DLC Blog

Don Quijote's 400th Birthday

This year marks the 400th anniversary of the appearance of Cervantes’ novel Don Quijote de la Mancha, arguably the most important work in Spanish language history as well as a must-read for all interested in the great international literary works. To commemorate this anniversary, I thought to write a brief summary of the novel's main premise and some of its most important interpretations and legacies.

The main character of this novel, the ever-famous Don Quijote, becomes obsessed with novels about a heavily romanticized medieval world where every day features chivalric events of the "virtuous knights battling monsters to rescue fair maidens" variety. In time, he becomes so obsessed with this world that he eventually loses touch with reality and fancies himself a knight. So he polishes some antique armor, mounts his old shabby horse, finds himself an unwitting squire, and rides into the sunset to conquer the world.

This novel is fascinating in countless ways. As the main premise of the work, Cervantes ridicules the popular romantic novel while at the same time exposing the reality of the harsh nature of mankind. He mocks this nature by creating a world in which the only morally upright character is mentally insane.

His use of satire, metaliterature (writing about writing), and his inclusion of himself in the novel as another character all lead many literary critics to deem Don Quijote de la Mancha the first modern novel. Whatever its characterization, I must say that this novel is one of the most clever, well-written works in the history of literature. As there is so much that one can get from such a rich work, I think it's important that everyone read this novel at least once, and as Cervantes himself states in his introduction, "do with it as you will."

Lindsey
Student Mentor - French

Posted by Lindsey at October 3, 2005 04:52 PM in Foreign Language.