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DonQuixoteVersion2.ppt
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At last, when his wits were gone beyond repair, he came to conceive the strangest idea that ever occurred to any madman in this world. It now appeared to him fitting and necessary, in order to win a greater amount of honor for himself and serve his country at the same time, to become a knight-errant and roam the world on horseback, in a suit of armor; he would go in quest of adventures, by way of putting into practice all that he had read in his books; he would right every manner of wrong, placing himself in situations of the greatest peril such as would redound to the eternal glory of his name (Norton 1678).

  • Author
  • Time/Date of Composition
  • Contextual Information
  • Form
  • Major Themes

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Author

  • Miguel de Cervantes
  • b. 1547; d. 1616 CE
  • Novelist, playwright, and poet
  • Known worldwide for writing Don Quixote, which has been translated into over sixty languages

Miguel de Cervantes by Mackenzie, c. 1600 CE

(via Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

Author

  • Miguel de Cervantes was born in a university town close to Madrid, Spain
  • At the time, Madrid was not yet the capital of Spain
  • Some argue he may have come from a converso family
  • Converso is a word meaning “convert”; conversos were people who converted from Judaism or Islam to Christianity

(from “Map of Spain and Portugal” by Nathan

Huges Hamilton, April 30, 2014 via Flickr, Creative

Commons Attribution)

  • Cervantes led an interesting and colorful life, characterized by his time as a soldier, government official, and writer
  • Soldier
  • Served in the Spanish navy under Don Juan de Austria (the illegitimate son of the Holy Roman Emperor and king of Spain, Charles V)
  • Fought in the Battle of Lepanto, where “though stricken with a fever, he refused to stay below and joined the thick of the fighting. He received two gunshot wounds in the chest, and a third rendered his left hand useless for the rest of his life” (from “Miguel de Cervantes” in Encyclopedia Britannica)

Author

Author

(Battle of Lepanto by Andrea Vicentino, 1604 via Wikimedia)

  • He spent the next few years serving as a successful and well-paid soldier
  • In 1575, the ship he was on was captured and he was taken prisoner by pirates and sold to the viceroy of Algiers (a city in Algeria)
  • Despite four separate attempts to escape, Cervantes spent the next five years in captivity

Author

Author

  • Upon his return, Cervantes established himself in the literary circles of Madrid
  • His literary career began c. 1585 when he sold the rights to two early plays and then published a pastoral romance called La Galatea

(Title Page of the 1 st Edition of La Galatea

via Wikimedia Commons)

  • His early work didn’t pay well or make him particularly reputable; in fact, he spent most of his life struggling to make ends meet
  • He wasn’t really famous until the early 17th century
  • After his return to Spain, Cervantes held various government positions (Commissioner of Supplies for the Royal Armada and tax-collector in Granada) and spent a great deal of time in jail
  • Mostly due to business problems

Author

  • There is a famous description of Cervantes in the prologue to his Exemplary Stories (in Spanish: Novelas ejemplares):
  • of aquiline countenance, with dark brown hair, smooth clear brow, merry eyes and hooked but well-proportioned nose; his beard is silver though it was gold not 20 years ago; large moustache, small mouth with teeth neither big nor little, since he has only six of them and they are in bad condition and worse positioned, for they do not correspond to each other; the body between two extremes, neither tall nor short; a bright complexion, more pale than dark, somewhat heavy in the shoulder and not very light of foot.

(from “Miguel de Cervantes” in Encyclopedia Britannica)

Author

Author

  • Cervantes died in 1616 on April 22nd from edema, a build up of fluid in the tissues of your body
  • About a week after Shakespeare died in England!

(Cervantes Monument in the Plaza de

España, Madrid, Spain by Elisa Cogbill-Seiders)

  • Part one of Don Quixote (in Spanish: El ingenioso hidalgo don Quijote de la Mancha) was published in 1605
  • Cervantes published part two of Don Quixote (in Spanish: Segunda parte del ingenioso caballero don Quijote de la Mancha) in 1615
  • A person who called himself Alonso Fernández de Avellanada published a fraudulent sequel in July 1614; in it, he attacks and insults Cervantes
  • Probably what prompts the serious tone of Cervantes’ prologue in the second part of Don Quixote

Time/Date

  • “What I cannot but resent is the fact that he describes me as being old and one-handed, as if it were in my power to make time stand still for me, or as if I had lost my hand in some tavern instead of upon the greatest occasion that the past or present has ever known or the future may ever hope to see. If my wounds are not resplendent in the eyes of the chance beholder, they are at least highly thought of by those who know where they were received… The scars that the soldier has to show on face and breast are stars that guide others to the Heaven of honor…” (465)

Time/Date

  • Miguel de Cervantes wrote Don Quixote at a time when Spain was an empire
  • The Spanish empire stretched around the world, but mostly included parts of
  • Central America
  • Modern-day California, Nevada, Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas
  • Western South America
  • Parts of the Caribbean
  • Parts of North Africa
  • Parts of the South Pacific

Context

  • This time period is called by some (especially Spaniards), ”the Golden Age of Spain” because Spain was politically unified for the first time in their history, and the arts experienced a flowering. I.e., there was a lot of literature published at this time
  • Including Don Quixote, of course!

Context

  • Spain in this time period also imposed serious restrictions, like
  • Forcing their Jewish population to convert to Christianity or leave
  • Forcing their Muslim population to convert to Christianity or leave
  • Policing “Christian-ness” through their Inquisition
  • The Spanish treated indigenous peoples in “the New World” horrifically, including their violent slaughter

Context

Form

  • Don Quixote is a picaresque novel
  • The picaresque style of writing arose in 17th century Spain
  • Early examples include Lazarillo de Tormes and Guzmán de Alfarche

(La vida de Lazarillo de Tormes by an

unknown illustrator, 1520.

via Wikimedia Commons)

Form

  • In an essay titled “Toward a Definition of the Picaresque,” comparative literature expert Claudio Guillén identifies eight characteristics of the picaresque novel:

(Don Quixote Sad via MemeCenter)

  • 1) The pícaro – a rogue-like or scamp-ish character—usually an orphan, or low born, or both—who is a “half-outsider,” meaning he lives outside of society (doesn’t belong) while not completely rejecting it either
  • Outwardly conforms with society’s rules, but inwardly rebels
  • A “self-made man” (101)
  • Example: Huck Finn

Form

  • 2) Pseudoautobiography – a “fake memoir,” meaning the story is presented as an autobiography (meaning the real story of someone’s life), but is clearly fictitious; told in the first person
  • It is the “confession of a liar” (92)
  • Examples: A Million Little Pieces by James Frey or Running With Scissors by Augusten Burroughs

Form

  • 3) Partial and prejudiced point of view – the narrator is biased in some way
  • Examples: Holden Caulfield from Catcher in the Rye or the narrator from Fight Club (Edward Norton’s character)

Form

  • 4) Reflective, philosophical, and/or critical attitude – which leads to a survey of, and conclusion about, society based on moral or religious grounds; usually ironic or satirical
  • Irony – the use of a word or words intending the opposite meaning, usually intending to be funny
  • Satire – using humor to show that someone or something is bad or foolish

Form

  • 5) Stresses realistic descriptions of living – openly discusses members of different social classes, money, and other details of day-to-day living
  • Unlike other texts we’ve read this semester, which gloss over “real life”

Form

  • 6) The pícaro lives through or observes different social classes – different professions, cities, and nations too (83)
  • Not just the aristocratic or noble class (like Greek and Roman epics, for example)

Form

  • 7) The pícaro is a traveler– he moves around geographical spaces, but also moves up the social ladder
  • A “social climber”

Form

  • 8. The novel has an episodic structure – meaning that it has self-contained stories that are loosely connected, but held together by a main or central character
  • Example: The Walking Dead... And most TV shows.

Form

  • Reality vs Fantasy
  • Example. At this point they caught sight of thirty or forty windmills which were standing on the plain there, and no sooner had Don Quixote laid his eyes upon them than he turned to his squire and said, “Fortune is guiding our affairs better than we could have wishes; for you see there before you, friend Sancho Panza, some thirty or more lawless giants with whom I mean to do battle. I shall deprive them of their lives, and with the spoils from this encounter we shall begin to enrich ourselves…” (Norton 1698)

Themes

  • In the previous example, Don Quixote mistakes windmills for giants. He’s read so many fantastical stories that he literally “sees” giants instead of the windmills.

Themes

  • The Nature of Literature
  • Example. In short, our gentleman became so immersed in his reading that he spent whole nights from sundown to sunup and his days from dawn to dusk in poring over his books, until, finally, from so little sleeping and so much reading, his brain dried up and he went completely out of his mind. (Norton 1677)

Themes

  • In this example, literature is jokingly said to “drive you crazy” because it blurs the lines between fact and fiction.

Themes

  • Madness and Sanity
  • Example. Listening to this speech, the travelers had some while since come to the conclusion that Don Quixote was out of his mind, and were likewise able to perceive the peculiar nature of his madness, and they wondered at it quite as much as did all those who encountered it for the first time. (Norton 1721)

Themes

  • Most of the travelers Don Quixote meets think he is crazy, and yet indulge his “madness.”
  • Do you think the other characters are cruel or kind to deceive Don Quixote?

Themes