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[Don Quixote de la Mancha] Error: {{Lang}}: text has italic markup (help) (now usually spelled [Don Quijote] Error: {{Lang}}: text has italic markup (help) by Spanish-speakers; [Don Quixote] Error: {{Lang}}: text has italic markup (help) is an archaic spelling) (IPA:[donki'xoteð̞ela'manʧa]) or [El ingenioso hidalgo Don Quixote de la Mancha] Error: {{Lang}}: text has italic markup (help) (The Ingenious Hidalgo Don Quixote of La Mancha) is a novel by the Spanish author Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra. The first part was published in 1605 and the second in 1615. It is one of the earliest written novels in a modern European language and is arguably the most influential and emblematic work in the canon of Spanish literature. [1]. Don Quixote is an acclaimed and widely read member of the Western literary canon; a 2002 poll of authors conducted by the Norwegian Nobel Institute placed it first ahead of all other works of fiction. [2].
The book tells the story of Alonso Quixano, a man who has read so many stories about brave errant knights that, in a half-mad and confused state, he believes himself to be a knight, re-names himself Don Quixote de la Mancha, and sets out to fight injustice in the name of his beloved maiden Aldonsa, or as he knows her in his mind, Dulcinea del Toboso.
The adjective "quixotic", at present meaning "idealistic and impractical", derives from the protagonist's name, and the expressions "tilting at windmills" and "fighting windmills" come from this story.
The opening phrase of the book [de cuyo nombre no quiero acordarme] Error: {{Lang}}: text has italic markup (help) ("whose name I do not want to recall") was made famous by the book, and, along with other phrases from the text, has become a common cliché in modern Spanish.
[En un lugar de la Mancha, de cuyo nombre no quiero acordarme, no ha mucho tiempo que vivía un hidalgo de los de lanza en astillero, adarga antigua, rocín flaco y galgo corredor.] Error: {{Lang}}: text has italic markup (help)
"In a place in La Mancha, whose name I do not want to recall, not so long ago there dwelt a gentleman of the type wont to keep an unused lance, an old shield, a skinny old horse, and a greyhound for racing."
Importance
Don Quixote is often nominated as the world's greatest work of fiction. It stands in a unique position between medieval chivalric romance and the modern novel. The former consist of disconnected stories with little exploration of the inner life of even the main character. The latter are usually focused on the psychological evolution of their characters. In Part I, Quixote imposes himself on his environment. By Part II, people know about him through "having read his adventures," and so, he needs to do less to maintain his image. By his deathbed, he has regained his sanity, and is once more "Alonso Quixano the Good".
Don Quixote and Sancho Panza after an unsuccessful attack on a windmill. By Gustave Doré.
The novel contains many minor literary "firsts" for European literature—a woman complaining of her menopause, someone with an eating disorder, and the psychological revealing of their troubles as something inner to themselves.
Subtle touches regarding perspective are everywhere: characters talk about a woman who is the cause of the death of a suitor, portraying her as evil, but when she comes on stage, she gives a different perspective entirely that makes Quixote (and thus the reader) defend her. When Quixote descends into a cave, Cervantes admits that he does not know what went on there.
Quixote's adventures tend to involve situations in which he attempts to apply a knight's sure, simple morality to situations in which much more complex issues are at hand. For example, upon seeing a band of galley slaves being mistreated by their guards, he believes their cries of innocence and attacks the guards. After they are freed, he demands that they honor his lady Dulcinea, but instead they pelt him with stones and leave.
Different ages have tended to read different things into the novel. When it was first published, it was usually interpreted as a comic novel. After the French Revolution it was popular in part due to its central ethic that individuals can be right while society is quite wrong and disenchanting—not comic at all. In the 19th century it was seen as a social commentary, but no one could easily tell "whose side Cervantes was on." By the 20th century it had come to occupy a canonical space as one of the foundations of modern literature.
The novel plays an important part in Michel Foucault's book The Order of Things. To Foucault, Quixote's confusion is an illustration of the transition to a new configuration of thought in the late sixteenth century. Quixote, by confusing semiology and hermeneutics, attempts to apply an anachronisticepistemological configuration to a new intellectual world, a new episteme, in which hermeneutics and semiology have been separated:
"Don Quixote is a negative of the Renaissance world; writing has ceased to be the prose of the world; resemblances and signs have dissolved their former alliance... [things] are no longer anything but what they are; words wander off on their own, without content, without resemblance to fill their emptiness; they are no longer the marks of things; they lie sleeping between the pages of books and covered in dust. ... Don Quixote is the first modern work of literature, because in it we see the cruel reason of identities and differences make endless sport of signs and similitudes; because in it language breaks off its old kinship with things and enters into that lonely sovereignty from which it will reappear, in its separated state, only as literature; because it marks the point where resemblance enters an age which is, from the point of view of resemblance, one of madness and imagination." [3]
American author Barry Gifford described "Don Quixote" as "the first Beat novel."
Following the Cuban revolution, the revolutionary government founded a publishing house called Instituto Cubano del Libro (Cuban Book Institute), to publish large runs of great literature for distribution at low prices to the masses. The first book published by the Instituto was Don Quixote.
For the 400th anniversary of the original publication of the novel, the Venezuelan government printed one million summarized copies for free distribution. Similar initiatives took place in Spain and other Spanish-speaking countries around the world.
Literary influence
Influences for Don Quixote include the Valencian novel Tirant lo Blanc, one of the first chivalric epics, which Cervantes describes in Chapter VI of Quixote as "the best book in the world."
The scene of the book burning gives us an excellent list of Cervantes's likes and dislikes about literature.
The novel's landmark status in literary history has afforded it a vast and nearly innumerable legacy of influence. To just enumerate a few examples:
Cardenio, a lost play by Cervantes's contemporary William Shakespeare. Itself the source of later plays, it was based on one of the interpolated novels in the first part.
Joseph Andrews by Henry Fielding notes in the preface that it is "written in Imitation of the Manner of Cervantes, Author of Don Quixote"
Northanger Abbey, by Jane Austen, features a Quixote-esque heroine, whose perception of reality is corrupted as a consequence of reading too much romantic literature.
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, by Mark Twain, is also said to be influenced by "Don Quixote", by having two leading characters (Huckleberry Finn and Jim) who get involved with all manner of people during their adventures. In Twain's story, Huck's friend Tom Sawyer even makes reference to "Don Quixote" early on as one of his references for "the right way" to do things.
Asterix in Spain by Goscinny and Uderzo. Asterix and Obelix encounter Don Quixote and Sancho Panza on a country road in Spain, with Quixote becoming enraged and charging off into the distance when the topic of windmills arises in conversation.
City of Glass, one of the stories in The New York Trilogy written by Paul Auster, has a main character called Daniel Quinn - the same initials as Don Quixote - and comments on the authorship of the novel.
Triste Fim de Policarpo Quaresma (The Patriot) is a Brazilian novel by Lima Barreto, which presents Quaresma, a modern (for the early 1900s) Quixote, whose wishes were to improve Brazil's patriotism, i.e. suggesting president Gen. Floriano Peixoto declare Tupi as an official language.
Auto da Fe, a German novel by Elias Canetti. Sinologist Peter Kien lives for his private library. After being expelled from his apartment by his wife (and former housekeeper) Therese, Kien is tricked by the dwarf Fischerle, whose lies are like Quixote's illusions.
Romance da Pedra do Reino (The Kingdom's Rock Novel), by Brazilian writer Ariano Suassuna, presents us D. Pedro Dinis Ferreira Quaderna, a poet who wants to be humanity's great genius and believes himself to be the fourth of a true lineage of noble Brazilians - the Orleans e Bragança family are usurpers to him.
Editions and translations
There are many adaptations of the book, mostly designed to modernise and shorten the text. One such adaptation is authored by Agustín Sánchez and runs to only 150 pages, cutting away about 750 pages.
Don Quixote has been translated complete many times since its release in 1605. Many pirated editions were being written at the time as was the custom of envious writers. Seven years after Part I of Don Quixote appeared, the book had been translated into French, German, Italian and English. It has been translated into English more than 19 times in all.
The first of the English translations was written in 1612 by an Englishman of whom little is known - not even his dates of birth and death - by the name of Thomas Shelton. Though some people claim that Shelton was actually a friend of Cervantes, there is no credible evidence to support this claim. Although Shelton's version of the novel has been a cherished translation, it was far from satisfactory as a carrying over of Cervantes's text.
Near the end of the 17th century the worst English translated version of Don Quixote appeared in print. The author was a nephew of the famous poet John Milton, by the name of John Phillips.
The translation, as many literary critics claim, was not based upon Cervantes's text but based mostly upon the French work by Filleau de Saint-Martin and notes that Thomas Shelton had previously written.
Around 1700, the Pierre Antoine Motteux version appeared on bookshelves. The version, as stated by translator John Ormsby was "Worse than worthless". The prevailing slapstick quality of the work, especially where Sancho Panza is involved; the obtrusion of the obscene where it is not to be found in Cervantes; the slurring over of difficulties through omissions or by expanding upon the text made the Motteux version irresponsible.
In 1742, the Charles Jervas translation appeared posthumously. Through a printer's error, it came to be known, and is still known, as "the Jarvis translation". It was the most scholarly and accurate English translation of the novel up to that time, but has been criticized by some as being too stiff. Nevertheless, it became the most frequently reprinted translation of the novel until about 1885. Another 18th-century translation into English was that of Tobias Smollett, himself a novelist; like the "Jarvis" translation, it continues to be reprinted today.
Most modern translators take as their model the 1885 translation of Englishman John Ormsby. It is said that his translation was the most honest of all translations without expanding upon the text or changing the proverbs.
The most widely read English-language translations for the latter-half of the 20th century were those of Samuel Putnam, which was published in 1949, J.M. Cohen, which was published in 1950 by Penguin Classics, and Walter Starkie's, which was published in 1957 by Macmillan Publishers. The turn of the millennium saw a flourish of new translations into English, by Burton Raffel, John Rutherford, and Edith Grossman, respectively. The most recent major translation was undertaken by Edith Grossman, who is responsible for translating Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Carlos Fuentes and Mario Vargas Llosa.
Literature
José Ángel Ascunce Arrieta: "Los quijotes del Quijote": Historia de una aventura creativa. Kassel, Edition Reichenberger 1997. ISBN 3-931887-14-6
José Ángel Ascunce Arrieta: "El Quijote como tragedia y la tragedia de don Quijote". Kassel, Edition Reichenberger 2005. ISBN 3-937734-00-4
Cervantes y su mundo I. V.V.A.A., Kassel, Edition Reichenberger 2004. ISBN 3-935004-89-3
Cervantes y su mundo II. V.V.A.A., Kassel, Edition Reichenberger 2005. ISBN 3-935004-91-0
Cervantes y su mundo III. V.V.A.A., Kassel, Edition Reichenberger 2005. ISBN 3-937734-10-4
Agapita Jurado Santos: "Obras teatrales derivadas de novelas cervantinas (siglo XVII)". Para una bibliografía. Kassel, Edition Reichenberger 2005. ISBN 3-935004-95-8
James A.Parr: "Cervantes and the Quixote: A Touchstone for Literary Criticism". Kassel, Edition Reichenberger 2005. ISBN 3-937734-21-X
Reichenberger: "Cervantes and the Hermeneutics of Satire". Kassel, Edition Reichenberger 2005. ISBN 3-937734-11-2
Kurt Reichenberger: "Cervantes, un gran satírico?" Los enigmas del Quijote descifrados para el carísimo lector. Kassel, Edition Reichenberger 2005. ISBN 3-937734-12-0
Kurt & Theo Reichenberger: "Cervantes: El Quijote y sus mensajes destinados al lector". Kassel, Edition Reichenberger 2004. ISBN 3-937734-05-8
Javier Salazar Rincón: "El mundo social del Quijote". Madrid, Gredos 1986. ISBN 84-249-1060-5
Javier Salazar Rincón: "El escritor y su entorno. Cervantes y la corte de Valladolid en 1605". Valladolid, Junta de Castilla y León 2006. ISBN 84-9718-375-4
Karl-Ludwig Selig: "Studies on Cervantes". Kassel, Edition Reichenberger 1995. ISBN 3-928264-64-9
Krzysztof Sliwa: "Vida de Miguel Cervantes Saavedra". Kassel, Edition Reichenberger 2005. ISBN 3-937734-13-9
V.V.A.A., Cervantes. Estudios sobre Cervantes en la víspera de su centenario. Kassel, Edition Reichenberger 1994. ISBN 3-928064-64-9
Duran, Manuel and Rogg, Fay R., "Fighting Windmills: Encounters with Don Quixote" Yale University Press 2006 ISBN 0-300-11022-7
Carroll Lewis, "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland", ed. Penguin Books, 1865, London
Films, TV Series and iconography
[DON QUIJOTE DE LA MANCHA (1979), a televisionseries directed by Cruz Delgado and produced by José Romagosa in cartoon animation. Guillermo Díaz-Plaja and Manuel Criado de Val were in the literary supervision, and the Series has gained recognition as the best adaptation of Cervantes' masterpiece produced for children and family audiences.File:PACK12DVDQUIJOTE.jpgPack 12 DVD "DON QUIJOTE DE LA MANCHA" Cartoon animation.
Don Quixote (1933), directed by Georg Wilhelm Pabst. This version was actually made three times in the same year, and in three different languages - French, English, and German. All three versions used the same script, set designs, and costumes, and all three starred the great Russian bass Feodor Chaliapin.
Don Quijote de la Mancha (1947), the first full-length Spanish film version of the novel, directed by Rafael Gil, and allegedly the most faithful film version of the book ever made.
The Adventures of Don Quick, (1970) a science fiction television series from Thames Television. Don Quick and Sam Czopanser travel from planet to planet repairing machines and interfering with the local cultures. Satirical and somewhat racy.
Donovan Quick (1999), a British TV movie starring Colin Firth as the title character who ends up "tilting" at the local bus company - called Windmill Transport.
The movie Kissing a Fool, starring David Schwimmer, is supposedly loosely based on a story found in Don Quixote.
The 1971 movie, They Might be Giants is a film about a modern-day judge (played by George C. Scott) who thinks that he is Sherlock Holmes. His psychiatrist, who is really named Dr. Watson (and played by Joanne Woodward) compares his "adventures" to Don Quixote's, saying that the judge believes that windmills are giants. The judge responds that Don Quixote would have shown more wisdom in believing that the windmills might be giants; instead, his folly was in believing that they actually were.
In Bolivia, Don Quixote became a symbol for justice in a series of paintings by the muralist, Walter Solón Romero. These were painted during many years of dictatorships that led to Solón's arrest and torture.
In the video game series Suikoden published by Konami, a pair of characters whose visual style is assuredly inspired by the author's descriptions of the good Don & Sancho star as Maximillian and Sancho in the game series respectively.
The original Marvel comic book of Star Wars featured a character named Don-Wan Kihotay who appeared in the first original story (in 1977, predating the release of Splinter of the Mind's Eye) after the movie adaptation concluded. This ran from #7 to #10, and the character made a minor appearance in #16 (and was never heard from again). This character was a version of how the original might have appeared in the Star Wars universe.
Farscape' featured an episode in its fourth season named "John Quixote", in which John Crichton' is sucked into a virtual reality game created by Stark from the pain of Zhaan's death and the dead John Crichton's memories.
Dan Quixote (2006) was a radio play, first broadcast on BBC Radio 4, in which a modern Belfaster, Dan McAughtry, has become convinced he is Don Quixote after a trip to Spain. His squire is the taxi driver who collects him from the airport, Sandy Palmer.
VeggieTales, In the episode of "Sheerluck Holmes and the Golden Ruler" there is a short film that tells the main events of Don Quixote using vegetables as different characters of the book. The film is supposed to help children learn the value of friendship.
Georg Philipp Telemann wrote an orchestral suite entitled Don Quichotte and an opera called Don Quichotte auf der Hochzeit des Camacho, based on an episode from the novel.
Die Hochzeit des Camacho, an early opera by Felix Mendelssohn (composed in 1827) is based on the same section of the book that Telemann based his opera on.
Jules Massenet's Don Quichotte premiered at Monte Carlo Opera on February 24, 1910. In the title role at the first performance was the legendary Russian bass Feodor Chaliapin, for whom the part was written.
Master Peter's Puppet Show, a puppet opera by Manuel de Falla, is based on an episode from Book II and was first performed at the Salon of the Princess de Polignac in Paris in 1923.
Richard Strauss composed the tone poem Don Quixote, subtitling it "Introduction, Theme with Variations, and Finale" and 'Fantastic Variations for Large Orchestra on a Theme of Knightly Character.' The music is highly descriptive, and at one point the oboe players actually imitate the bleating of sheep with their instruments. On November 13, 1943, Leonard Bernstein made his New York Philharmonic debut conducting this piece with Joseph Schuster, solo cellist with the orchestra. This nationally broadcast concert launched Bernstein's career.
1869 saw the Bolshoi Ballet's premiere of Marius Petipa's balletDon Quixote, set to music by Léon Minkus. The ballet is based on the same chapters in the novel which attracted Mendelssohn and Telemann. It was substantially revised by Alexander Gorsky in 1900, and revisited by several other choreographers in the course of the twentieth century. In 1972, Rudolf Nureyev and Sir Robert Helpmann filmed another version of this ballet over 25 days in 40 degree heat, in Melbourne's Essendon airport hangar, which is considered one of Australia's greatest artistic achievements. The choreography was credited to Nureyev, but based closely on Petipa's.
In 1988, Björn Afzelius wrote and recorded the song Don Quixote and subsequently an album with the same name. Original title by El Mayor. The album sold in excess of 50000 copies.
American folk-pop-rock band Toad the Wet Sprocket released the album Dulcinea in 1994. The album included the song "Windmills" and includes the line "I spend too much time, raiding windmills".
In 1997The Paperboys released an album entiltled Molinos (Spanish for windmills). The title track of the album tells the story of someone who does not quite fit in. The Spanish translation of the chorus, "Sólo son molinos; no te oyen Don Quixote" is, "They are only windmills; they can't hear you Don Quixote."
In 1998 the Spanish heavy metal band Mägo de Oz released an album entitled La leyenda de la Mancha, which is based heavily on the Don Quixote and meant to give homage to the original work.
The autonomous community of Castile-La Mancha has used the fame of Cervantes's novel to promote tourism in the region. A number of sites in La Mancha are linked to the novel, including windmills and an inn upon which events of the story are thought to have been based. Several trademarks also refer to Don Quixote's characters and events.
Spelling and pronunciation
Quixote is the original spelling in medieval Castilian, and is used in English. However, modern Spanish has since gone through spelling reforms and phonetic changes which have turned the x into j. Since the phonetics don't match in Dutch, his name is written like Don Quichot or Don Quichote in the Netherlands.
The x was pronounced like an English sh sound (voiceless postalveolar fricative) in mediaeval times—[kiˈʃote] in the International Phonetic Alphabet—and this is reflected in the French name Don Quichotte. However, such words (now virtually all spelt with a j) are now pronounced as a voiceless velar fricative sound like the Scottish or Germanch (as in Loch, Bach) or the Greek Chi (χ)—[kiˈxote]. English speakers generally attempt something close to the modern Spanish pronunciation when saying Quixote/Quijote, although the traditional English pronunciation [kwiksət] or [kwiksəʊt] is still frequently used.
The book's 400th anniversary was celebrated around the world in 2005. Spain issued a commemorative €2 coin. In Venezuela, President Hugo Chávez's government handed out 1 million free copies as part of a national literacy program [1]. In the UK, BBC Radio ran during two weeks a ten part serialisation of an adaptation of the work. (There had previously been a 2-part, 3-hour BBC Radio adaptation in 1980). In late 2005, Peru presented at a book fair in Guadalajara a version of Don Quixote translated into the Quechua language. In Spain, the exhibit "CERVANTES ENCANTADO"obtained a great success among children and families visiting the exhibit.
In Argentina, a young Spanish Alpinist, Javier Cantero, walk up the Aconcagua to read the incipit of the novel. He was on duty by the Spanish minister of culture.
