Don Quichotte dans la bande dessinée : la trace de Cervantès dans la publication Hazañas bélicas

Abstract

The study presented here focuses on the relationship between Don Quixote, the famous work of Cervantes, and the publication Hazañas bélicas, one of the best examples of the war genre in Spanish comics. Its success made it enjoy a privileged position in the world of comics during the central years of Franco’s dictatorship, when control over artistic production was more intense. Throughout the hundreds of issues that were published, brief episodes from armed conflicts such as the Second World War or the Korean War are described, all of them under the perspective of the imposed censorship. Precisely, it is in these two wars where the presence of Cervantes’ stele has been noted, since two of the published comic strips make direct references to Don Quixote, to the point of consolidating it as the element that solves the situation. These curious appeals to the book inevitably led to the need to ask a series of questions at the beginning of the research: what was the intention behind including such literary references within the course of the comic? is there any real reference to the facts that are narrated or is it purely fictional? what role did Cervantes’ work play in the transmission of information to readers? is it an isolated event from this publication or are there other examples? In order to answer these questions, we have made use of the important collections of the Centre of Studies of Castilla-La Mancha (UCLM), an institution of reference in the documentation of Cervantes’ work, where, in addition to the series of publications studied, dozens of comic books with the presence of the famous Don Quixote are preserved.