Don Quixote

I read this book when I was in my twenties and I liked the narrative and loved the people of Spain. Now that I am 50 years old I am reading it again and it is giving me a different perspective about life. I admire Don Quixote for seeing the world as a place to make true his dreams and fantasies According to experts, this is one of the best books ever written, and always appears on the lists of best novels that have been published. It is the second most translated book after the Bible. It was given the distinction of "Best literary work ever written" by the Norwegian Book Club based on a vote of 100 weel known writers from 54 countries. It was one of the favorite books of Thomas Jefferson and was used as a reference by famous American writers such as Mark Twain, Herman Melville and William Faulkner. The Russian writer Fyodor Dostoevsky referred to this book as "the only conclusion that can be drawn from life if the world came to an end" Masterpieces of world literature such as Madame Bovary, by Gustave Flaubert, and Dostoevsky's The Idiot, are inspired by Don Quixote and were deliberately written based on the admiration that these writers felt for Cervantes’ book. Don Quixote has all the basic ingredients to entertain: humor, romance, fights and horse chasing, among others. It was innovative at the time of publication and it is considered the first novel in modern literature. This was the first book in which different opinions and viewpoints coexisted harmoniously in the same environment. The dialogues between the characters are masterfully written and inspired by the Spanish theatrical tradition of writers such as Lope de Vega. Don Quixote follows his quest as a knight with deep passion and commitment, always certain that his actions make a great contribution to the world. He shows the highest respect for all the people that he finds in his journey; being friends or rivals. But each time his fantasies crash with crude reality, as he and Sancho get beaten, injured, mocked and deceived. The confrontation between reality and fantasy is in episode of this book. Although Don Quixote tries desperately to become a hero he cannot be different than any other human being: proud and humble, strong and weak, wise and crazy Sancho is always aware of Don Quixote’s madness, but he follows him loyally despite the fact that he often gets the worst part of the beatings. A great theme of this book is the friendship that these two different men develop based on mutual respect; Sancho learns from Don Quixote to put fantasies into his life and Don Quixote sees reality through Sancho’s’ companionship. The dialogues between Don Quixote and Sancho are very rich, often riddled with humor, but always revealing deeper human nature All who have read Don Quixote have their own interpretation that often changes with age. After all, this interpretation depends on how everyone sees life. In this sense, Don Quixote can be seen as a description of life in form, rhythm and substance. The Peruvian writer,recipient of the Nobel Price of Literature, Mario Vargas Llosa said that Don Quixote is the personification of a disproportionate love of freedom and a rebellious spirit

Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes is an absolute classic that deserves its legendary status. The story masterfully balances humor, adventure, and deep reflection on the nature of dreams and reality. Cervantes brings his characters — especially the idealistic Don Quixote and the loyal Sancho Panza — to life with warmth and wit, making their journey both entertaining and profoundly human. Despite being written over 400 years ago, its themes of purpose, idealism, and the courage to defy convention still feel incredibly relevant today. A rich, rewarding read for anyone who enjoys literature that both entertains and enlightens.

If you're on the fence about this one, I say go for it! Yes, it is long and written in a hundreds-of-years-old style that may be a turn-off for some, but Grossman's perfect translation brings the story into the modern era. She takes the hysterical stories of Don Quixote and translates the original 16th century Spanish into modern English, which makes it not only MUCH easier to read, but helps make the tales more relatable to a modern audience. It isn't like reading Shakespeare or even novels from, say, the 19th entry, where the language is so different than contemporary English that you have to really think about what the author is trying to say; Edith Grossman's translation makes the novel flow and allows the reader to simply enjoy the story. As for the novel itself, it's funny. It's very...farcical (is that the right word?) It's almost slapstick at times, but still explores human nature and deeper themes while maintaining an often hilarious tone (again, giving props to Grossman's translation skills). It's also relatable even for a modern audience, as the two main characters, Don Quixote and Sancho Panza, face situations and conflicts that anyone can have at least some relation to. It's fast-paced, despite being over 900 pages, so you don't have to worry about drawn-out, wordy passages. You could easily read a chapter or two a day in 15-20 minutes and get through it in a week or two, even if you're a light reader like me. But seriously, this was on my Amazon wish list for almost 12 years and I finally decided to just go for it after reading so many positive reviews of the new translation, and I'm glad I did. This book is considered one of the best for a reason, and this modern English presentation removes the "scholarly and studious" quality away (scholarly books tend to turn casual readers off) leaving a simply enjoyable novel for anyone to love.

The noble madman and his simple enabler I first read ‘Don Quixote’ thirty years ago. I don’t recall which translation I read and I only remembered certain portions of the plot. I liked the novel then but the style was a bit flat. Now I have read Edith Grossman’s 2003 translation and I have to say that she brings the story to vibrant life with a very readable, modern style while also placing footnotes regarding the closest English equivalents or the origin of a particular Spanish word or phrase. The mental disorder of Alonso Quijano, a gentleman farmer who has binged on so many chivalric romances that he feels he has been transformed into a figure whose mission is to revive the practice of knight errantry, dubbing himself Don Quixote, is known to everyone even casually acquainted with Cervantes’ novel, as well as the enlistment of his neighbor Sancho Panza as his squire. It seems obvious to me that Sancho is also somewhat mentally unhinged and becomes an enabler to the Don’s illness, to use contemporary psychological parlance. The Don and Sancho have a co-dependent relationship. Sancho could turn back any time but he tells himself he wants to stay with the Don to help keep him in line and to prevent him from hurting himself. He also believes the Don’s promise that he will be able to get Sancho a Dukedom of some kind, rendering him a governor with power, wealth, and status that Sancho currently lacks, even though he has, or had, a stable relationship with his wife Teresa and a family including a son and a daughter. I don’t think it’s explicitly stated whether Sancho gave Teresa a time frame for his projected first ‘sally’ with the Don but Teresa had to be extraordinarily patient and long-suffering to consent to care for the children as well as run the estate in Sancho’s absence for some indeterminate time. I had also forgotten how violent this novel is. There are the obvious collisions between the Don’s delusions and the hard reality of physical objects as in his attack on the windmills i.e. shape-shifting giants, how he and his lance get tangled up in the rotating windmill blades. In delusional attacks on herds of sheep throwing up clouds of dust the Don thinks are warring armies, he gets pummeled. In an inn he thinks is a castle with prostitutes he sees as noble ladies he gets in fights with anyone who will not acknowledge the Don’s lady Dulcinea as the most supreme beauty on Earth, he gets battered and gets his teeth knocked out along with a concusssion. Sancho also bears the brunt of much of this reactionary violence and can’t forget the humiliating experience of being tossed in the air in a blanket. In the first part of ‘Don Quixote’, there are many tales embedded within the larger narrative, many of which involve chivalry and betrayal, which may prove frustrating for readers expecting to follow a linear narrative of the Don and Sancho and their adventures. In every one of them almost all the women are staggeringly beautiful. In one that intersects with the Don’s travels, he comes across a burial party for a lovesick man who killed himself over a shepherdess named Marcela. In an extended diatribe against the men who gather together in defense of the tragic romantic, Marcela addresses the crowd: ‘Heaven made me, as all of you say, so beautiful that you cannot resist my beauty and are compelled to love me, and because of the love you show me, you claim that I am obliged to love you in return. I know, with the natural understanding that God has given me, that everything beautiful is lovable, but I cannot grasp why, simply because it is loved, the thing loved for its beauty is obliged to love the one who loves it. Further, the lover of the beautiful thing might be ugly, and since ugliness is worthy of being avoided, it is absurd for anyone to say: “I love you because you are beautiful; you must love me even though I am ugly.’ But in the event the two are equally beautiful, it does not mean that their desires are necessarily equal, for not all beauties fall in love; some are a pleasure to the eye but do not surrender their will, because if all beauties loved and surrendered, there would be a whirl of confused and misled wills not knowing where they should stop, for since beautiful subjects are infinite, desires would have to be infinite, too.’ She goes on to question the necessity for her to surrender her will simply because a man says he loves her. She did not ask for her beauty. She chooses the solitude of the countryside. Her statements stand as eternal rebukes to all men who pursue female beauty to the exclusion of the free will and independence of the beautiful one. The Don, moved by Marcela’s integrity and honesty, steps up in the wake of her departure, and pledges to prevent any man from pursuing her in violation of her wishes. He says that she should be honored and esteemed as “the only woman in it who lives with so virtuous a desire.” This incident stands alone as the one time in both books where the Don exemplifies true chivalry and the lucid honor of knight-errantry. The second part of ‘Don Quixote’ was published in 1615, ten years after the first part had become a runaway bestseller. In the wake of the success of the first part, other unauthorized sequels appeared, taking the Don and Sancho in many different directions from where Cervantes might have taken them. He speeded up his production of the authorized sequel, creating an early example of metafiction. In this world, the Don and Sancho have become celebrities and figures known in the popular imagination. The Don has been recuperating from his earlier adventures and leading a quiet life. And yet there are restless stirrings of spirit, compelling him to go back out in the world. He feels there is still a need for chivalric honor. He persuades Sancho to accompany him again; Sancho hopes to talk him out of his enchantment/madness. As they are heading to El Toboso to get Dulcinea’s (Aldonza Lorenzo) blessing, Sancho has to think fast as he goes ahead to see the real-life model for Dulcinea. In a novel in which every other woman is stunningly beautiful, it is particularly ironic that the real-life model for the Don’s goddess Dulcinea is a snub-nosed, sweaty, dirty peasant girl. When the Don finally sees the peasant girl, Sancho convinces him that witches have put a cruel spell on the Don so that where Sancho saw the beautiful Dulcinea, by the time the Don saw her he was bewitched into seeing an ugly peasant girl. In the second part, they also run across a Duke and Dutchess who tell them that they may have a cure for the Don’s illness. They have read Part 1 of the Don’s saga and are very familiar with his tale and devise very convoluted adventures that amount to cruel tricks, such as an “enchanter” telling them that in order to “disenchant” Dulcinea, Sancho must lash himself a thousand times. “The deceivers are as mad as the deceived…the duke and duchess came very close to seeming like fools since they went to such lengths to deceive two fools.” On two occasions, the Don and Sancho encounter a mysterious shielded knight known as the Knight of the Wood (actually the student Simon Curasco, who has been working with the priest and the barber from La Mancha to cure the Don of his madness). He challenges the Don to a fight the first time. Unexpectedly, the Don wins. After knocking him off his horse, the Don raises the knight’s visor and recognizes the face of Curasco but is willing to believe that the Knight is someone else enchanted to look like the Don’s neighbor, just as he suspects that the “Don Quixote” that the Knight claimed to have defeated was someone else enchanted to deceive the knight. On the second occasion, the Don is accosted by the Knight of the White Moon (the same figure as the previous Knight of the Wood) who challenges him again to a fight if he will not acknowledge that whoever his lady may be, that she is incomparably more beautiful than Dulcinea. If the Don confesses this truth his life will be spared; if the Don does battle and loses but survives, the Knight wants “no other satisfaction than that you abandon your arms, abstain from seeking adventures, and withdraw and retire to your home for a period of one year, where you must live without laying a hand on your sword, in peaceful tranquility and profitable serenity”. The Knight knocks the Don and his horse Rosinante to the ground. The Don is significantly weakened and tells the Knight to kill him as he will never acknowledge that there is anyone more beautiful than Dulcinea. The Knight says he will not kill the Don and he will acknowledge the supreme beauty of Dulcinea but he will impose the condition that the Don give up knight-errantry and not touch his sword for a full year. He also reveals his identity as Curasco. Bound by the honor he swore to live by, the Don is as good as his word. Without that spark of excitement and that zeal that propelled him into his misadventures, he becomes ill and loses his belief in knight errantry and chivalry. He makes a will and includes a proviso that his niece must only marry a man who has never read a book of chivalry or she will lose her inheritance. He dies shortly afterward. I believe that Cervantes is saying that the Don did possess a nobility in his madness. The destruction that he wreaked was based on delusion. Thankfully, he never killed anyone or got himself killed. The various subterfuges such as those machinations conducted by the Duke and Duchess and the various digressions from the primary plotline did try my patience a bit. The tales of chivalry, whether invented or adapted by Cervantes from previous sources grew tiresome. However, the overall scope of the life of Spain in the sixteenth century and the narrative complexity are accomplishments that I recognize as a masterful literary work. It is not surprising at all that the work possesses a power that is still being felt five centuries after it was written.

By Jay Kim, 8th grade Don Quixote is the main character of The Ingenious Gentleman Don Quixote of La Mancha. He is the hero of the story, but he is certainly a strange one. Don Quixote starts as a poor and elderly noble who reads books for pleasure. These books of chivalry drive him insane, and lead him to believe that he must revive the profession of knight errantry. Before losing his sanity, Don Quixote was named Alonso Quixano, but he named himself Don Quixote to suit the role he is playing of a knight errant. Don is a spanish title and Quixote is a section of armor that covers the thigh. His face is described as being very long and serious, and he is very gaunt and tall. Throughout the book, Don Quixote is ridiculed by many but he never seems to notice. He also has a sense of chivalry as he wants to embody the idea of a knight errant, trying to right wrongs and using force when force is needed. Knight errants are thought to be courageous, and Don Quixote is nothing but courageous. Throughout his adventures, he almost never fails to confront his fears and right perceived wrongs although doing so loses him several teeth and a part of his ear. It is also remarked many times that apart from anything related to chivalry, Don Quixote is perfectly sane and intelligent. In fact, throughout the book he gives many admirable speeches and many morals that I agree with. I admire Don Quixote because even though he is elderly and can live off his estate as a noble, he refuses to do so and becomes a knight errant. Yes, this is because he is not completely sane but he is trying to do good for others. Sancho Panza is Don Quixote’s poor peasant neighbor. Poor, but fat and short. For whatever reason, Sancho agrees to be Don Quixote’s squire even though Don Quixote is quite obviously mad. He plays a counterpart to Don Quixote, behaving cowardly when Don Quixote is rushing forward to meet his imaginary enemies, and greedy to Don Quixote’s apparent non-materialism. But he sticks through all of Don Quixote’s adventures next to him, and he seems to regard the knight errant as a very good friend by the book’s end. Sancho Panza tries to do the best for his family, bringing money from the adventure back to them, and his donkey, being very careful not to lose him. Sancho Panza is also extremely simpleminded, as evident by him agreeing to be a squire to Don Quixote. Also, his proverbs, of which he has many, are always off the mark and make no sense. However, he is not without his moments, as when he becomes a governor he creates several very intelligent laws that are followed even after he leaves his position. I like Sancho Panza because he gives humor to the story with his strange acts and simple mindedness. You can also sense a bond growing between Sancho Panza and Don Quixote through the story, and I really enjoy seeing their friendship grow. The Barber is an un named character in Don Quixote who is a friend of Don Quixote. They seem to be good friends, although the barber does enjoy poking fun at Don Quixote at times. His friend the Priest is also a good friend of Don Quixote, and the Barber seems to defer to the Priest’s judgement a lot. There is not much to be said about the Barber except that he is a true friend of Don Quixote. The Priest is an un named character in Don Quixote who is a friend of Don Quixote. He graduated from what is said to be a bad college, but he seems quite intelligent. He takes pride in being a priest, one time saying that he refuses to wear a the clothing of a women because he would dishonor priests. His friend the Barber defers to him in many matters of judgement. Books of chivalry seem to be a pet peeve to the priest since they have so changed his friend, Don Quixote, and he also seems to find many of them distasteful since they are so unreal as to not give him any enjoyment in reading them. I agree with him about chivalry novels and generally think he is another true friend to Don Quixote. The Niece of Don Quixote is a woman who loves Don Quixote as a family member and tries to care for him when he is sick. Their familial bond and love is further shown when Don Quixote gives her land in his will. The Niece tries her best to stop Don Quixote from going out on adventures, but it’s for his own good. I feel she is not trying hard enough, however, since Don Quixote manages to go out and have adventures a total of three times. The Housekeeper for Don Quixote is similar to his Niece in that both care for him. In fact, the Housekeeper continues working for Don Quixote even when he is gone on his adventures and doesn’t pay her. She just wants the best for Don Quixote, and I think that is an admirable thing. Dulcinea of Toboso is the name Don Quixote gives to a peasant girl he had a crush on when he was young. Her real name is Aldonza Lorenzo, but Don Quixote decides he needs a maiden to serve and so changes her name to better fit that. They never meet in the book, but it is said she was pretty when she was young. I am not sure what to think of her as there is not much information about her, but she must be a good person if Don Quixote likes her so much. Cardenio is a man who runs away to die alone when he hears his beloved marries another. Eventually, it is found that this was not true and he goes back and presumably marries her. I think Cardenio had a hard life and I am glad his story ends happily. Luscinda is Cardenio’s sweetheart who refused an offer of marriage even though she was pressed into accepting it by many. She is considered inordinately beautiful, and it is said her beauty was matched only by Dorotea. There is not much said about her, but she remains faithful to her sweetheart so I admire her for that. Don Fernando is a rich noble who said he loved Dorotea, but then tried to marry Luscinda. Of course, he was also Cardenio’s good friend until he tried to steal away Luscinda. He eventually agrees to marry Dorotea and it is presumed they live happily ever after. I think Don Fernando is a womanizer and quite rude, since he broke his promise to Dorotea. Dorotea is the rich daughter of a peasant family. When Don Fernando ran away from his obligations to her, she was so ashamed that she ran away. Eventually, she found Don Fernando and they married. She is considered to be as beautiful as Luscinda, and very intelligent for she managed to get Don Fernando to marry her. I like that Dorotea’s story ended happily because she seems like a good person. The Duke and Duchess are characters in the second part of Don Quixote who, having read the first part, decide to play tricks on Don Quixote and his squire for their amusement. These tricks are not very nice, but they are funny and the Duke and Duchess seem to genuinely like both Don Quixote and his squire. In fact, they even gift Sancho Panza with a town to govern, although he loses his job after a mere 10 days. I like the Duke and Duchess since they are basically harmless and just play a lot of jokes that are a little funny. The Knight of the Green Coat is a person Don Quixote meets on the road. The Knight invites him to his house, and so Don Quixote and Sancho Panza stay there for a while. The Knight seems to be a rich farmer, and his real name is Don Diego de Miranda. He and his son believe that Don Quixote is sometimes intelligent and other times mad. His son aspires to be a famous poet. I think that this Knight is a nice guy for allowing Don Quixote to stay at his house, but I wish that Don Quixote had a chance to tell the Knight his adventures after the knight errant parted ways with Don Diego. Unfortunately, Don Quixote dies at the end of the book so I don’t think this will ever happen. Bachelor Sanson Carrasco is a bachelor of a university. He, along with the Priest and Barber, plan to stop Don Quixote’s madness. Sanson dresses as a knight and fights Don Quixote, so that the loser must proclaim the winner’s maiden as the most beautiful, but he loses. He is not daunted by this loss, however, and he meets Don Quixote again near the end of the book to fight him. This time he wins, and it is considered that the depression brought about by this defeat led to Don Quixote’s death. I think Sanson’s cause is worthy, but the end result is utterly sad. Connection: I chose this project because I like reading, and I thought that this would take less effort and be more enjoyable than the other options. The other options just sounded like work, while reading sounded more like resting. The Ingenious Gentlemen of La Mancha influenced spanish culture because so many people read the book and enjoyed it. This led them to incorporate the book into plays and art. Don Quixote helped me understand a little more about spanish . For example, footnotes in the book indicate that Don Quixote uses more formal language to indicate anger at Sancho Panza, but this formal language is not seen in the translation. English and spanish have differences, and Don Quixote helped me see that more clearly. Reflection: I learned a little about the spanish language, but mostly I learned about knight errantry and some of the culture of Spain. I felt bored for some parts of the book, like through the sonnets and poems, but otherwise I felt engaged and understood most of it. I do think that I would recommend this project to another student because I feel like I had fun reading Don Quixote and there was little to no effort involved. Footnotes increased my understanding of the text, so if someone has a copy of the book with footnotes I think they should definitely give it a try. However, the reading did consume a lot of time, so if people don’t have a lot of time they should not do this project. I planned it so that I would read 50 pages a day for several weeks, but it turned out that it was very hard to keep to this schedule. I think a better way would be to read 300 pages on the weekends so the reading doesn’t interfere with schoolwork but it still gets done. At some points in the book, I wasn’t sure if I liked the book or not, but when I finished the book I felt sad so I guess that means I liked the book after all. Honestly, I feel that it was worth it to experience what people have called the, “first modern novel”.

Enchanting Errancy Don Quixote is the greatest novel ever, marking a decisive point in the emergence of the modern mind and setting the foundation for methods of satire, drama, comedy and cultural analysis. Old-fashioned style can make great classics less accessible. Edith Grossman's superb translation of Don Quixote completely overcomes this problem, with a reading as modern and engaging as anything written today. The Man of La Mancha, Don Quixote, sets his own rational but groundless imagination against the power of observation by the senses, achieving a hallucinatory faith that his waking dreams are real. His power to convince himself that flocks of sheep are armies and windmills are giants mocks all imaginative stories that conflict with evidence. Cervantes is decisively modern in his assertion that evidence is a stronger guide than authority, a suggestion strongly at odds with church dogma. Don Quixote is an absurd literary character. With this magnificent creation, Cervantes is a pioneer in the modern disjunction between observation and cognition. Absurdity emerges in his fictional satire of traditional values. Cervantes created Quixote with close attention to the opportunity afforded for a study of the psychology of madness. The source of Quixote's insanity is said to be his love of chivalry, and chivalric literature, and his resulting desire to live the noble life of a knight errant. The picture painted is of a madman fantasizing about armed service to defend the needy in a land at peace. The military knight in arms was a throwback to the medieval time and the Dark Ages of the Gothic conquest of Spain. However, what is the subtext? Spain had conquered South America in consort with Portugal a century before Cervantes wrote Don Quixote, through force of arms and disease. So, the picture of a man at arms in Spain was not as anachronistic as Cervantes paints, but merely displaced across the Atlantic Ocean. The adventures of Quixote and his trusty servant Sancho Panza bear comparison with the Spanish conquest of the Aztecs and the Incas. The tradition of chivalry seemed irrelevant from the civil society perspective of mercantile Spain, but at that very time, military leaders steeped in a chivalric tradition, but willing to employ any means for conquest and plunder, were expanding the Spanish Empire on behalf of the Crown and people of Spain. Military conquest on such large scale requires a touch of Quixotic madness. Many stories from chivalry inform Don Quixote. One is The Madness of Sir Lancelot. A motif borrowed by Cervantes from this tale is the knight wearing only a ragged shirt who is lost by himself in the wilderness for love of a beautiful woman. Don Quixote copies this and other actions of Lancelot, going above and beyond the legacy of the father of the grail knight by performing several cartwheels while in his state of melancholy undress, as part of his quest to typify knighthood. Don Quixote has my sympathy. Sent mad by reading too many fictitious old books, he stands as the embodiment of chivalrous virtue (except for his murderous actions) in an age of squalor. The absurdity inherent in maintaining chivalrous values in a world of modern machines is captured by the famous story of Don Quixote tilting at a windmill, breaking his lance and being tossed from his horse by the turning blade. Using absurdity to mock chivalry is a method that inspired an illustrious modern tradition of satire. The British comedians Monty Python borrow from Cervantes in important respects in the movie The Quest for the Holy Grail. Python King Arthur's lines are modeled on Quixote's formal mode of address, and the Black Knight copies Quixote in seeking to prevent the passage of innocent travelers by threatening death by sword and collapsing into madness and absurdity in his "none shall pass" caper. Cervantes points out that his writing method, claiming to improve an Arabic text of unknown provenance, shares much with the chronicles of chivalry. We might note his method shares much with older texts as well, such as the Bible, that are also reputed to be history, and that have as much claim to be fact as the celebrated Man of La Mancha. It is always helpful to claim that a book (like the Bible) is 'based on a true story', and this method is at the core of Cervantes' satirical style. Cervantes takes the opportunity of his entertaining buffoonery to satirise the entire courtly world of Holy Spain, safe in the modern confidence that his deft style can deflect any claims of impiety and other unwelcome attention from censors and critics. At one point, a priest and a servant conspire to burn all Don Quixote's books. The book burning drips with irony. The reader is invited to think, if reading books is this bad, why did Cervantes write such a fat book, so full of literary allusions, and why the hell am I reading it? I'm sure there is a strong political message in this episode, as book burning was associated with the auto-da-fe, the 'act of faith' where the Inquisition burnt heretics at the stake. Cervantes is condemning book burning as the act of idiots, with the vacillation of the priest showing his recognition that his complicity was an immoral piece of cultural vandalism. The overt message of the book-burning is that Don Quixote has sent himself mad by reading rubbishy fiction books and believing they are factual, therefore any sensible person will avoid reading entirely and will stick to practical activity. However, Cervantes himself is obviously steeped in this chivalric tradition that he affects to despise, and seems to think people can learn something from tales of knight errantry, perhaps rather like the popular pulp romances of today which may give psychological insights for all their formulaic wish-fulfillment. So the irony is that the surface language of the book-burning episode presents the consignment to the flames as a necessary and ethical task, while just below the surface is the disturbing sense that here we see wanton vandalism and loss of values that the destroyers (except the priest) are unable to comprehend. The deeper irony is the critique of Christian theology. Christians have been among the greatest book-burners in history, largely responsible for the amnesia of the dark ages which set the scene for knight errantry, such as the legendary burning of the great classical library of Alexandria in Egypt. Cervantes is reconstructing a continuity with classical civilization. Stories from Homer and Ovid were common coin among the literary elite of his day but are now forgotten by our contemporary equivalents of book burners. Christians, by believing in miracles, are just like Don Quixote, and deserve the same level of incredulity about their insanity as his amazed onlookers give to the Knight of the Sorrowful Face. But the Bible was off limits for mockery. Don Quixote himself later says he would like to burn at the stake anyone who suggests that chivalric literature is not 100% factual. So the surface message is that Christian civilization can mock the fantasy world of chivalry, but the unstated irony is that Christianity is just as fantastic as the delusions it mocks.

I started but never finished Don Quixote way back in high school. Now that I have a long commute to work each day, I thought I would get back into this old classic. I don't need to tell you that Don Quixote is one of the greatest novels ever written, but I will anyway. It is one of the greatest novels ever written. One of my professors of Spanish literature based his academic career on this novel as have thousands of other scholars in the past 400 years. It is deep and rich, tragic and comic, adventurous and philosophic. This piece of literature prefigures literary traditions that would come into being centuries after its publication. All of this while being an immensely enjoyable novel, even now. Now to comment on the audioversion that I have listened to. The translation is superb. I have not read all of Don Quijote in the original Spanish, but just a few chapters. The tone, the rhythm, and the richness of the prose is closely replicated in this traslation. It is easy to listen to and I find myself being imersed in the world of the novel. The reading is of the finest quality. The deep, resonant voice of the narrator shifts to accomodate the personalities of Sancho Panza, Don Quixote and the other characters, but it never seems strained. This comes on 35 disks, but the packaging is not the best. I bought a sturdy, hard case for the disks and keep this in my car. I suggest that you do the same. The recordings are split into 3 minute tracks in order to easily find your place. I give this 5 stars. You have many hours of enjoyable listening with this audiobook.

I get the appeal, but the story is not for me.