still utilized to mock politicians and satirize the self-righteous.

The original story, El ingenioso hidalgo don Quijote de la Mancha, was immediately popular—with six editions in 1605 alone—and has never lost its prominence. Cervantes not only created one of the greatest comic figures of world literature, but with his realist and humanist techniques, he originated, some critics assert, the modern novel.

Part I of Don Quixote's story appeared in 1605 and was complemented ten years later—a year after the usurper, Avellaneda, published a false se-quel—by Part II. In both parts of the novel, Don Quixote lives in a world created in his imagination, which had been fueled by his obsession with chivalric tales. He longs to resurrect this world he has long read of: chivalry, battles with giants and evil knights, the rescue of virtuous maidens. Instead, Don Quixote deals with windmills, bedclothes, and much disappointment. Along the way, he acquires a sidekick, Sancho, who helps Don Quixote in hopes of getting rich. This dynamic duo has pro-vided readers throughout the centuries with humorous, yet poignant, chivalric tales.

Author Biography

Cervantes was born in Alcalé de Henares on September 19, 1547. Little is known about his early childhood, other than that it was an itinerant existence; his father, a barber-surgeon, was constantly moving his family from town to town to find work. It is assumed that Cervantes's education was minimal although he does seem to have received some education from the Jesuits in Seville.

In 1569, his teacher, López de Hoyos, published four of his poems in Madrid. Cervantes then traveled to Italy, possibly as a result of a duel with Don Antonio Sigura. In Rome, Cervantes served the Cardinal-elect Giulio Acquaviva. In 1571 he enlisted in the Spanish militia to fight for Don Juan of Austria against the Ottoman-Turks at Lepanto. During this battle, he received two bullets to the chest and one to his left hand, which left him permanently disabled. In 1572, he joined Don Juan's campaign to fight at Navarino, Corfu, and Tunis. Returning to Spain in 1575, he was captured by Algerian corsairs.

Cervantes fetched a high price for his captors. Cervantes, as is recorded in the Informacion (a document based on eyewitness testimony to refute his enemies and avoid the Spanish Inquisition), kept up the spirits of his fellow hostages. He tried unsuccessfully to lead them in several escapes. Finally, in 1580, Trinitarian friars paid his high ransom, probably collected from family and friends. Now free, he returned to Spain a great hero. Despite his fame, he was without a job and his family was destitute.

He was unsuccessful as a playwright, because he was unable to compete with the monopoly of Lope de Vega. He wrote poems, but that brought in little money. His only child, Isabel de Saavedra, was the result of an affair with an actress named Ana Franca de Rojas. In 1584, he married a young woman, Catalina de Salazar y Palacios.

In 1585 Cervantes published La Galatea. He became a commissary agent, then a tax collector. Since his salary was often late, he made money by lending out his tax collections at interest. When such a transaction went bad, he was investigated. This landed him in jail several times. During one such jail term in 1597 he conceived of the story that became Don Quixote.

With the publication of El ingenioso hidalgo don Quijote de la Mancha, Cervantes became famous around the world. Although inadequate copyright protection robbed him of riches, patrons enabled him to settle in Madrid and write more novels. His last works included the second part of the Don Quixote saga and Los trabajos de Persiles y Sigismunda, completed three days before he died in April 1616.

Plot Summary

Part I

Don Quixote opens with a prologue. Much of the prologue, however, is devoted to a discussion of what a prologue should include, offering the reader some insight into what a seventeenth-century audience might expect.

Don Quixote is the story of Alonso Quijano, an aging gentleman of La Mancha. He reads so many chivalric romances that he loses his sanity. As the narrator reports: "With virtually no sleep and so much reading, he dried out his brain and lost his sanity."

Don Quixote decides to become a knight-errant, which is a knight who travels the countryside performing good deeds and seeking adventure. He puts on an old suit of armor, mounts a bony old horse he calls Rocinante, and renames himself Don Quixote de La Mancha. He also appoints a peasant woman, Aldonza Lorenzo, as his ladylove, and renames her Dulcinea del Toboso. Like the knights of old, Don Quixote performs good deeds in the name of Dulcinea, although she does not know that she is the object of the older man's attention.

Don Quixote then rides in search of adventure. Just as he considers himself a knight, he imagines that a local inn is a castle and the innkeeper a castellan. As a result of his madness and odd behavior, a group of travelers beat him.

After the beating, he makes his way home, where he is interrogated by the local priest and barber. Concerned, they decide to cure him of his madness by burning his books. Don Quixote attributes the missing books to a thieving wizard.

Soon he sets off on another adventure, this time accompanied by Sancho Panza, a rude peasant. In a very famous scene, Don Quixote mistakes some windmills for giants and rushes at them with his spear. When Don Quixote realizes that he has attacked a windmill, he says that the same magician who has stolen his books has also turned the giants into windmills.

Don Quixote and Sancho have several more adventures, including mistaking two herds of sheep for armies and a funeral for a parade of monsters. Furthermore, they free some prisoners on their way to becoming galley slaves. Don Quixote travels to the mountains to fast and pray for his love, Dulcinea, and sends Sancho Panza with a message to Dulcinea. Don Quixote's friends intercept Sancho and learn his master's whereabouts. They finally lure Don Quixote home, hoping that they can keep him safe.

Part II

Don Quixote's friends are unable to keep him at home for long. Don Quixote and Sancho Panza take off in search of adventure again, this time meeting with the Knight of the Wood (a village student in disguise who had promised to impede Don Quixote's adventures), joining a wedding party, and destroying a traveling puppet show.

The second volume of the novel also includes a long section in which Don Quixote and Sancho Panza stay with a duke and a duchess who have read about the pair's famous adventures. The Duke and the Duchess play a series of tricks on Don Quixote, including the "disenchantment" of Dulcinea and the enthronement of Sancho as ruler of an island.

Next, Don Quixote and Sancho decide to go to Barcelona where they have additional adventures. Finally, the student firm the earlier episode finds Don Quixote and challenges him to combat. Don Quixote is defeated. He decides to return home and become a shepherd.

On his return home, Don Quixote falls ill. He instructs his niece and housekeeper, "Take me to my bed because I don't feel at all well, and just remember: whether I'm a knight errant, as now, or a shepherd, later on, I'll never stop doing for you whatever needs to be done, as you will see in the event."

Although his friends try to cheer him up, Don Quixote grows weaker and weaker. Finally he writes his will and apparently returns to sanity:

I was mad, and now am sane; I was Don Quixote de La Mancha and now, as I have said, I am Alonso Quijano the Good. I pray that my repentance, and my honesty, may return me to the good opinion your graces once held of me.

With this renunciation of chivalry and romance, Don Quixote receives his last rites and subsequently dies. He leaves an inheritance to both Sancho and to his niece, instructing her to marry a man who has never read a book of chivalry.

Characters

The Barber

See Master Nicholas

The Captive Captain

See Perez de Viedma

Cardenio

Cardenio is in love with Luscinda, but Don Fernando tricks him into giving her up. After seeing them wed, he hides in a desolate region of mountains. Found by the Curate and Barber, they find the woman wronged by Don Fernando. Together they fetch Don Quixote and return to the Inn, where Cardenio and Luscinda are reunited.

Sanson Carrasco

Carrasco is a scholar and historian who informs Don Quixote and Sancho Panza about the book that had been written of their adventures. Carrasco seems to encourage Don Quixote to ride again, but then he becomes the Knight of the Mirrors to convince Don Quixote to return home. When Carrasco is vanquished instead, he tries again as the Knight of the White Moon. This time he is successful and commands Don Quixote to return home for one year. Carrasco, unlike the Barber and Curate, really respects and loves Don Quixote, and worries about the old man's safety. Don Quixote thanks him by making him the executor of his will—a position of trust. Carrasco also writes Don Quixote's epitaph.

The Curate

See Pedro Perez

Dulcinea del Toboso

See Aldonza Lorenzo

Don Diego de Miranda

Don Diego is a wise gentleman from La Mancha. He is concerned by Don Quixote's madness and is witness to his conquest of the lion. As a man of sense, he represents what Don Quixote would be if he hadn't become obsessed with chivalric tales.

Gines de Pasamonte

Pasamonte is a notorious criminal freed by Don Quixote. He gives Don Quixote no thanks and even knocks his teeth out with a stone. Later, he steals Sancho's ass.

Perez de Viedma

Maria's companion, Perez de Viedma, the Captive Captain, relates the experience of his slavery in Algeria to Don Quixote. His tale is based somewhat on Cervantes's own captivity experience in Algeria.

Dorotea

Dorotea flees to a convent rather than marry Don Fernando. He retrieves her and is escorting her home when they meet Cardenio and Luscinda.

Duchess

The Duchess is based on Maria Luisa de Aragon, Duchess of Villahermosa. Sancho is her favorite character in the story and she pays much attention to him. At her encouragement, Sancho is made governor of a small village.

Duke

Based on the historical Don Carlos de Borja, the Duke of Villahermosa is a kindhearted, wealthy man. He has read Part I of Don Quixote and hopes to play tricks on Don Quixote and Sancho.

Don Fernando

Don Fernando is a rich and selfish man who steals his friend's woman, Luscinda. In the process he affects the life of another woman, his lover Dorotea.

Roque Guinart

Roque Guinart is like Robin Hood; he steals only from the rich. Don Quixote and Sancho travel with Roque's band for three days until they are delivered to a friend of Roque's in Barcelona.

Housekeeper

One of several stock characters, Don Quixote's housekeeper is a woman "about forty" who blames books of chivalry for her master's madness and wants them all burned.

Knight of the Green Cloak

See Don Diego de Miranda

Media Adaptations

• In 1984, Universal released a laser disc game called "Super Don Quixote." It was similar to Dragon's Lair, and the gamester was a knight named Don who had to rescue Isabella from a witch. Sancho Panza even tags along but, as one would expect, does little to help.
• Don Quixote has been adapted as a ballet many times. Famous dancers, including Mikhail Baryshnikov, have performed in various productions. Rudolf Nureyev choreographed a production in 1973. He also danced the part of Basilio. The Kirov Ballet performed Don Quixote as choreographed by Petopia and Gorsky in 1988. Tatianna Terekhova was the star performer. Nina Ananiashbili starred in a production in 1992.
• Don Quixote was made into a silent film a few times. Edward Dillon directed DeWolf Hopper Sr., Fay Tincher, and Max Davidson in 1915. Maurice Elvey filmed another silent version in 1923; his film starred Bertram Burleigh and Sydney Fairbrother.
• Dramatic film adaptations have been produced in Russia. The first, which contained an amazing windmill scene, is known as Don Quichotte. Georg Wilhelm Pabst directed the story in three linguistic versions using mostly the same cast: French, English, and German. Feodor Chaliapin Sr. stars as Don Quixote. Several years later, Don Kikhot (1957) appeared. This version was directed by Grigori Kozyntsev and starred Nikolai Cherkassov as Don Quixote and Yuri Tolubeyev as Sancho Panza. Oleg Grigorovich directed a version known as Don Quixote Is Coming Back (1966). A film version of Don Quixote for children was released by Mosfilm Company in 1965. For this production, Yevgeni Karelov directed a cast including Anatoli Papanov, Vera Orlova and Vladimir Korenev.
• There have been many adaptations produced in Spanish. Don Quijote de la Mancha was directed by Rafael Gil in 1948. It starred Rafael Rivelles as Don Quixote and Juan Calvo as Sancho Panza. More recently, an animated series was made for TV by Romagosa International Merchandising, S.L., in 1997, entitled Don Quixote of La Mancha.
• An Israeli version of the story was released in 1956. Dan Quihote V'Sa'adia Pansa, also known as Don Quixote and Sa'ad Pancha, was directed by Nathan Axelrod.
• An Australian version of Don Quixote (1973) was directed by Robert Helpmann and Rudolf Nureyev.
• Jesus Franco and Patxi Irigoyen finished Orson Welles's black-and-white Don Quixote in 1992. The original narrator was Orson Welles, but Constantino Romero narrates in the new version. Jose Mediavilla is Don Quixote and Juan Carlos Ordónez plays Sancho Panza.
• Alvin Rakoff directed Don Quixote de la Mancha for BBC-TV in 1973. Rosemary Leach played Dulcinea and Bernard Hepton played Don Quixote.
• Dale Wasserman wrote the original TV play Don Quixote, in 1959. This version eventually evolved into the musical Man of La Mancha.
• Combining the play by Dale Wasserman with the music of Joe Darion, Don Quixote was made into the musical Man of La Mancha by United Artists in 1972. Don Quixote was played by Peter O'Toole, but the singing voice was that of Paolo Gozlino. Sophia Loren played Dulcinea and Sancho Panza was acted by James Coco.
• Don Quixote by Cervantes: A Multimedia Storybook—Windows CD-ROM was released in 1997 by TDC. With illustrations by Manuel Boix, the interactive story teaches kids about Spain in the time of Don Quixote while telling the story of the famous knight-errant.

Aldonza Lorenzo

To be a full knight requires a ladylove. Don Quixote chooses Aldonza Lorenzo, a local woman, and renames her Dulcinea. She does not have a major role in the novel, but remains the ideal of womanhood in Don Quixote's mind. He resolves to do good deeds in her honor. Dulcinea has three appearances in the novel: the delivery of the letter; the appearance in an "enchanted" form astride an ass outside El Toboso; and finally, in a vision in the Cave of Montesinos.

Luscinda

Having been dumped by Don Fernando for Dorotea, Luscinda runs away to live the quiet life of a shepherd. She is a clever woman who steps in to play the role of a princess and therefore saves the Barber from transvestitism. While playing this role, she is reunited with Don Fernando.

Maria

See Lela Zoraida

Princess Micomicona

See Luscinda

Master Nicholas

Master Nicholas, the village barber, helps to preserve some of Don Quixote's library. He and the Curate work to bring Don Quixote back to his estate and, in the process, amuse themselves. The Barber, like the Curate, is well intentioned but cruel to Don Quixote. In their duplicity, they allegorize humanity's kind inhumanity to man.

The Niece

See Antonia Quixano

Sancho Panza

Sancho Panza is a neighbor of Don Quixote. He is an illiterate laborer who signs on to be Don Quixote's squire in hopes of becoming governor of an island as a reward for some adventure. At first Sancho is a timid character. Gradually, however, Sancho becomes more loquacious, full of proverbs, and a believer in Don Quixote's madness. He also functions as the jester, or the gracioso (the buffoon character of Spanish comedy) archetype.

Although he continues to hope for financial reward from his association with Don Quixote, Sancho admits that he his happy to be with Don Quixote, participating in wild adventures. Eventually, he does receive the position of governor to an island, and his leadership decisions surprise everyone by their wisdom. He is funny, round, and wise.

Pedro Perez

Perez, the Curate, is a friend of the family who preaches good will and "bonhomie." He considers it his duty to help Don Quixote recover his senses. First, the Curate and the Barber undertake a mock Inquisition and burn chivalric books. Later, they take a more active role in Don Quixote's adventure and bring him home in a cage.

Alonso Quixano

See Don Quixote

Antonia Quixano

Don Quixote's niece loathes chivalric tales and her uncle's fascination with them. She pleads with him to stay home and be sane. In an effort to curb Don Quixote, she willingly helps to burn many of his books.

Don Quixote

Alonso Quixano is a fifty-year-old man who reads of chivalric tales until he begins to neglect his domestic affairs. Eventually he decides that for his own honor and that of the state, he must revive the profession of the knight-errant. He therefore dons his armor and becomes Don Quixote, Man of La Mancha and Knight of the Rueful Figure. Not happy with the modern world, he takes it upon himself to bring back the golden age of heroism and chivalry.

In first part of the novel, Don Quixote suffers physical humiliation. In several instances, he is aggressive and rather dangerous. On numerous occasions, he charges into the fray of an adventure, only to come crashing down to earth with his lance in splinters and his body bruised. He is wise in the ways of knight-errantry and his speech on the importance of the scholar is a good example of this.

Resurrected in the second part of the novel, he becomes the gaunt figure towering above the Spanish landscape. Due to the publication of the first part, he had become famous. Unlike his earlier adventures, however, he is gradually regaining his reason. This becomes more obvious as he begins to call an Inn an Inn; in addition, he admits to interpreting reality. "God knows whether Dulcinea exists on earth or not. I contemplate her in her ideal." Don Quixote becomes wiser and less likely to lash out in the fury that surrounded him in part one.

As Don Quixote strives to return to sanity, however, people take advantage of his fame and encourage him in his delusions. His defeat at the hands of the Knight of the White Moon crushes him in mind and body. It leads to his speedy death.

The Ragged One

See Cardenio

Lela Zoraida

Lela Zoraida, known as Maria, is a Moor who escapes with the Captive Captain. She wants to become Christian.

Themes

Love

Love is the major theme of the novel. It functions as the motivating force of knight-errantry. In the several real adventures (for example, Dorotea and Cardenio or Basilio and Quiteria), where there is a question of forced conjugation, love conquers all: "true love cannot be divided, but must be free and uninhibited." In each of these encounters, there are lessons about the nature of love. These lessons are spelled out in ABC fashion in "The Tale of Ill-Advised Curiosity." Love also allows forgiveness, even of murder—as is the case of Claudia and Don Vicente.

The theme of love never really involves the character of Don Quixote. He speaks favorably of true love and prevents a quarrel (as in the situation with Camacho the Rich), but because the theme of love deals with what is true in reality, Don Quixote plays no part in the many reunions that occur in the novel. In fact, in the case of Luscinda and Don Fernando, Don Quixote is asleep and dreaming when their tense reunion occurs.

War and Peace

"There are two roads … by which men can travel and reach wealth and honor: one is the way of letters, the other the way of arms." Don Quixote has chosen arms. In fact, he believes that fighting for what is right is as important as anything else. He is not a big believer in modern warfare; instead, he prefers the ancient, chivalric duels that pit one man against another.

There is also a desire for peace. Don Quixote, by his words and actions, prefers the Arcadian life. He admirably defends the art of poetry and in the end wishes to lead the simple life of a shepherd with no mention of revenging his honor. Sancho shows a preference for this quiet alternative when he questions the chase. The Duke tells us that all rulers partake in the exercise of the chase to keep their skills fresh, for "chase is the image of war." But Sancho wonders if it isn't a waste to always be at war "killing an animal that has done no harm to anyone." The same could be said about the other victims of Don Quixote's efforts to revive knight-errantry.

Fear

In the life of a knight-errant, fans, admirers, and squires often broach the topic of fear. Sancho is in constant fear for his own safety and for that of his master. However, as Sancho admits to his wife, such a life makes him happy. For whether he climbs an oak tree or runs away, Sancho is just happy to be a part of the action. And that adventure is the main thing; as both Don Quixote and Sancho believe, it is better to try and maybe fail than not to try at all.

At the height of his powers, right after defeating the Knight of the Mirrors, Don Quixote passes the ultimate test of courage. In the face of this test, Don Quixote reveals a truth about fear. "Fear … will make [danger] seem bigger by half." Subsequently, he faces and defeats the lion. Everyone is impressed by the feat, although the narrator downplays the event. It is Don Quixote's willingness to face up to his fears that is the true achievement.

Sanity and Insanity

Don Quixote becomes obsessed with the idea of knight-errantry to the point of losing himself. His loss of reason is similar to that of any person who becomes obsessed with something. As he says to his niece, "if these knightly thoughts did not monopolize all my faculties, there would be nothing I could not do…."

Indeed, Don Quixote never quite loses his mind, he simply indulges—to the fullest extent—his imagination. It is a conscious effort, "and that is where the subtleness of my plan comes in. A knight-errant who goes mad for a good reason deserves no credit; the whole point consists in going crazy without cause." That is, if knight-errantry were in fashion, Don Quixote would not be unique. If he succeeds in resuscitating chivalry, he will become famous.

The point of Don Quixote's knight-errantry is to make a fantasy come true. Living a fantasy even for a short time is more than most hidalgos could say. His friends unwittingly bring his wish to fruition better than he could have possibly hoped. Everyone wins, for "what the world needed most of all was plenty of knights-errant" and by acting in his fantasy, his friends help revive the traditions of knight-errantry.

In fact, it is their indulgence—their cooperation with the fantasy—that fulfills Don Quixote's dream and "astonished [him], and for the first time he felt thoroughly convinced that he was a knight-errant in fact and not in imagination." Don Quixote's madness, sadly, is the only way for adults to play in the serious world of Spain's Golden Age.

Style

Structure

Cervantes switches between a style of narration that Boccacio employed in the Decamaron—a renowned collection of tales—to a more modern style. Like the Decamaron, Don Quixote is a medieval work wherein characters incorporate novellas, old ballads, and legends. Cervantes combines this style with the chivalric genre. This hybrid style is considered innovative.

Another result of Cervantes's unique style is that his characters have independent, interesting stories of their own. To offset this, Cervantes adds the device of the found manuscript; well into the story, the reader discovers the story is part of a manuscript found in the ruins of an old building. In fact, the history is the work of Cide Hamete Berengena, "the author of our true history."

This clever stylistic device does not change the tone of the narration, which is that of an omniscient, omnipresent, and amused narrator. This duplicity of narration only adds to the overall irony of the work. The characters are aware of being characters in a story that is being delivered by a narrator who is quoting, with liberality, from a found manuscript. In addition, there are other narrative viewpoints mixed into the melange. The potential layering—anticipating later Russian narrative forms—is kept at a minimum by the picaresque.

Satire

Don Quixote is a satire on conditions in Spain at the time the novel was written. This is accomplished by rendering Spain's archetype—the knight-errant as formidable, honorable, and above reproach—into realistic terms. For example, at the end of the first section, Don Quixote answers the call of nature—bathroom breaks are not a part of chivalric tales.

Picaresque

Don Quixote transforms the chivalric tale of adventure into the picaresque. This type of narrative chronicles the humorous adventures of a rogue, like Gines de Pasamonte (who has been working on a manuscript about his own adventures), while on the road, often traveling a long distance. The picaresque is often a satiric tale.

Topics for Further Study

• Discuss the importance of reading in the novel and in the lives of the characters. Be sure to examine negative, as well as positive, examples from the story.
• Don Diego believes that "if the laws and ordinances of knight-errantry had been lost, they would be found in your worship's heart, as in their right repository and archive." What does he mean by this? What is the code of the knight-errant according to Don Quixote? How does this compare with the real code of chivalry?
• Find misrepresentations of the Don Quixote character in the media, on film, or in cartoons. Compare these versions with the original character in the book. How has the image of Don Quixote changed throughout time?
• Spain's tenure as a superpower was ruined by extravagant military spending and a lack of investment in business and industry. How does Spain's experience as a superpower contrast with that of the United States? Will the United States suffer the same fate as Spain? Why or why not?
• Investigate the meaning of the story about the madman and the dog experiment at the start of

Irony

The technique of irony has its roots in the character Eiron. This character in Greek comedy always manages to outsmart Alazon. The term has come to mean a moment when words express something other than their literal meaning. The result is often intentionally humorous. Cervantes employs this technique on many levels.

In the process, Cervantes tears down the barriers between maturity and fantasy. Don Quixote and Sancho are so famous by the beginning of the second part of the novel that they are able to have a man with a degree help them judge the verisimilitude of their story—they are aware of themselves as being fictional characters. This leads to other jokes about whether the character or the narrator or the writer said such and such.

In fact, this occurs at the opening of the second part of the novel. There, Sancho surprises the narrator, and the reader, with his clever speech—or he has been faking his stupidity the whole time. Although the audience should know the truth, in many moments of Don Quixote the truth is whatever you wish it to be and therein lies the irony.

Dialogue

In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, dialogue was being developed into an artistic technique. At that time, dialogues in histories or "novels" were flat, presenting and debating ideas; then the techniques of the playwright were incorporated into dialogue, and the technique was used to show characterization and motivation, as well as propel the action of the story. Cervantes's practice as a playwright enabled him to utilize dialogue in an engaging, non-pedantic manner.

Don Quixote is an excellent example of an early effort to inject depth of psychology into a character through conversation. Two hundred years before the first psychological thriller, psychology—usually shown in mannerisms and action—could be revealed and confessed by the character.

Historical Context

The First Global Empire: Philip II

The marriage of King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella in 1469 unites the kingdom of Spain. After defeating the Moors in 1492, as well as financing the expedition of Christopher Columbus, Spain becomes a global empire. Spain also benefits from an early form of capitalism amongst its merchant classes—a force Spain weakens by deporting its Jewish citizens. The remaining Moors fill the void, however, and Spain flourishes.

Using the influx of wealth from the New World, Spain remains a superpower for more than one hundred years. Consolidated and powerful, leadership is passed to Philip II in 1556. He commands fifty thousand soldiers, the best generals, a navy of 140 vessels, and collects an annual revenue ten times that of England.

In addition, Philip reigns over all of Central America and parts of North and South America; also the Netherlands, several kingdoms in Italy, the Philippines, protectorates in Europe, and the West Indies. The Spanish court is the most splendid, its nobles are the proudest, and its architecture is on display on five continents.

Philip II nearly doubles the size of the empire when he absorbs Portugal and its holdings in 1580 (Portugal regains independence in 1640). However, despite his meticulous attention to detail, Spain's economy begins to decline. Prices skyrocket and wages fail to catch up. Industry, never a strong part of Spain's economy, simply grinds to a halt.

To compound these dire circumstances, wars grow more costly. Philip II grows so intolerant of the Protestants in England harassing his convoys that he bankrupts his government to finance a formidable armada. The Spanish Armada sails in 1588 and is destroyed by winds and storms. The loss is so disastrous that Spain is in denial of the repercussions. The economic situation worsens as Philip tries to rebuild his armada. As a result, the Spain of Don Quixote is a superpower in decline.

Phillip III

Taking power in 1598, Philip III is weak and totally unable to manage even one-tenth of the empire left by his father. He appoints the Duke of Lerma to govern in his stead.

The Duke of Lerma funnels more money into war supplies, in particular the Spanish Armada. Failure on all fronts prompts him to search for scapegoats. In 1609 the Moriscos are shipped to Africa (where many are killed as Christians and others die of starvation). The loss of the best members of the industrial, merchant, and banking classes weaken Spain even more. By 1618 Spain is in ruins.

Religion

While the rest of Europe is undergoing a period known as the Renaissance, Spain clings to its medieval values. The Roman Catholic Church is second only to the monarchy in terms of power. Spain is virtually ruled by Catholic laws and philosophies.

Compare & Contrast

• 1600s: In 1615, 40,000 people demonstrate in favor of the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception of the Virgin (which contended that the Virgin Mary was without Original Sin). Once approved, this doctrine becomes a central tenet of Catholicism.
  
  Today: Devotion to Mary is still central to the practice of Roman Catholicism. Around the world there are many holy sites where she is believed to appear to believers.
• 1600s: As the most powerful nation on Earth, Spain ignores its industrial and agricultural sectors, leading to their eventual decay.
  
  Today: With one of the healthiest economies in the European Union, Spain exports 63% of its industrial production. It is also the center for small car manufacturing in Western Europe. With 29 million acres in permanent crops, Spain's agricultural base is larger than the United States'.
• 1600s: Spain ruins its economy building armadas to win the naval war against England.
  
  Today: The United States and Russia, after spending trillions of dollars on an arms race, are still affected by the economic repercussions. In particular, Russia has a difficult time adapting to a capitalist economy and suffers a near financial collapse.
• 1600s: Moralists bemoan the corrupting influence of chivalric tales on the young.
  
  Today: Commentators blame television, video games, music, and absent parents for a youth culture viewed as irresponsible and immoral. Dramatic incidents of youth violence prompt a widespread debate on how society raises its youth.
• 1600s: The land that would eventually become the United States is claimed by Spain, although it is inhabited by native peoples.
  
  Today: The United States is a world superpower. Ownership of the land is still contested by native people in various parts of the American hemisphere.

Thousands of young men enter the priesthood—approximately 32,000 men comprise the Dominican and Franciscan orders during this time. A number of these men form a secret, very powerful group: the Inquisition. This group behaves like police, enforcing the highest standards of morality; in fact, they punish sinners with a range of punishments from 100 lashes to execution. The Spanish Inquisition also persecutes those of other faiths, especially Jews and Protestants. As a result, many people of these faiths convert to Roman Catholicism out of fear.

Hidalgo

Originally a term used to describe the minor nobility of Spain, the number of hidalgos explodes as Spain reaches her zenith as a superpower. A hidalgo is anyone with papers proving he descends from a noble family. Such a heritage meant, to the hidalgo, that he deserved the honor due to a person of nobility. Consequently, a whole segment of the population refuses to work and aspires to an aristocratic lifestyle; this, along with the expulsion of those who did work, is another factor in Spain's downfall.

Critical Overview

Readers have always loved Don Quixote. Critics, however, have offered mixed assessments of the novel. For example, Lord Byron asserted that Cervantes was responsible for finally extinguishing the flame of chivalry in Europe. This charge was repeated by the English author Ford Madox Ford. Other negative reviewers, like Miguel de Unamuno and Giovanni Papini, consider Don Quixote a brilliant novel but deem its author a disorganized hack.

Yet, these authors are in the minority. Most critics appreciate the achievement of the novel and the author. Highest praise for the author came from Victor Hugo: "Cervantes sees the inner man."

Don Quixote's popularity spread throughout Europe soon after the first English translation of the first part of the novel appeared in 1612. By the eighteenth century, Cervantes was a literary icon. In his biography of the author, Tobias Smollet recalled that dignitaries visiting Spain were appalled by the idea that Cervantes was not financially supported for his contribution to Spanish literature. Summarily, said Smollett, "Cervantes, whether considered as a writer or a man, will be found worthy of universal approbation and esteem."

William Hazlitt, in his "Standard Novels and Romances," examined a very popular subject of Cervantes criticism—the delightful characters. "The characters in Don Quixote are strictly individuals; that is, they do not belong to, but form a class of themselves." Hazlitt applauded the linguistic play of the author and the insights into human nature. Furthermore, Cervantes "furnished to the whole of civilized Europe" a great "number of allusions" useful for conversation and for sermonizing. Hazlitt ranked Cervantes with Le Sage as one of the great writers of the ages and ahead of Fielding, Richardson, Smollett and Sterne on the local English stage.

Unlike Lord Byron, many commentators were thankful that Cervantes had, as Heinrech Heine contended, "uprooted the tales of chivalry." Heine asserted that after Don Quixote the "taste for such books died." Indeed, "Cervantes founded the modern novel by introducing into the knightly romance the faithful delineation of the lower classes—by giving the life of the people a place in it."

Carlos Fuentes maintained that if Don Quixote is the first modern novel then his "debt to tradition is enormous." Another critic, the noted author Vladimir Nabokov, agreed:

I wish to stress the fact that in romances of chivalry all was not Ladies and Roses and Blazons, but that scenes occurred in which shameful and grotesque things happened to those knights and they underwent the same humiliations and enchantments as Don Quixote did—and that, in a word, Don Quixote cannot be considered a distortion of those romances but rather a logical continuation, with the elements of madness and shame and mystification increased.

Cervantes is often compared with his English contemporary, William Shakespeare. For example, Wyndham Lewis compared the character of Don Quixote to Falstaff. Ivan Turgeniev, in "Hamlet and Don Quixote" made a more immediate comparison: While Hamlet represents the Northern European archetype, Don Quixote represents the Southern European man. This man is characterized by his affinity for a romantic view of the Middle Ages. Perhaps Don Quixote is more limited than Hamlet but he "reflects all that is human … [he is a] deep river quietly flowing [with which] the reader, slowly carried by its transparent waves, looks with joy at that really epic tranquility."

Believing that Cervantes was sent by God solely to give us Don Quixote, Miguel de Unamuno asserted, "Cervantes never existed but Don Quixote did." As if that were not clear enough, Unamuno categorically declared, "I have no doubt in my mind but that Cervantes is a typical example of a writer enormously inferior to his work, to his Don Quixote." However the novel came into being, Unamuno admitted that Don Quixote is as much an artifact for meditation as anything Homeric or, for the English, anything Shakespearean.

The master of magic realism, Jorge Luis Borges, considered Don Quixote his muse. His remarks, characteristically, analyze the theme of reality: "Every novel is an ideal depiction of reality." He asked the troublesome question, "Why does it make us uneasy to know that the map is within the map … that Don Quixote is a reader of the Quixote, and Hamlet is a spectator of Hamlet?" The answer is such: "Those inversions suggest that if the characters in a story can be readers or spectators, then we, their readers or spectators, can be fictitious."

The theme of madness is a recurring subject of Cervantes commentary. Recent criticism of the psychological vein has been insightful. Caroll B. Johnson speculated on the relationship between Don Quixote and his loyal sidekick, Sancho. He perceived homoerotic elements in their friendship; moreover, he considered the relationship a life-affirming example of how men can be friends with men.

Carroll summarized his view of Quixote: "Don Quixote's madness propels him backward into life. It enables him to have a life, to engage in purposeful and meaningful activity, and to enjoy a fulfilling, evolving relationship with another human being. That is, in the psychological as well as the existential sense already observed by Unamuno, our fiftyish hidalgo's only meaningful life is his life as a madman Don Quixote … [therefore, readers] are saddened by his recuperation of sanity and his swift death."

Criticism

Diane Andrews Henningfeld

Henningfeld is an associate professor at Adrian College. She holds a Ph.D. in literature and writes widely for educational publishers. In this essay, she views the novel Don Quixote as postmodern.

In 1605, Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra wrote the first part of his ingenious novel, El ingenioso hidalgo don Quijote de la Mancha, known in English as Don Quixote. Written because Cervantes was in financial trouble and he needed to make some money, Don Quixote met with immediate commercial success.

Indeed, the novel was so popular that in 1614, another writer imitating Cervantes's subject and style published a book called Segundo tomo del ingenioso hidalgo Don Quixote de la Mancha. While imitation might be the most sincere form of flattery, Cervantes was not amused. Already working on the second volume of Don Quixote, he wrote into the book a chapter castigating the impostor and denigrating the imitative work. This second volume was published in 1615, and once again met with both critical and popular approval.

Since the seventeenth century, Don Quixote has grown to be one of the most regarded and highly influential novels in the western world. It continues to generate critical study and controversy, and has been called the most important novel ever written, particularly by South American writers. Indeed, important writers such as Michel Foucault and Jorge Luis Borges have both discussed Don Quixote at length.

What is there about the novel that makes it the subject of so many literary studies, centuries after its first publication? Perhaps it is because the novel offers readers nearly endless possibilities for interpretation. As Harold Bloom argues in The Western Canon: "No two readers ever seem to read the same Don Quixote…. Cervantes invented endless ways of disrupting his own narrative to compel the reader to tell the story in place of the wary author."

Further, a number of critics believe that it is the first modern novel. Carlos Fuentes, for example, in a foreword to the Tobias Smollet translation of Don Quixote, tells the reader that for him, "[T]he modern world begins when Don Quixote de la Mancha, in 1605, leaves his village, goes out into the world, and discovers that the world does not resemble what he has read about it."

P. E. Russell, in his book Cervantes, also traces the connections between Don Quixote and the modern novel. Most interesting, however, are Russell's statements concerning how the book is not like the modern novel. For example, he argues that "A parodic or even a more generally comic stance is hardly the norm in the modern novel." Russell continues, "The ambiguity of the book is another feature that we scarcely associate with the modern novel."

The problem, of course, is how to reconcile Cervantes' multi-layered, highly ironic, playful text with the modern novel, which tries to preserve the illusion of the reality of its fictive world. Russell might meet with more success if he were to connect Don Quixote with the postmodern novel, what Russell refers to as "experimental fiction."

Postmodern literature is concerned with narrative and the disruption of narrative; with the connection between naming and reality; and with fiction that self-reflexively calls attention to itself as fiction. By examining each of these in turn, readers may find that Cervantes anticipates the postmodern moment in Don Quixote.

A narrative is, according to The Harper Handbook of Literature, an account of real or imaginary events, and a narrative perspective is the standpoint from which a story is told. A narrative demands a narrator, that is, a teller of the story. While this may seem self-evident, postmodernism has rendered the entire relationship between the narrator and the narrative problematic. Like a postmodernist himself, Cervantes plays with the relationship as well.

What Do I Read Next?

• Cervantes's first book, La Galatea (1684), is one of the few books in Don Quixote's library to escape the fire. The work is a pastoral novel.
• Cervantes's Exemplary Novels is comprised of stories that depict examples of exemplary behavior. Some tales, like "Lady Cornelia," are traditional cloak-and-dagger romances. Others are Kafkaesque; "Doctor Glass Case" chronicles the story of a servant boy who gets to attend school. He goes mad when he falls in love, and in his madness he believes he is made of glass.
• Cervantes's final novel was completed three days before his death. Published posthumously, Los trabajos de Persiles y Sigismunda is a scathing denunciation of reason and science in favor of the idylls of the golden age of Spain. The story itself is a quest, as several characters leave an imperfect society and eventually arrive at superior wisdom.
• Voltaire's classic satire, Candide, is a picaresque adventure that unmasks many of the pretensions of 1750s Europe. The principal characters are engaged in a quest for understanding.
• R. E. Raspe wrote a collection of stories based loosely on the tales of the adventurer Karl Friedrich Hieronymus (Baron von Munch-hausen) in 1785. The volume is titled Baron Munchausen's Narrative of His Marvellous Travels and Campaigns in Russia.
• Published at approximately the same time as Don Quixote, Shakespeare's Hamlet is the tale of a prince trying to solve the mysterious death of his father. Under the ruse of madness, he succeeds in exposing the perpetrator.
• An excellent example of a chivalric tale is Acts of King Arthur and His Noble Knights, by John Steinbeck. The story retells the exploits of the legendary King Arthur and the tragic Lancelot.
• Charlotte Lennox wrote The Female Quixote, or the Adventures of Arabella to warn young women against reading novels. In her story, set just outside of colonial Philadelphia, Arabella pays so much attention to novels that she is unable to attract a husband. In fact, she goes mad as a result of so much reading. A family friend finally works out a romantic ruse by which to cure her.
• Gulliver's Travels is Jonathan Swift's satire of Europe, set in the first half of the eighteenth century. Gulliver visits many strange lands, and as a result gains a new perspective on his own country. Upon his return home, he is pronounced mad and spends his remaining days talking to his horses.

As the novel opens, Cervantes introduces himself to the reader through his prologue. Readers thus expect that Cervantes will be the voice narrating the tale. As E. Michael Gerli in his book Refiguring Authority: Reading, Writing, and Rewriting in Cervantes notes, however, "[T]he narrative structure of Don Quijote is exceedingly complex." The voice that opens the novel, introduces the characters, and recounts the action remains consistent for the first eight chapters.

Suddenly, however, Cervantes disrupts his own narrative, and informs the reader that he has been reading from a text that has suddenly come to an end, right in the middle of a battle. This disruption of the narrative throws the reader into confusion. Does this mean that Cervantes is not the narrator of his own story? Or that he is not the author of this text?

At the beginning of chapter nine, the battle suspended, the narrator goes in search of the rest of the story. He tells the reader that he is "always reading, even scraps of paper [he] finds in the street…." He finds a set of notebooks, written in Arabic. Although the narrator is a voracious reader, he is unable to read the Arabic and must find a translator. He finds a Moor in the marketplace who translates the notebooks, which are, it appears, the work of the Arab historian Sidi Hamid Benengeli, who is the writer of the History of Don Quijote of La Mancha. With the translation finished, the original narrator resumes his story.

However, the disruption has served several purposes. First, it undermines the reliability of the narrator and of the text itself. Although the reader thought that the narrator and Cervantes were one and the same, clearly this is not the case. In addition, the text that the narrator reads from is located within the larger text Cervantes creates. Second, the disruption forces the reader to consider the reliability of sources and of history itself. Whose story is this anyway? What does it mean that the story was originally written in Arabic, translated by someone the narrator finds in the market, written in Spanish by Cervantes, and translated into English by any one of several translators?

Certainly, the layering of text upon text serves to distance Cervantes from his story. However, at the same time, it calls attention to Cervantes as a writer of fiction. The disruption in the narrative reminds the reader that Don Quixote is a character in a novel, not a real human being. It also reminds the reader that the narrator, the translator, and Sidi Hamid Benengeli are all fictional characters, created by Cervantes for his novel.

In addition, the fictional Moorish translator forces readers to consider the role of the real English translators who undertake to interpret and render meaningful texts separated from their readers by culture, space, and time. How does reading a novel in translation differ from reading it in the original language? What is the relationship between the text itself and the translation? For that matter, what is the text itself? These are questions that postmodern writers and readers find most intriguing.

Postmodernism is also concerned with the process of naming. As Brenda Marshall suggests in Teaching the Postmodern, "Naming must occur from a position 'outside' of a moment, and it always indicates an attempt to control…. Only from a fictional, removed, and separate point of perspective do we name (identify) the framework or paradigm within which people have lived in the past."

Cervantes calls attention to the power of naming by first creating doubt over the name of his fictional character: "It's said his family name was Quijada, or maybe Quesada: there's some disagreement among the writers who've discussed the matter. But more than likely his name was really Quejana." By introducing this moment of doubt, Cervantes suggests that he has less control over his story than one might think. Always there is the possibility of not being able "to tell things as faithfully as you can."

As Michel Foucault argues in The Order of Things, Don Quixote is a novel about the rupture between words and meaning, between names and identity. Reality depends on the ability to name, to identify, and to tell a story faithfully. The rupture evident in the novel suggests that there may be more than one reality.

Brenda Marshall continues, "But the traditional process of naming—a belief in the identity of things with names, so that 'reality' may be known ab-solutely—provides a space of interrogation for postmodernism, which asks: whose 'reality' is to be represented through the process of naming?"

The importance of names is especially clear when Alonso Quejana renames himself, his servant, his lady, and his horse. In so doing, he creates identities for them that have meaning within the "framework or paradigm within which people have lived in the past." Cervantes makes it clear that names have consequences: once Don Quixote becomes Don Quixote, he enters into a different reality and becomes a knight-errant. Don Quixote, through the process of naming, creates a reality that requires particular action on his part. Likewise, the naming of Don Quixote as "mad" requires a different understanding of reality on the part of his friends.

The kind of fiction described above can be called "metafiction." Metafiction asks readers to recognize that what they are reading is fiction, not reality, in order to help readers explore the rela-tionship between fiction and reality. Throughout Don Quixote, Cervantes says as much about the nature of fiction as he does about the adventures of Don Quixote. For example, at the beginning of chapter twenty-four, he tells the reader,

He who translated this great history from its Arabic original, written by its primal author, Sidi Hamid Benengeli, tells us that, when he got to this chapter about the adventure in Montesinos' Cave, he found, written in the margins, and in Sidi Hamid's own handwriting, "I cannot persuade myself nor quite believe that the valiant Don Quixote in fact experienced literally everything written about in the aforesaid chapter, because everything else that has happened to him, to this point, has been well within the realm of possibility and verisimilitude, but I find it hard to accept as true all these things that supposedly happened in the cave, for they exceed all reasonable bounds."

This intrusion reminds the reader that the translator, the Arabic original, the marginal notes, and Sidi Hamid Benengeli are also fictional creations of Cervantes, just as Don Quixote is a fictional creation. In addition, while a fictional text may seem to be true because of verisimilitude, that is, its imitation of reality, all fictional texts "exceed all reasonable bounds." In other words, a text that seems true is no truer than a fictional text that does not seem true; both only exist in the world of fiction.

Don Quixote, then, is a work that continues to speak to its readers. Through its play with narration, its exploration of the power of naming, and its attention to metafictional concerns, the novel seems acutely appropriate for reading in the postmodern moment. Nevertheless, if, as Harold Bloom contends, no two readers ever read the same Don Quixote, future readers will also find much to interest them, for with each reading, the novel grows in richness and complexity.

Source: Diane Andrews Henningfeld, in an essay for Novels for Students, Gale, 2000.

Miguel de Unamuno

In the following excerpt from an essay originally published in 1905, Unamuno, one of the most influential Spanish writers and thinkers of his era, argues that Cervantes "extracted Don Quixote from the soul of his people and from the soul of all humanity."

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Source: Miguel de Unamuno, "On the Reading and Interpretation of Don Quixote," in Selected Works of Miguel de Unamuno: Our Lord Don Quixote, Vol. 3, edited by Anthony Kerrigan and Martin Kozick, translated by Anthony Kerrigan, Bollingen Series LXXXV, Princeton University Press, 1967, pp. 445-66.

Havelock Ellis

Ellis was a pioneering sexual psychologist and a respected English man of letters. In the following excerpt, he favorably compares Don Quixote to other literary masterpieces and also emphasizes the indelibly Spanish nature of the work.

There can be no doubt, Don Quixote is the world's greatest and most typical novel. There are other novels which are finer works of art, more exquisite in style, of more perfect architectonic plan. But such books appeal less to the world at large than to the literary critic; they are not equally amusing, equally profound, to the men of all nations, and all ages, and all degrees of mental capacity. Even if we put aside monuments of literary perfection, like some of the novels of Flaubert, and consider only the great European novels of widest appeal and deepest influence, they still fall short of the standard which this book, their predecessor and often their model, had set. Tristram Shandy, perhaps the most cosmopolitan of English novels, a book that in humour and wisdom often approaches Don Quixote, has not the same universality of appeal. Robinson Crusoe, the most typical of English novels, the Odyssey of the Anglo-Saxon on his mission of colonising the earth—God-fearing, practical, inventive—is equally fascinating to the simplest intellect and the deepest. Yet, wide as its reputation is, it has not the splendid affluence, the universal humanity, of Don Quixote. Tom Jones, always a great English novel, can never become a great European novel; while the genius of Scott, which was truly cosmopolitan in its significance and its influence, was not only too literary in its inspirations, but too widely diffused over a wilderness of romances ever to achieve immortality. La Nouvelle Héloïse, which once swept across Europe and renewed the novel, was too narrow in its spirit, too temporary in its fashion, to be enduring. Wilhelm Meister, perhaps the wisest and profoundest of books in novel form, challenges a certain comparison, as the romance of the man who, like Saul the son of Kish, went forth to seek his father's asses and found a kingdom; it narrates an adventure which is in some sense the reverse of Don Quixote's, but in its fictional form it presents, like the books of Rabelais, far too much that is outside the scope of fiction ever to appeal to all tastes. The Arabian Nights, which alone surpasses Don Quixote in variety and universality of interest, is not a novel by one hand, but a whole literature. Don Quixote remains the one great typical novel. It is a genuine invention; for it combined for the first time the old chivalrous stories of heroic achievement with the new picaresque stories of vulgar adventure, creating in the combination something that was altogether original, an instrument that was capable of touching life at every point. It leads us into an atmosphere in which the ideal and the real are equally at home. It blends together the gravest and the gayest things in the world. It penetrates to the harmony that underlies the violent contrasts of life, the only harmony which in our moments of finest insight we feel to be possible, in the same manner and, indeed, at the same moment—for Lear appeared in the same year as Don Quixote—that Shakespeare brought together the madman and the fool on the heath in a concord of divine humour. It is a storybook that a child may enjoy, a tragicomedy that only the wisest can fully understand. It has inspired many of the masterpieces of literature; it has entered into the lives of the people of every civilised land; it has become a part of our human civilisation.

It was not to be expected that the author of such a book as this, the supreme European novel, an adventure book of universal human interest, should be a typical man of letters, shut up in a study, like Scott or Balzac or Zola. Cervantes was a man of letters by accident.

He was a soldier, a man of action, who would never have taken up the pen, except in moments of recreation, if a long chain of misfortunes had not closed the other avenues of life. Before he wrote of life he had spent his best years in learning the lessons of life.

Seldom has any great novel been written by a young man: Tristram Shandy, Robinson Crusoe, Tom Jones, La Nouvelle Héloïse, Wilhelm Meister, were all written by mature men who had for the most part passed middle age. Don Quixote—more especially the second and finer part—was written by an old man, who had outlived his ideals and his ambitions, and settled down peacefully in a little home in Madrid, poor of purse but rich in the wisdom garnered during a variegated and adventurous life. Don Quixote is a spiritual autobiography. That is why it is so quintessentially a Spanish book.

Cervantes was a Spaniard of Spaniards. The great writers of a nation are not always its most typical representatives. Dante could only have been an Italian, and Goethe only a German, but we do not feel that either of them is the representative man of his people. We may seek to account for Shakespeare by appealing to various racial elements in Great Britain, but Shakespeare—with his volubility and extravagance, his emotional expansiveness, his lightness of touch, his reckless gaiety and wit—was far indeed from the slow, practical, serious Englishman. Cervantes, from first to last, is always Spanish. His ideals and his disillusions, his morality and his humour, his artistic methods as well as his style—save that he took a few ideas from Italy—are entirely Spanish. Don Quixote himself and Sancho Panza, his central personages, are not only all Spanish, they are all Spain. Often have I seen them between Madrid and Seville, when travelling along the road skirting La Mancha, that Cervantes knew so well: the long solemn face, the grave courteous mien, the luminous eyes that seem fixed on some inner vision and blind to the facts of life around; and there also, indeed everywhere, is the round, wrinkled, good-humoured face of the peasant farmer, imperturbably patient, meeting all the mischances and discomforts of life with a smile and a jest and a proverb. Don Quixote! I have always exclaimed to myself, Sancho Panza! They two make Spain in our day, perhaps, even more than in Cervantes's day; for, sound as Spain still is at the core, the man of heroic action and fearless spirit, the conquistador type of man, is nowadays seldom seen in the land, and the great personalities of Spain tend to become the mere rhetorical ornaments of a rotten political system. Don Quixote, with his idealism, his pride of race and ancestry, his more or less dim consciousness of some hereditary mission which is out of relation to the world of to-day, is as inapt for the leadership of the modern world as Sancho Panza, by his very virtues, his brave acceptance of the immediate duty before him, his cheerful and uncomplaining submission to all the ills of life, is inapt for the ordinary tasks of progress and reform. The genius of Cervantes has written the history of his own country.

Even in the minute details of his great book we may detect the peculiarly national character of the mind of Cervantes, and his thoroughly Spanish tastes. To mention only one trifling point, we may observe his preference for the colour green, which appears in his work in so many different shapes. Perhaps the Moors, for whom green is the most sacred of colours, bequeathed this preference to the Spaniards, though in any case it is the favourite colour in a dry and barren land, such as is Spain in much of its extent. Cervantes admires green eyes, like many other Spanish poets, though unlike the related Sicilians, for whom dark eyes alone are beautiful; Dulcinea's eyes are verdes esmeraldas [green emeralds]. Every careful reader of Don Quixote, familiar with Spain, cannot fail to find similar instances of Cervantes's Españolismo.

And yet, on this intensely national basis, Don Quixote is the most cosmopolitan, the most universal of books. Not Chaucer or Tolstoy shows a wider humanity. Even Shakespeare could not dispense with a villain, but there is no Iago among the six hundred and sixty-nine personages who, it is calculated, are introduced into Don Quixote. There is no better test of a genuinely human spirit than an ability to overcome the all-pervading influences of religious and national bias. Cervantes had shed his blood in battle against the infidel corsairs of Algiers, and he had been their chained captive. Yet—although it is true that he shared all the national prejudices against the Moriscoes in Spain—he not only learned and absorbed much from the Eastern life in which he had been soaked for five years, but he acquired a comprehension and appreciation of the Moor which it was rare indeed for a Spaniard to feel for the hereditary foes of his country. Between Portugal and Spain, again, there was then, to an even greater extent than to-day, a spirit of jealousy and antagonism; yet Cervantes can never say too much in praise of Portugal and the Portuguese. If there was any nation whom Spaniards might be excused for hating at that time it was the English. Those pirates and heretics of the north were perpetually swooping down on their coasts, destroying their galleons, devastating their colonial possessions; Cervantes lived through the days of the Spanish Armada, yet his attitude towards the English is courteous and considerate.

It was, perhaps, in some measure, this tolerant and even sympathetic attitude towards the enemies of Spain, as well as what seemed to many the ridicule he had cast upon Spanish ideas and Spanish foibles, which so long stood in the way of any enthusiastic recognition by Spain of Cervantes's supreme place in literature. He was for some centuries read in Spain, as Shakespeare was at first read in England, as an amusing author before he was recognised as one of the world's great spirits. In the meanwhile, outside Spain, Don Quixote was not only finding affectionate readers among people of all ages and all classes; it was beginning to be recognised as a wonderful and many-sided work of art, a treasure-house in which each might find what he sought, an allegory, even, which would lend itself to all interpretations…. It is not alone the pioneer in life, the adventurous reformer, the knight of the Holy Ghost, who turns to Don Quixote, the prudent and sagacious man of the world turns thither also with a smile full of meaning, as the wise and sceptical Sydenham turned when an ambitious young practitioner of medicine asked him what he should read: Read Don Quixote. It is a good book. I read it still. And when we turn to the noble ode—etania de Nuestro Señor Don Quijote—which Ruben Dario, the most inspired poet of the Spanish-speaking world of to-day, has addressed to Don Quixote, we realise that beyond this Cervantes has created a figure with even a religious significance for the consolation of men. Don Quixote is not only the type and pattern of our greatest novels; it is a vision of the human soul, woven into the texture of the world's spiritual traditions. The Knight of La Mancha has indeed succeeded in his quest, and won a more immortal Dulcinea than he ever sought.

Source: Havelock Ellis, "Don Quixote," in The Soul of Spain, Houghton Mifflin Company, 1908, pp. 223-43.

Sources

Harold Bloom, "Cervantes: The Play of the World," in his The Western Canon, Harcourt, Brace, 1994, p. 128.

Jorge Luis Borges, "Partial Enchantments of the 'Quixote,'" in his Other Inquisitions: 1937–1952, translated by Ruth L.C. Simms, University of Texas Press, 1964, pp. 43-6.

Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, in Don Quixote, translated by Burton Raffel, edited by Diana de Armas Wilson, W.W. Norton & Company, 1999.

Manuel Duran, Cervantes, Twayne, 1974.

Carlos Fuentes, "When Don Quixote left his Village, the Modern World Began," in The New York Times Book Review, March 23, 1986, p. 15.

????????, "Foreword," in The Adventures of Don Quixote, translated by Tobias Smollet, Farrar, Strauss & Giroux, 1986, p. xi.

E. Michael Gerli, Refiguring Authority: Reading, Writing, and Rewriting in Cervantes, The University Press of Kentucky, 1995, p. 62.

William Hazlitt, "Standard Novels and Romances," in his The Collected Works of William Hazlitt, edited by A. R. Waller and Arnold Glover, McClure, Philips & Co., 1904, pp. 25-44.

Heinrech Heine, "Heine on Cervantes and the 'Don Quixote'," in Temple Bar, Vol. XLVIII, October, 1876, pp. 235-49.

Victor Hugo, "Men of Genius," in his The Works of Victor Hugo, Vol. X, The Jefferson Press, n.d., pp. 23-65.

Caroll B. Johnson, Madness and Lust: a Psychoanalytical Approach to Don Quixote, University of California Press, 1983, 230 p.

Brenda Marshall, Teaching the Postmodern: Fiction and Theory, Routledge, 1992, p. 3.

P. E. Russell, Cervantes, Oxford University Press, 1985, p. 117.

Tobias Smollet, "The Life of Cervantes," in The History and Adventures of the Renowned Don Quixote, Vol. I, by Miguel Cervantes, translated by Tobias Smollet, A. Millar, 1755, pp. i-xx.

Ivan Turgeniev, "Hamlet and Don Quixote," translated by Josef Firi Kral and Pavel Durdik, in Poet Lore, Vol. IV, No. 4, April 15, 1892, pp. 169-84.

Miguel de Unamuno, Selected Works of Miguel de Unamuno: Our Lord Don Quixote, Vol. 3, edited by Anthony Kerrigan and Martin Nozick, translated by Anthony Kerrigan, Bollingen Series, LXXXV, Princeton University Press, 1967, 553 p.

For Further Study

Jean Canavaggio, Cervantes, translated by J. R. Jones, W.W. Norton, 1990.

Originally published in Paris, this biography of Cervantes is considered one of the best. Also contains bibliographical references.

Brenda Knox and Joe Main, Don Quixote de la Mancha Exhibit, at the Milton S. Eisenhower Library at the Johns Hopkins University, http://milton.mse.jhu.edu:8006/tour1.html.

The Don Quixote Exhibit contains historical illustrations of the novel and some background information.

Felix Martinez-Bonati, in Don Quixote and the Poetics of the Novel, translated by Dian Fox, Cornell University Press, 1992.

This critical work examines past criticism and trends for reading Don Quixote.

Melveena McKendrick, in Cervantes, Little Brown, 1980.

A comprehensive biography of Cervantes.

Ian Watt, Myths of Modern Individualism: Faust, Don Quixote, Don Juan, Robinson Crusoe, Cambridge University Press, London, 1997.

Watt examines four hero archetypes of the modern West: Faust, Don Juan, Don Quixote, and Robinson Crusoe. He traces their historical influence and considers their continued relevance in our society.