Don Quijote De Research Articles

“Ciudades fantasma” en el entorno del Área Metropolitana de Madrid (España). Un análisis de la Región de Castilla-La Mancha

In the new forms of irrational urbanization context, this work addresses the phenomenon of the “ghost cities” in Spain, a consequence of the period of expansive urbanism prior to the global economic crisis (2008). Transforming into unfinished spaces from it, they have had leading part in the post-crisis period. The objective is to present some Spanish cases near Madrid metropolitan area within the autonomous community of Castilla-La Mancha: El Quinon in Sesena (Toledo), Ciudad Valdeluz in Yebes (Guadalajara) and El Reino de Don Quijote in Ciudad Real (Ciudad Real). The methodology combines qualitative aspects related to the description of the case studies with other qualitative methods based on statistics on population and housing. The results allow framing the examples chosen in the dynamics of expansive urbanism as they serve to illustrate urban practices away from sustainability.

Lecturas del <em>Quijote</em> en la poesía española reciente: «Yo recordé mi nombre en Barcelona»

Frente a la interpretación romántica que defiende que don Quijote es un personaje heroico e idealista, en la poesía española de finales del siglo XX y comienzos del XXI predomina una visión antiheroica y realista del caballero andante. Por un lado, poemas como «Don Quijote», de Manuel Vilas, y «Primera salida de don Quijote», de Felipe Benítez Reyes, desenmascaran la locura del hidalgo desde una perspectiva grotesca o prosaica. Por otro lado, composiciones como «Morirse de cordura», de Ana Merino, y «Las confesiones de don Quijote», de Luis García Montero, reivindican la cordura, representada por la silueta individual de Aldonza Lorenzo o por la proyección colectiva de Alonso Quijano. A partir de dichos ejemplos, este artículo plantea que el diálogo del Quijote con los lectores actuales se sustenta en la humanización de los personajes cervantinos, en la faceta cotidiana de sus personalidades o en la complicidad que suscitan sus reflexiones.

Mapping Don Quixote’s Route: Spanish Cartography, English Travelers and National Pride

Mapping Don Quixote’s RouteSpanish Cartography, English Travelers and National Pride Elizabeth Franklin Lewis (bio) During the eighteenth century, Don Quijote de la Mancha drew attention for its proliferation of new editions in Spanish; for its numerous translations, especially in English; as well as for the many other “spin-off” works based on the novel and its characters.1 Eighteenth-century translators, editors, and authors identified in this classic story of the misadventures of the “ingenious gentleman” of La Mancha important messages for a modern reading public. Samuel Johnson famously remarked “how few books are there of which one can possibly arrive at the last page. Was there ever anything written by a mere man that was wished longer by its readers excepting Don Quixote, Robinson Crusoe, and the Pilgrim’s Progress?”2 Eighteenth-century essayists and critics considered Don Quijote as more than an entertaining or even inspiring work of fiction: they treated it as an object of study. A 1780 edition created for the Real Academia Española by the printer Joaquín Ibarra added to the novel some important extra-textual material including an analytical study, illustrations, and for the first time, a map that situated fictional evets of the novel in the geography of contemporary eighteenth-century Spain. This map is the first representation of what would come to be known as Don Quixote’s Route—a literary tour made famous by Azorín’s 1905 La ruta de Don Quijote.3 About the same time as the Ibarra edition, British travelers to Spain also evoked elements of [End Page 35] the novel—its setting, characters, and even objects—in their observations of and writings about their experiences with Spanish culture. This essay will compare two early maps of Don Quixote’s route to references to the novel in British travel journals, showing the ways both Spanish and English readers found evidence of Don Quijote in the Spanish landscape. I argue that these editors, geographers, and authors used the novel to support claims of each nation’s cultural superiority thus bolstering national pride. Enrique Rodríguez-Cepeda identifies various types of eighteenth-century Spanish-language editions of the novel produced in Spain, each intended for a different reading public, including inexpensive pocket versions of the novel (de bosillo) intended for a common audience and high quality luxury editions destined for the libraries of wealthy connoisseurs and government officials as well as gifts to important diplomats and political figures.4 The 1780 Ibarra edition by the Royal Academy presents Cervantes´ novel as an object of admiration and study. Its small run (Rodríguez-Cepeda estimates only about 1000 copies were printed, in comparison to the more than 30,000 copies of the pocket editions), large size, and high economic value indicate that is was an edition destined for collectors.5 This edition also stands out for its preliminary study and biography of Cervantes, for its collection of fine illustrations, and for a map of Spain that highlights Don Quixote’s journeys and adventures, prepared by Tomás López, the Royal Geographer to Charles III (fig. 1). In the prologue to this edition, the Academy states its main interest in undertaking this project as based in a desire to cultivate and promote the study of the Spanish language.6 However, this edition also seeks to build upon, and even improve, an earlier 1737 Spanish-language edition published in London that included the first ever biography of Cervantes, written by Spanish enlightenment thinker Gregorio Mayans, an edition that the Royal Academy calls “magnífica” but also full of errors.7 Following Mayans, the Ibarra edition also includes its own biography and a preliminary study, both written by academy member Vicente de los Ríos.8 The text itself goes back to the original first and second editions of the novel produced by printer Juan de la Cuesta in 1605 and 1615. But added to all of the previous texts was something new—a map showing the itinerary of Don Quixote starting in La Mancha, through Barcelona, and back: Últimamente para satisfacer más la curiosidad de los lectores, se ha puesto un mapa, que comprende una buena...

Los espejos del yo: Existencialismo y metaficción en la narrativa de Unamuno by Luis Álvarez-Castro

Reviewed by: Los espejos del yo: Existencialismo y metaficción en la narrativa de Unamuno by Luis Álvarez-Castro Brian J. Cope Álvarez-Castro, Luis. Los espejos del yo: Existencialismo y metaficción en la narrativa de Unamuno. Salamanca: U of Salamanca P, 2015. Pp. 265. ISBN 978-1-58871-163-2. Los espejos del yo: Existencialismo y metaficción en la narrativa de Unamuno examines an interrelated cross section of Unamuno's literary production through the lens of reader-response theory and is the author's second monograph on Unamuno. In effect, the study explores the place of the reader in the hermeneutical labyrinths constructed by Unamuno in six key works: Vida de Don Quijote y Sancho, Niebla, Abel Sánchez, Cómo se hace una novela, Don Sandalio, jugador de ajedrez, and San Manuel Bueno, mártir. In the introduction, Álvarez-Castro establishes the study's general focus on the relationship between author, text, and reader. The critical framework that he builds seamlessly integrates the relatively scant but valuable criticism that has examined the role of the reader in Unamuno's novels from a reader-response perspective. One noteworthy strength of the study, in fact, is the way that it develops in careful dialogue with the scholarly criticism in general. Another is the way that it brings to light a profitable connection between two incongruent lines of inquiry in the scholarship on Unamuno: metafiction and existentialism. Álvarez-Castro acknowledges that, individually, these lines have received ample attention, and he makes a persuasive case for seeing in reader-response theory a generative space for examining their interconnectedness. In chapter 1, Álvarez-Castro recounts Unamuno's interest in Herostratus, the fourth century BCE arsonist who destroyed the Temple of Artemis hoping to acquire everlasting fame. Herein lies the root of Álvarez-Castro's critical inquiry: to understand the ways in which Unamuno's profound desire to achieve immortality through his writing left an indelible mark on his literary production in terms of structure, style, and theme. The bulk of this chapter offers an enlightening critique of Unamuno's professed motivation for writing. In the process, it highlights a salient contradiction in Unamuno's aesthetic outlook. On the one hand, Unamuno asserts his own autonomy as reader, but on the other, he pioneers a metafictional approach that, beginning with Niebla, essentially predetermines the reader's inferential interpretation of his novels' storylines. One strength of this chapter is the way that Álvarez-Castro uses theorists like Roland Barthes and Michel Foucault to provide perspective on Unamuno's obsession with achieving [End Page 681] immortality through literature. Another is the exposition of the original and evocative concept of "chantaje existencial." Chapter 2 examines Vida de Don Quijote y Sancho as the theoretical cocoon from which gestate Unamuno's heterodox ideas on literature and the role of the reader as co-creator of the text's meaning. The subjective commentary on the existential themes that Unamuno crafts as he reads Cervantes's masterpiece attests to his view of literature as a phenomenological experience that flouts the commonplace assumption of the text as a vessel containing the author's meaning. Unamuno's style of metafiction that arises in Niebla and evolves thereafter in subsequent works shares Cervantes's knack to place the burden of understanding on the reader but also exhibits originality in how it prefigures the reader's reception of the story. In chapter 3, Álvarez-Castro examines the ambiguity surrounding Augusto Pérez's demise in Niebla and alleges that the reader is made to play a game of existential extortion ("chantaje existencial") by virtue of the metafictional structure of the text. By participating in the extortion, the reader receives a payoff of sorts—existential validation—and, in the process, becomes the vehicle through which Unamuno's desire to perpetuate his own existence is fulfilled. Although at times very insightful, Álvarez-Castro's argument is premised on an unsupported assumption of the reader's cognitive dissonance and is unduly reductive in scope. In chapter 4, Álvarez-Castro argues that through metafiction Unamuno successfully situates the reader not as the recipient but rather as the originator of the text's truth. His reading of...

Imitation and Adaptation: A Meeting of Minds

The focus of this collaborative paper is a form of creative collaboration: translations and adaptations across distinct historical periods and cultural contexts. The paper draws upon Edward H. Friedman's experience as an adaptor and translator, and both participants' research and scholarly work. The paper focuses on the choices made by adaptors in considering the time, place and contexts of the original while bearing in mind the exigencies and the sensibilities of the present. There is no doubt that the practice of imitatio in the Early Modern period and current practices of spin-offs and remakes differ significantly; however, this project reflects upon what Early Modernists can learn from the contemporary adaptations and stagings of the texts we study and teach. This question was central to Emilie Bergmann’s recent cross-cultural seminar on Renaissance and Baroque imitatio and centuries of translations and adaptations into French prose and theatre (Lesage and Molière) and Italian opera (Don Giovanni) in the eighteenth century, and recent English and Spanish spin-offs. The participants' specific focus is on Friedman's own adaptations of Lope de Vega's La dama boba, Unamuno's Niebla and Cervantes' Don Quijote and El laberinto de amor, in dialogue with other recent adaptations of Spanish comedia: the Royal Shakespeare Company's version of Sor Juana's Los empeños de una casa, Octavio Solís' Dreamlandia and Man of the Flesh (versions, respectively, of La vida es sueño and El burlador de Sevilla).

Clowning and tragic clowning: Miguel de Unamuno as a funny writer

ABSTRACTThe present study considers the role and function that humor has in Unamuno's intellectual and literary universe. It traces Unamuno's attitude toward humor to his reading of the Spanish character in En torno al casticismo (1895) and to his dialogue with the figure of Don Quixote, as found in Vida de Don Quijote y Sancho (1905) and Del sentimiento trágico de la vida (1912). Finally, it looks at the theory of humor offered in the novel Niebla (1914) and also at the role that humor played in Unamuno's later political writings, especially those of exile (1924–1930).

Contra molinos y maestros: La Difesa di Dulcinea de Gherardo Marone y el quijotismo italiano

This article explores an important episode in the history of Italian quijotismo initiated by the publication in 1919 of Difesa de Dulcinea-by the Neapolitan writer Gherardo Marone-and its confrontational view towards the most influential writer and quijotista of the early 20th century in Italy: Giovanni Papini. By combining creative fiction and literary criticism, personal reflection and political urgency around the figure of Don Quijote (as seen by Miguel de Unamuno in his Vida de don Quijote y Sancho), the Difesa proposes a tenacious examination of the Italian literary field during the “dopoguerra” period. Its unapologetic defense of poetry (Dulcinea) envisions the poet (don Quijote) as a necessary actor in the cultural and socio-political landscape of the nation.

Contra molinos y maestros: La Difesa di Dulcinea de Gherardo Marone y el quijotismo italiano

This article explores an important episode in the history of Italian quijotismo initiated by the publication in 1919 of Difesa de Dulcinea —by the Neapolitan writer Gherardo Marone—and its confrontational view towards the most influential writer and quijotista of the early 20th century in Italy: Giovanni Papini. By combining creative fiction and literary criticism, personal reflection and political urgency around the figure of Don Quijote (as seen by Miguel de Unamuno in his Vida de don Quijote y Sancho ), the Difesa proposes a tenacious examination of the Italian literary field during the “dopoguerra” period. Its unapologetic defense of poetry (Dulcinea) envisions the poet (don Quijote) as a necessary actor in the cultural and socio-political landscape of the nation.

Don Quixote: Pain, Space, and Artifice

En el capitulo seis de la segunda parte, Don Quijote explica su rol en el mundo enfatizando el dolor que sufre. Contextualiza este dolor refiriendo alegoricamente a la cartografia. Este ensayo propone que la manera en que Don Quijote reacciona dolor crea una tension prefigurada en el prologo de 1605. Demuestro que esta tension entre la percepcion sensorial y la imaginacion guiada por artificio reaparece cuando el texto refiere explicitamente a la cartografia. La manera en que el artificio cartografico combina con el artificio literario sugiere que la explicacion alegorica de Don Quijote opera dentro del texto de una forma fundamental. La reaccion de empatia que el texto pide del lector posibilita su inclusion en una relacion que perturba la division tradicional entre ficcion e historia, entre cartografia y literatura y, en fin, entre el espacio cotidiano del lector y el espacio literario de Don Quijote. ********** EARLY IN PART TWO, Don Quixote describes his purpose by emphasizing the pain that he suffers as a wandering knight. He contextualizes this pain by referencing cartography. While courtiers se pasean por todo el mundo mirando un mapa, sin costarles blanca, ni padecer calor ni frio, hambre ni sed, knights-errant al sol, frio, aire, a las inclemencias del cielo, de noche y de dia, a pie y a caballo, medimos toda la tierra con nuestros mismos pies (2.6:589). Don Quixote presents himself, metaphorically, as a kind of surveyor who suffers out in the world. The purpose of this suffering is to create and sustain a larger order that is, in turn, represented cartographically by the maps that the cortesanos are able to enjoy in comfort. The cartographic allegory that Don Quixote employs brings the logic of maps together with the logic of his libros de caballerias. In this essay I will show how Cervantes's focus on the peculiarities of imagination and artifice in the context of interpreting literature prepares the reader to approach cartographic ideas in unique ways. The relationship that the protagonist offers above between pain and cartography is crucial for an understanding of the intersection of these two discourses in the novel. Cervantes suggests that maps, as nonfictional works of artifice, rely on both the imagination of their readers and the labors of those who maintain the integrity of the territories that are represented. For Don Quixote, however, the literary texts that he has read are also nonfictional. They too rely on the imagination of their readers and the labors of their heroes. Pain and imagination are intertwined in both representations. Don Quixote's allegorical statement of purpose also builds on the notion that there are commonalities between his suffering as a caballero andante and the suffering of other armed men: all require that their pain be relevant to a larger social or cultural order. This larger order was, in the case of the nonfictional men of arms referenced in the novel, the of Spain. (1) The literary fantasy that sustains Don Quixote's purpose in the world commingles, in this sense, with the powerful yet also tenuous idea of early modern nationhood. One, of course, is primarily shaped by the artifice of libros de caballerias, while the other is sustained by the artifice of cartography. Both, however, must be into existence. Indicating that the exists in the imagination--that it is shaped by cartography and sustained by political faith--does not diminish its importance. Precisely because of the fact that it is an imagined entity, the nation can be responsibly or irresponsibly. Cervantes aims, in this sense, not for the destabilization of the fantasy of nationhood, but rather for its fortification, for a vision of its contours that takes the suffering of armed men into account as one of its central sources of strength, legitimacy, and necessity. This is accomplished in an indirect manner because it also implies a critique: that the nation could be stronger than it is, and that, furthermore, its weaknesses ore particularly onerous for those who are asked to suffer greatly for it. …

Who's Afraid of "Don Quijote?" the Implied Reader in a Spanish Re-Creation for Children

Are adaptations of Cervantes's masterpiece intended for children a quixotic enterprise? This article seeks to show how Spanish author Concha Lopez Narvaez, in Andanzas de don Quijote y Sancho, recreates the story in a way that makes it accessible to readers ten and older, including junior-high-school students of Spanish as a second language. The author does this through aspects of paratext, structure, point of view, characters, and language, the total effect of which is construction of a quite idealistic implied reader who places a high value on friendship.

Miguel de Unamuno. Pomiędzy fikcją a rzeczywistością

The article Miguel de Unamuno. Pomiedzy fikcją a rzeczywistością (Miguel de Unamuno. Between fiction and reality) is an author's metalepsy analysis, a phenomenon described by Gerard Cenette (Mśtalepse. De la figure k la fiction, 2004), in three texts by Miguel de Unamuno: Vida de Don Quijote y Sancho (1905), Niebla (1914) and Como se hace una novela (1927). Author's metalepsy, defined as transgression of the limits of fiction by an author, existentional metalepsy (understood as a vision of the world based on doubt, concerning the status of reality) and reader's metalepsy (if he’s forced to transgression of the limits of fiction) are the inseparable parts of Unamuno's writing.

Lope de Vega, El cuerdo loco , and 'la más discreta figura de la comedia

Although examples of Lope de Vega's engagement with the locura del mundo topos abound in his early dramatic works, written before the publication of Don Quixote, few scholars have registered the playwright's interest in the theme. Taking as a point of departure Cervantes's enthusiastic endorsement of the figure of the theatrical bobo, in Don Quixote, Part II, this study explores one play by Lope, El cuerdo loco, of 1602, in terms of its central 'mad' figure. The innovative use Lope made of madness in this play in which the prince, Antonio, is able to save his kingdom by feigning insanity, is seen to be another example of the perhaps unexpected sophistication and subtlety with which the dramatist handled his ideas.Muchos son los ejemplos de la dedicacion de Lope de Vega al tema de la locura del mundo en su obra dramatica temprana (antes de la publicacion de Don Quijote), aunque pocos son los estudiosos que han notado este interes. Este estudio parte del entusiasmo que demuestra Cervantes, en la segunda par...

“God is dreaming you”

The starting point of my essay is a paradoxical claim that the Spanish philosopher, poet and novelist Miguel de Unamuno (1864-1936) makes—in his essay “Vida de Don Quijote y Sancho” (1905)—that Don Quixote, Cervantes’ character, is more real and authentic than Miguel de Cervantes himself. Then, after discussing this claim and analyzing the implications of an ingenious literary device that Unamuno employed in his fiction “Niebla” (1914), I will sketch some of the possible philosophical consequences that Unamuno’s literary concepts might have on understanding the ultimate identity of the self, and of the nature of human condition in general. The paper is in three parts: 1) the first part is dedicated to discussing the above mentioned paradoxical claim in “Vida de Don Quijote y Sancho”; 2) the second part deals mainly with Chapter XXXI of Unamuno’s “Niebla”; and 3) in the final part I will deal with Unamuno’s insight that the relationship between the self and God is, properly speaking, of the same nature as the relationship between a literary author and the fictional beings he creates. In addition, I will be trying to place Unamuno’s insight within a broader context of history of ideas, and to point to some of its far-reaching philosophical implications.

Competing Narrative Discourses: (Fe)Male Fabulation in the Episode of Grisostomo and Marcela

Cervantes's and characters within it owe their existence to curious interplay of art and life that has come to epitomize modern era. The novel is a text born of other texts, within which texts play an essential role in narrative structure, story, plot, and character development. Throughout Cervantes's novel, it is blatantly obvious that text and all its characters are conceived, nurtured, and sustained by a fascinating and intriguing combination of inter- and intratextuality. Take, for instance, Cervantes's efforts to distance himself from his protagonist and present him as an autonomous character (aunque parezco padre, soy padrastro de don Quijote [79]); don Quijote's countless sleepless nights reading libros de caballeria con tanta aficion y gusto (98); creation of narrator Cide Hamete Benengeli; scrutiny of Quijote's library by priest and barber, series of interpolated tales; and incorporation of other novels and genres (e.g. El curioso impertinente and Maese Perez's puppet theatre).It is probably safe to say that of all interpolated tales in Quijote, episode of Grisostomo and (I: 11-14) has received most critical attention. No doubt this is due in large part to extent to which shepherdess Marcela's character embodies a strong sense of individualism, a feature that sets her apart from other female characters in Cervantes's novel and in other works of same period. In words of Elvira Macht de Vera, Marcela se transmuta en una libertad autosuficiente y se plantea problematica en el mundo de los seres corrientes y de sus actos cotidianos (6). Curiously, though not surprisingly, what sets apart from other female characters makes her more like Quijote. is one character who most closely mirrors novel's strong-minded and free-willed protagonist. To quote Julio Rodriguez Puertolas: Don descubre [en Marcela], sin duda con admiracion, la existencia de otra persona tan independiente y libre como el mismo, integerrima e individualista, sincera y honesta. descubre un espejo en que puede mirar un otro yo (185). Like Quijote, confuses art and life and is driven by an innate desire to alter reality in order to achieve her personal objective. Like idealistic knight, she is also deaf to those who offer her practical advice in an attempt to thwart her efforts. Marcela's behavior, as might be expected, is considered unnatural. She is sharply criticized by other shepherds who characterize her as cruel, arrogante, and desdenosa (195). As a female character in pastoral genre, what Yvonne Jehenson has called a fantasy, a microcosmic image of man's gender-inflected wish fulfillment (19), is atypical because she does not conform to traditional image of woman as of male desire.That is misunderstood by her fellow shepherds may be dismissed by fact that they are victims of their textual and contextual circumstances. Less understandable, however, are a variety of critical studies that regard her as callous, cold-hearted, destructively selfish, and categorically out-of-character (see, for example, Herrero, Dunn, and McGaha, among others). For every study that has concluded that Marcela's character is awkward, humorous, and not fully believable (Finello 123), there is a more recent one that has defended her as a woman who actively resists objectification and inscription as helpless female. These studies view as embodiment of ideals of female liberty (Laffey 553) and subversion of the male view of her as textual object (Jehenson 29), a character willing to proclaim female subjectivity and establish her autonomy regardless of consequences and in spite of how difficult it is for characters within novel and her would-be critics to accept her (El Saffar 159).Marcela's character has generated diametrically opposing critical views, which, as Ruth El Saffar has pointed out, divide fascinatingly along gender lines (158). …

Don Quijote Wins by a Nose

DON Quijote's victory over the Caballero de los Espejos (Sanson Carrasco) has generally been considered the originating impulse for the adventures of Don II. Had Sanson been victorious, as he expected, he would have required that don honor his demand to return home as the price of defeat. In an essay of a few years ago, J. B. Avalle-Arce goes back a bit further and seeks to establish the initial thrust of the second part in Sanson Carrasco's broken promise to don Quijote. In effect, after the knight informs Sanson that he plans a third sally and asks him not to divulge such plans, the though he promises to keep the secret, actually confers with the barber and the curate in order to devise some means of bringing the knight back home. Avalle-Arce maintains that the fateful words '[t]odo lo prometio Carrasco' ... [es] de fundamental importancia en el desarrollo de los planes para la tercera salida de don Quijote (2), adding that this broken promise is the razon de ser de la segunda (2). I would add that this is true in a general sense, but that don had already clearly determined to sally forth (the curate and the barber guessed as much in chapter i). Sancho himself announces that he and his master will give Cide Hamete plenty to write about. Whereupon, as he hears Rocinante's neighing, don Quijote: determino de hacer de alli a tres o cuatro dias otra salida; y declarando su intento al bachiller, le pidio consejo por que parte comenzaria su jornada; el cual respondio que era su parecer que fuese al reino de Aragon, y a la ciudad de Zaragoza, adonde de alli a pocos dias se habian de hacer unas solenisimas justas por la fiesta de San Jorge, en las cuales podria ganar fama sobre todos los caballeros aragoneses, que seria ganarla sobre todos los del mundo. (482-83) Sanson Carrasco is here encouraging don merely out of mischievousness, since he hasn't as yet conferred with the priest and the barber on how to bring don back home. He is driven by deceit and the wish to have fun at the knight's expense. Actually, Sanson Carrasco is the first of several readers of Don I (including, extrafictionally, Avellaneda) who want to become authors of Don Quijote, but whose plans prove unequal to the protagonist's lability. By the time Sanson is successful in chapter lxiv (as the Caballero de la Blanca Luna), Dulcinea's tenacious enchantment has almost exhausted don Quijote's imaginative energies. As to the priest and barber, there is no mention of their having read the first part (it may not have reached the provinces; Sanson comes with the news of the book, but may not have a copy himself). Their conversation with don deals with his present condition and personal memories of the immediate past, i.e., their participation at the end of part I. Because the priest's wide-ranging reading was established in his escrutinio of don Quijote's library (1, 6), it would be natural for him to have read it. Don Quijote, of course, doesn't want to read it-he will also merely glance at Avellaneda's version, in chapter lix, just enough to point out some of its flaws-once he hears about it from Sancho and Sanson Carrasco. From a practical point of view, Cervantes may have wanted to move on and introduce Sanson as the new (initial and final) foil to don Quijote's madness (as the priest was in part I). Of course neither he, nor other readers of Part I, such as the duke and duchess, are capable of moving beyond don Quijote's armor to the shifting ambivalences within. Their reading does not allow for the negative capability now embodied by both don and Sancho, and which has been developing at least since the episodes of the Sierra Morena in part I. Both Avalle-Arce's view that part I originates in a broken promise and my own sense that a pall of deceit overshadows not only those exchanges but the entire beginning of the second part, including the episode of the Knight of the Mirrors, address a shift in how the text presents don Quijote. …

Cervantes's Confidence Games and the Refashioning of Totality

Georg Lukacs's correlation of the origins of the novel with the disappearance of transcendental values established a line of theoretical reflection on the importance of this genre for the understanding of Modernity. His treatment of Don Quijoteas the textual watershed in the configuration of the genre is laden with implications for the speculative or even normative significance of this work. Lukacs was not, of course, the first to accord Cervantes's masterpiece a historic-philosophical role or to consider its formative influence on the development of the novel, but he was the first to situate this work at the axis of a reflection on the historical necessity and the philosophic presuppositions of the genre. The Romantic forefathers of modern aesthetics (Schlegel, Schelling, Hegel) had already called attention to the concentration of new literary conditions in Cervantes's text, while two years before the publication of Lukacs's Theory of the Novel (1916), the Spanish philosopherJose Ortega y Gasset titled his first book Meditations on Quixote (Meditaciones del Quijote, 1914). Still earlier, the late Romantic essayist and religious thinker Miguel de Unamuno had made Cervantes's hero the object of a meditation in the manner of spiritual exercises. Vida de Don Quijote y Sancho (1905) is an Imitatio of sorts, a subjective rewriting of Cervantes's novel filled with ad hoc harangues and a high-pitched lyricism typical of Unamuno's style. A rigorous and informative analysis of the philosophical relations between Lukacs and these Spanish authors, both with respect to their engagement of Hegelianism and their responses to the philosophical possibilities of Cervantes's work, is available (Cascardi 1987). My pur-

Don Quixote's sophistry and wisdom

Don Quixote's sophistry and wisdom

"El curioso impertinente" and Don Quijote's symbolic struggle against "curiositas"

The interpolated story of El curioso impertinente has been the crux interpretum of the Quijote ever since its original publication. Evidently Cervantes himself was aware of this fact, for whereas in his discussion of the inserted tales in Part II he praises their aesthetic value, he nonetheless omits them in the sequel, admitting that in doing so he is yielding to the adverse opinions of his reading public. He knew that the average reader simply ignored these episodios sueltos in order to follow the main plot of the novel. As for the educated reader we note the opinion of the bachiller, who finds El curioso impertinente quite out of place, though he is willing to admit that in spite of its irrelevance it possesses an aesthetic artificio of its own, ‘el cual se mostrara bien al descubierto, cuando por si solas, sin arrimarse a las locuras de Don Quijote, ni a las sandeces de Sancho, [las novelas] salieran a luz.’ To Cervantes these opinions seemed surprisingly critical of his intention, for he meant to inc...

Unamuno, Freud and the Case of Alonso Quijano

VER SINCE FREUD wrote a psychoanalytic account of Oedipus and Jung analyzed Electra and Ernest Jones diagnosed Hamlet, there has been a growing psychoanalytic literature on the cases of other classical characters of mythology and fiction. It should come as no surprise that there is also available a psychoanalytic account of that most insane of literary personalities, Don Quijote de la Mancha. What may be a bit of a surprise is that such an account has been available since 1905 and was written by that (apparently) most un-Freudian of writers, Miguel de Unamuno. The book is Vida de Don Quijote y Sancho. If Vida de Don Quijote contains a Freudian study of Cervantes' creation, it is not strange that this has not been noticed before, because often we think of psychoanalytic accounts of our heroes as attempts to debunk the greatness of those heroes by showing that precisely what we find praiseworthy in them is nothing but the symptom of some psychic or emotional aberration. And it is well-known that, far from wanting to debunk Quijote's greatness, Unamuno saw as the task of Vida de Don Quijote the rescue of Quijote's greatness from just such a malicious attack on the part of Cervantes. Where Cervantes saw folly, lunacy and grotesqueness, Unamuno saw decisiveness, heroics and profundity. Where Cervantes approached Quijote with ridicule and cruel humor, Unamuno approached him with compassion and reverence. In Vida de Don Quijote Unamuno hoped to construct a truly Spanish philosophy of existence from precisely those Quixotic traits which Cervantes seemed to have condemned as exemplars of human folly in general and Spanish folly in particular. That Don Quijote was hopelessly mad Unamuno never denied, but Unamuno advocated Quixotic madness as a legitimate existential stance to be assumed by the individual who confronts an absurd universe whose only telos is one's own death.