Everything about Don Quixote totally explained
| translator =
| image =
| image_caption = The 1605 original title page
| author =
Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
| cover_artist =
| country =
Spain
| language =
Spanish
| length =
381,214 words (original Spanish version)
| series =
| genre =
Picaresco,
Satire,
Parody,
Farce,
Psychological novel
| publisher = Iuan de la Cuesta
| release_date = 1605, 1615
| media_type = Print (
Hardback &
Paperback)}}
( see
spelling and pronunciation below), fully titled ("The Ingenious
Hidalgo Don Quixote of
La Mancha") is an early
novel written by
Spanish author
Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra. Cervantes created a fictional origin for the story based upon a manuscript by the invented
Moorish historian, Cide Hamete Benengeli.
Published in two volumes a decade apart,
Don Quixote is the most influential work of literature to emerge from the
Spanish Golden Age and perhaps the entire
Spanish literary canon. As a founding work of
modern Western literature, it regularly appears at the top of lists of the greatest works of fiction ever published.
Literary attributes
The novel's structure is in episodic form. It is a humorous
novel in the
picaresco style of the late sixteenth century. The full title is indicative of the tale's object, as
ingenioso (Span.) means "to be quick with inventiveness". Although the novel is
farcical, the second half is serious and philosophical about the theme of deception.
Quixote has served as an important thematic source not only in literature but in much of later art and music, inspiring works by
Pablo Picasso and
Richard Strauss. The contrasts between the tall, thin, fancy-struck, and idealistic Quixote and the fat, squat, world-weary Panza is a motif echoed ever since the book’s publication, and Don Quixote's imaginings are the butt of outrageous and cruel practical jokes in the novel. Even faithful and simple Sancho is unintentionally forced to deceive him at certain points. The novel is considered a satire of orthodoxy, truth, veracity, and even nationalism. In going beyond mere storytelling to exploring the individualism of his characters, Cervantes helped move beyond the narrow literary conventions of the
chivalric romance literature that he
spoofed, which consists of straightforward retelling of a series of acts that redound to the
knightly virtues of the
hero.
Farce makes use of punning and similar verbal playfulness. Character-naming in
Don Quixote makes ample figural use of contradiction, inversion, and irony, such as the names
Rocinante (a reversal) and
Dulcinea (an allusion to illusion), and the word itself, possibly a pun on (jaw) but certainly (Catalan: thighs), a reference to a horse's
rump.
The world of ordinary people, from shepherds to tavern-owners and inn-keepers, which figures in
Don Quixote, was groundbreaking. The character of Don Quixote became so well-known in its time that the word
quixotic was quickly
calqued into many languages. Characters such as Sancho Panza and Don Quixote’s steed,
Rocinante, are emblems of Western literary culture. The phrase "
tilting at windmills" to describe an act of futility similarly derives from an iconic scene in the book.
Because of its widespread influence,
Don Quixote also helped cement the modern
Spanish language. The opening sentence of the book created a classic Spanish cliché with the phrase, "whose name I don't want to remember."
"In a place at La Mancha, which name I don't want to remember, not very long ago lived a noble, one of those nobles who keep a lance in the lance-rack, an ancient shield, a skinny old horse, and a fast greyhound."
Plot summary
Alonso Quixano, a fiftyish retired country gentleman, lives in an unnamed section of
La Mancha with his niece and a housekeeper. He has become obsessed with books of chivalry, and believes their every word to be true, despite the fact that many of the events in them are clearly impossible. Quixano eventually appears to other people to have lost his mind from little sleep and food and because of so much reading. He decides to go out as a knight-errant in search of adventure. He dons an old suit of armor, improvises a makeshift helmet, renames himself "Don Quixote de la Mancha," and names his skinny horse "
Rocinante." He designates a neighboring farm girl, Aldonza Lorenzo, as his ladylove, renaming her Dulcinea del Toboso, while she knows nothing about this.
He sets out in the early morning and ends up at an inn, which he believes to be a castle. He asks the innkeeper, whom he takes to be the lord of the castle, to dub him knight. He spends the night holding vigil over his armor, during which he becomes involved in a fight with muleteers who try to remove his armor from the horse trough so that they can water their mules. The innkeeper then "dubs" him knight advising him that he needs a
squire, and sends him on his way. Don Quixote battles with traders from
Toledo, who "insult" the imaginary Dulcinea, and he also frees a young boy who is tied to a tree by his master because the boy had the audacity to ask his master for the wages the boy had earned but hadn't yet been paid. Don Quixote is returned to his home by a neighboring peasant, Pedro Crespo.
Back at home, Don Quixote plots an escape. Meanwhile, his niece, the housekeeper, the parish
curate, and the local barber secretly burn most of the books of chivalry, and seal up his library pretending that a magician has carried it off. Don Quixote approaches another neighbor,
Sancho Panza, and asks him to be his squire, promising him governorship of an island. The rather dull-witted Sancho agrees, and the pair sneak off in the early dawn. It is here that their series of famous adventures begin, starting with Don Quixote's attack on
windmills that he believes to be ferocious giants.
Although the first half of the novel is almost completely
farcical, the second half is serious and philosophical about the theme of deception. Don Quixote's imaginings are made the butt of outrageously cruel practical jokes. Even Sancho is unintentionally forced to deceive him at one point; trapped into finding Dulcinea, Sancho brings back three peasant girls and tells Quixote that they're Dulcinea and her ladies-in-waiting. When Don Quixote only sees three peasant girls, Sancho pretends that Quixote suffers from a cruel spell which doesn't permit him to see the truth. Sancho eventually gets his imaginary island governorship and unexpectedly proves to be wise and practical; though this too, ends in disaster. The novel ends with Don Quixote's complete disillusionment, with his
melancholic return to sanity and renunciation of chivalry, and finally, his death.
Writing and publication
Cervantes' sources
Tirant lo Blanch
Sources for
Don Quixote include the Valencian novel
Tirant lo Blanch, 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.
Orlando furioso
Cervantes makes a number of references to the
Italian poem
Orlando furioso. In chapter 10 of the first part of the novel, Don Quixote says he must take the magical helmet of Mambrino, an episode from Canto I of
Orlando, and itself a reference to
Matteo Maria Boiardo's
Orlando innamorato. The interpolated story in chapter 51 of Part II is a retelling of a tale from Canto 43 of
Orlando, regarding a man who tests the fidelity of his wife.
Publication
In July of 1604 Cervantes sold the rights of
El ingenioso hidalgo don Quixote de la Mancha (known as
Don Quixote, Part I) to the publisher-bookseller Francisco de Robles for an unknown sum. License to publish was granted in September, the printing was finished in December, and the book came out in January 1605. The novel was an immediate success. Most of the 400 copies of the first edition were sent to the
New World, with the publisher hoping to make a better price in the Americas . Although a lot of them disappeared in a shipwreck near
La Havana, approximately 70 copies reached
Lima, from where they were sent to
Cuzco in the heart of the defunct
Inca Empire The
compositors at Juan de la Cuesta's press in Madrid are now known to have been responsible for errors in the text, many of which were attributed to the author.
No sooner was it in the hands of the public than preparations were made to issue derivative ("pirated") editions. "Don Quixote" had been growing in favour, and its author's name was now known beyond the
Pyrenees. By August 1605 there were two Madrid editions, two published in Lisbon, and one in
Valencia. A second edition with additional copyrights for
Aragon and
Portugal, which publisher Francisco de Robles secured. Sale of these publishing rights deprived Cervantes of further financial profit on
Part One. In 1607, an edition was printed in
Brussels. Robles, the Madrid publisher, found it necessary to meet demand with a third edition, a seventh publication in all, in 1608. Popularity of the book in Italy was such that a Milan bookseller issued an Italian edition in 1610. Yet another Brussels edition was called for in 1721.
Don Quixote, Part Two, published by the same press as its predecessor, appeared late in 1615, and quickly reprinted in Brussels and Valencia (1616) and Lisbon (1617). The second tome capitalizes on the potential of the first, developing and diversifying without sacrificing familiarity. Many people agree that it's richer and more profound. Parts
One and
Two were published as one edition in Barcelona in 1617.
Some theories exist that question whether Cervantes alone wrote
Don Quixote. Carlos Fuentes raises an intriguing possibility that, "Cervantes leaves open the pages of a book where the reader knows himself to be written and it's said that he dies on the same date, though not on the same day, as William Shakespeare. It is further stated that perhaps both were the same man."
The spurious Avellaneda Segunda Parte
It isn't certain when Cervantes began writing
Part Two of
Don Quixote, but he'd probably not gotten much further than Chapter LIX by late July of 1614. About September, however, a spurious Part Two, entitled "
Second Volume of the Ingenious Gentleman Don Quixote of La Mancha: by the Licenciado (doctorate) Alonso Fernández de Avellaneda, of Tordesillas", was published in
Tarragona by an unidentified
Aragonese who was an admirer of Lope de Vega, rival of Cervantes. Avellaneda's identity has been the subject of many theories, but there's no consensus on who he was. In its prologue, the author gratuitously insulted Cervantes, who not surprisingly took offense and responded; the last half of Chapter LIX and most of the following chapters of Cervantes'
Segunda Parte lend some insight of the effects upon him. However, in his introduction to
The Portable Cervantes,
Samuel Putnam, a noted translator of Cervantes' novel, calls Avellaneda's version "one of the most disgraceful performances in history".
The second half of Cervantes'
Don Quixote, finished as a direct result of the Avellaneda book, has come to be regarded by most literary critics as being far superior to the first, because of its greater depth of characterization, its discussions, mostly between Quixote and Sancho, on random subjects, and its philosophical insights.
Editions in translation
There are many translations of the book, and it has been adapted many times in shortened versions. Many derivative editions were also being written at the time, as was the custom of envious or unscrupulous writers. Seven years after the
Parte Primera appeared,
Don Quixote had been translated into French, German, Italian, and English. (first French translation of 'Part II' (1618), first English translation (1620).) One abridged adaptation is authored by Agustín Sánchez, which runs slightly over 150 pages, cutting away about 750 pages.
The elusive
Thomas Shelton's English translation of the
First Part appeared in 1612. Some claim Shelton was actually a friend of Cervantes, although there's no credible evidence to support this claim. Although Shelton's version has been a cherished translation, according to
John Ormsby and
Samuel Putnam respectively, it was far from satisfactory as a carrying over of Cervantes's text. and another called it the "most transparent and least impeded among more than a dozen English translations going back to the 17th century."
Cultural legacy
Don Quixote is often nominated as one of the world's greatest works of fiction.
Prince Myshkin, the title character of Dostoyevsky's novel The Idiot (1869) was explicitly modelled on Don Quixote.
"Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote" (1939) by Jorge Luis Borges is an essay about a (fictional) 20th century writer who re-authors Don Quixote. "The text of Cervantes and that of Menard are verbally identical, but the second is almost infinitely richer." Borges' story is also well known as a central metaphor in John Barth's famous essay "The Literature of Exhaustion".
Don Quixote appears as a character in Tennessee Williams's Camino Real (1953).
Rocinante was the name Steinbeck gave his converted truck in his 1960 travelogue "Travels with Charley"
Asterix in Spain (1969) 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.
A Confederacy of Dunces (1980) by John Kennedy Toole. The main character, Ignatius, is considered a modern-day Quixote.
Monsignor Quixote (1982) by Graham Greene. Monsignor Quixote is said to be a descendant of Don Quixote.
Don Quixote: Which Was a Dream (1986) also known as Don Quixote: a Novel by Kathy Acker, is a work of cyber-punk, post-feminist fiction that revisits the themes of the original text to highlight contemporary issues.
The Moor's Last Sigh (1995) by Salman Rushdie, with its central themes of the world being remade and reinterpreted clearly draws enormous inspiration from Cervantes, with names and characters drawn from the earlier work.
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 anachronistic epistemological configuration to a new intellectual world, a new episteme, in which hermeneutics and semiology have been separated.
Slaven, Neil, "Electric Don Quixote: the definitive story of Frank Zappa", 1996,Omnibus Press, London
Influences upon the arts
Operatic, music, and ballet renditions of Quixote
The 18th century French baroque composer Joseph Bodin de Boismortier wrote a short ballet titled Don Quichotte chez la Duchesse. The ballet, which includes sung parts, is about a Duke's and Duchess' efforts to fool Don Quixote.
A play by Thomas D'Urfey with music and songs by Baroque composer Henry Purcell, entitled The Comical History of Don Quixote (1694), adapts and rearranges some of his adventures. The play, like other eighteenth-century adaptations of the novel, reflects that era's view of Don Quixote as a comic work, with no hint of seriousness.
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 on which Telemann based his opera.
Ludwig Minkus composed the music for Marius Petipa's ballet Don Quixote, which was staged for the Bolshoi Theatre of Moscow in 1869, and was revised in more elaborate production for the Imperial Ballet of St. Petersburg in 1871. The libretto was based on the same chapters in the novel which attracted Mendelssohn and Telemann. Petipa's ballet was substantially revised by Alexander Gorsky in 1900 for the Bolshoi Theatre in Moscow, a version which was staged for the Imperial in 1902. It is Gorsky's 1902 staging which has been revisited by several other choreographers in the course of the twentieth century in Soviet Russia, and has since been staged by ballet companies all over the world. In 1972, Rudolf Nureyev filmed his celebrated versionof the ballet. The choreography, credited to Nureyev, was based closely on the Soviet edition.
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.
Maurice Ravel composed a set of three songs for voice and piano, Don Quichotte à Dulcinée (Don Quixote to Dulcinea) to poems by Paul Morand in 1932, and orchestrated them in 1934.
Jacques Ibert composed music for the 1933 film Adventures of Don Quixote starring the Russian bass Feodor Chaliapin, directed by G.W. Pabst. Three versions were filmed, in French, English, and German. The French and English versions have been released on home video.
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 makes explicit reference to many of the novel's most entertaining sections, including the sheep (described famously by double-tongued brass) and windmill episodes.
The Catalan composer Roberto Gerhard, shortly after being exiled to the United Kingdom at the end of the Spanish Civil War, composed in 1940–41 a ballet on Don Quixote as the most important of a number of tributes to Spanish culture. Not staged in this original form, the ballet became the source for a number of orchestral suites and Gerhard also used it in the extensive incidental music he provided for a BBC radio adaptation of Cervantes’s novel by Eric Linklater, The Adventures of Don Quixote (1940). Gerhard re-wrote the ballet in 1947–49 and it was staged by Sadler’s Wells Ballet at Covent Garden with choreography by Ninette de Valois and décor by Edward Burra.
George Balanchine created another Don Quixote ballet in 1965, to music by Nicolas Nabokov. This was dedicated to the dancer Suzanne Farrell, whom he played opposite in the original production.
Man of La Mancha, with music by Mitch Leigh, lyrics by Joe Darion and book by Dale Wasserman based on his non-musical teleplay I, Don Quixote, is a one-act Broadway musical which combines episodes in the novel with a story about its author, Miguel de Cervantes, as a play within a play that premiered in 1965.
The British composer Ronald Stevenson has composed an extensive work for two guitars, Don Quixote and Sancho Panza, subtitled 'a Bagatelle Cycle' (1982–3) and consisting of a double theme with seventeen variations based on various events in Cervantes' novel. The work was premiered in Glasgow in 1998.
British singer-songwriter Nik Kershaw released a song entitled Don Quixote, which reached No. 10 in the UK top 40 in 1985.
Don Quixote was the title song of the eighth album released by Canadian singer/songwriter Gordon Lightfoot.
The 1998 Concept Album La Leyenda de la Mancha by popular Spanish Rock band Mägo De Oz is a modern retelling of the story of Don Quixote. The most popular song from that album 'Molinos De Viento' is about Don Quixote's conversation with Sancho Panza after the adventure with the windmills, in which Don Quixote attacks the windmills because he believes them to be giants.
Don Quixote is the subject of the song Windmills on the album The Village Lanterne released in 2006 by Renaissance-inspired folk rock band Blackmore's Night.
In Iris Johansen's "No One to Trust" the DEA agent, Ben Forbes, is often compared to Don Quixote by the mercenary, Sean Galen.
Quixote in the visual arts
Don Quixote has inspired a large number of illustrators, painters and draughtsmen such as Gustave Doré, Pablo Picasso, Salvador Dalí and Antonio de la Gandara.The French artist Honoré Daumier produced 29 paintings and 49 drawings based on the book and characters of Don Quixote starting with an exhibition at the 1850 Paris Salon, which would later inspire Pablo Picasso. In 1863, Gustave Doré produced a large set of drawings based on Don Quixote. These include the famous, if fanciful, engraving of Don Quixote in his library. On August 10, 1955, Pablo Picasso drew an illustration of Don Quixote and Sancho Panza that has become the most iconic image ever made of these characters, drawn for the journal weekly Les Lettres françaises (week of August 18-24, 1955), and which quotes from the Daumier caricature of a century before, shown left. Widely reproduced, today it's the iconic image used by the Spanish government to promote Cervantes and Don Quixote.
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.
The x was pronounced like an English sh sound (voiceless postalveolar fricative) in medieval times — — and this is reflected in the French name Don Quichotte, the Dutch Don Quichot (or Don Quichote), as well as in the Italian name Don Chisciotte. However, in Spanish such words (now virtually all spelled with a j) are now pronounced with a voiceless velar fricative sound like the Scottish or German ch (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, as, although the incorrect traditional English pronunciation /ˈkwɪksət/ or /ˈkwɪksoʊt/ is still frequently used, more in the United Kingdom than in the United States .
In Spanish, the "qu" in "qui" and "que" are pronounced almost identically to the English "k", so when people pronounce it /ˈkwɪksoʊt/, it's ultimately incorrect. The e at the end of "Quixote" is pronounced as a soft e, not a hard e, nor a silent e, due to Spanish phonetics. The traditional English rendering is also preserved in the pronunciation of the adjectival form quixotic.
Films based on, or inspired by Don Quixote
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 Quixote (1934), directed by Ub Iwerks and published as a Comicolor cartoon, is an animated cartoon loosely based on the novel. It takes great liberties with the story (for example, Don Quixote demolishes the windmill and emits a Tarzan-like yell of triumph). It was made in color.
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.
Дон Кихот (1957), a Soviet production by Grigori Kozintsev, and starring Nicolai Cherkassov, the first live-action version in color.
Don Quijote (1965), a French/German made-for-television miniseries comprising four feature length parts, directed by Carlo Rim. It stars the noted Austrian actor and keeper of the Iffland-Ring Josef Meinrad as Don Quijote.
Don Quichotte de Cervantes (1965), a short (23 minute) French film by Éric Rohmer. (External Link
)
Man of La Mancha (1972), directed by Arthur Hiller (a film version of the hit stage musical by Dale Wasserman, Mitch Leigh, and Joe Darion. The stage musical was, in turn, based on Wasserman's 1959 live TV drama, I, Don Quixote.) It stars Peter O'Toole as both Don Quixote and Miguel de Cervantes, as well as Sophia Loren as Aldonza / Dulcinea and James Coco as Sancho Panza and Cervantes's manservant.
Don Quijote cabalga de nuevo (1973), directed by Roberto Gavaldón, a Mexican/Spanish comedy with Cantinflas in the role of Sancho Panza and Fernando Fernán Gómez as Don Quixote.
The Adventures of Don Quixote (1973), a British made-for-television version first telecast on the anthology series Play of the Month, but shown as a television special in the U.S, presumably to capitalize on the publicity engendered by the then-recent release of the film version of Man of La Mancha. It stars Rex Harrison and Frank Finlay. Directed by Alvin Rakoff, with a script by Hugh Whitemore.
Don Quixote (1973), a film version of the Minkus ballet, starring Rudolf Nureyev, Lucette Aldous, Robert Helpmann (as Don Quixote) and artists of the Australian Ballet. The third of three Don Quixote films shown in the U.S. that year (the others being Man of La Mancha, which, although released in 1972, was still playing in theatres in '73, and the aforementioned Rex Harrison The Adventures of Don Quixote.)
Don Quixote: Tales of La Mancha (1980), a Japanese anime series produced by Ashi Productions and distributed by Toei Animation.
The Adventures of Don Coyote and Sancho Panda
Life of Don Quixote and Sancho (1988), 9 episode series, filmed in Georgia and Spain by Georgian director Rezo Chkheidze.
El Quijote de Miguel de Cervantes (1991), a television miniseries version of Part I of the novel, directed by Manuel Gutiérrez Aragón, and starring Fernando Rey as Don Quixote
Don Quixote, begun by Orson Welles but never finished; a reshaped version by Jesus Franco was released in 1992
Don Quixote (2000), directed by Peter Yates, a made-for-TV version co-produced by Hallmark and Turner Network Television, starring John Lithgow, Bob Hoskins, Vanessa L. Williams, and Isabella Rossellini. The script was by noted British playwright John Mortimer.
Lost in La Mancha (2002) is a documentary movie about Terry Gilliam's failed attempt to make a movie adaptation of Don Quixote.
El Caballero Don Quijote (2002), Manuel Gutiérrez Aragon's belated filming of Part II of the novel, with an entirely different cast from the one that had appeared in his version of Part I. This was a two-hour theatrical film, not a miniseries. Juan Luis Galiardo starred as Quixote.
Donkey Xote (2008), (External Link)Further Information
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