Don Quixote in Eighteenth-Century England

Abstract

HE NOVEL WAS fortunate indeed to stumble upon Don T Quixote as its first protagonist. Few ideas could have been more fruitful than the idea of a literary quixote, a man whose consciousness is formed by the reading of some particular kind of literature, and who then goes forth into the world, assuming the world's reality will match the literary reality he knows. Insofar as novelists see themselves as striving towards a greater realism, the literary quixote can serve as a device for pointing out what seems to be the absurdity and unreality of whatever literature is popular at the time. Thus Cervantes uses Don Quixote to parody chivalric romances, Jane Austen uses Catherine Morland to attack gothic novels, and Flaubert creates Madame Bovary to destroy the sentimental illusions peddled by the circulating libraries. Each replaces someone else's illusion with his own reality. No national literature assimilated the idea of Don Quixote more thoroughly than the English. During the eighteenth century especially, Don Quixote came into its own; not only was it read and enthusiastically appreciated, but it also found many imitators. In this process of assimilation the knight undergoes a fascinating metamorphosis. There are three stages. At first we see Don Quixote as a buffoon, a madman who belongs in a farce. Then ambiguities begin to creep in, and we have a Don Quixote who is still ridiculous, still a buffoon, but who, at the same time, is beginning to look strangely noble, even saintly. Then, finally, toward the end of the century we begin to glimpse the romantic Don Quixote, an idealistic and noble hero. The metamorphosis goes on not just in the critical comments about Cervantes' work, where it