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Cervantes' Don Quixote
Don Quixote: Significance for Spanish and European Literature
Don Quixote is a very important piece of literature for both Spanish and European consideration. It shows a relationship between life and art, and also indicates that much of this belongs to European Renaissance thought. Don Quixote is the story of a crusading knight, a Christian, but is told by a narrator that is Muslim. It is seen by many critics to be the purest and best example of a novel, and has been utilized in literature classrooms throughout the country and the world. Many of the ideas regarding madness and what makes someone 'mad' or insane came originally from Don Quixote and his windmills. In addition to this, Don Quixote inspired paintings and other works of art, and it is believed that these graphic representations of the man and the story can be just as informative and inspiring as the text that was written by Cervantes so long ago. There have been both satirical and sentimental interpretations of Don Quixote, and he has been seen as a great romantic as well as an example of how too much of this romantic attitude and a lack of reality could cause insanity.
The main reason that Don Quixote is still significant for literature, both in the Spanish and European sense, is that much of what it has to say is universal. The story embodies the clash between what people hope for and wish to be so, and what is actually reality for them and for so many others. This hopeful dreaming, when not taken to the point of madness as it was in the story, is a vital part of human life. All humans dream of what they want and try to reconcile it with what they actually, have, which is all that Don Quixote was doing. Unfortunately for him, he was not able to reconcile the differences between what he thought should be and what really was. Even though it was published in 1605, much of it remains relevant today as a life lesson for many people, and this is much of the reason that it is still seen as important and valuable for those that read it in modern society.
Don Quixote is among the most influential novels ever written. It explores the shifting boundaries of truth and illusion. The author is a narrator who self-consciously narrates and makes us constantly aware of his presence and is preoccupied with literary criticism and theory. With his post-modernist tendencies he has become a novelist's novelist par excellence. Often called the first modern novel, Don Quixote originally conceived as a comic satire against the
Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes is the story of a middle-aged man from La Mancha who, as a result of reading books, becomes obsessed with the chivalric code. This causes him to lose his hold on reality, and he embarks on a number of delusional adventures. The question is whether these delusions are the result of genuine madness or merely an intensified from of day-dreaming. Evidence from both the
All of this is done with a specific purpose in mind: "The landlord told all the people who were in the inn about the craze of his guest, the watching of the armor, and the dubbing ceremony he contemplated" (Cervantes, chapter III). To the innkeeper and his guests, Don Quixote's imagination is a spectacle and a way for them to entertain themselves at someone else's expense. They do not
Yet this realization comes to Don Quixote as part of his journey, which is how age and experience also presents itself to any individual -- in a gradual, subtle manner that is learned with the passing of time. Therefore, it is accurate to state that Don Quixote's wisdom is a result of the experience he gains in his travels, both of which are linear components of time. The knowledge
Quijote Cervantes' Don Quijote is, above all, the story of a reader. The real question of the novel perhaps is why more readers do not behave like Quijote himself, and attempt to act out the things that they find so engaging in print. I would like to explore the way in which the main character's status as a reader in Cervantes' novel gives some clue to us as readers as
Throughout it all, Don Quixote is trying to live a dream he has of a so-called better time, when Spain was filled with lords, ladies and courtly manners. The bad guys were evil and the good guys were heroes, winning every time. But by the end of the book Don Quixote wakes up from this dream, which wasn't so wonderful after all, and realize things aren't just black and white,