name | Don Quixote |
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title orig | |
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author | Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra |
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country | Spain |
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language | Spanish |
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genre | Picaresco, satire, parody, farce |
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publisher | Juan de la Cuesta |
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pub date | 1605 (Part One)1615 (Part Two) |
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english pub date | 1612 (Part One)1620 (Part Two) |
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media type | Print |
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dewey | 863 |
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congress | PQ |
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length | 381,214 words (original Spanish version)
}} |
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(, ), fully titled ''The Ingenious Gentleman Don Quixote of La Mancha'' (), is a novel written by Spanish author Miguel de Cervantes. Published in two volumes a decade apart (in 1605 and 1615), ''Don Quixote'' is considered the most influential work of literature from the Spanish Golden Age in the Spanish literary canon. As a founding work of modern Western literature, and one of the earliest canonical novels, it regularly appears high on lists of the greatest works of fiction ever published. In one such list, ''Don Quixote'' was cited as the "best literary work ever written".
Spelling and pronunciation
''Quixote'' (pronounced "kihoteh")
is the original spelling in
Old 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
Galician and
Astur-Leonese name ''Don Quixote'', the
Catalan ''Don Quixot'' , the
Portuguese ''Dom Quixote'' , 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'' . English speakers generally attempt something close to the modern Spanish pronunciation when saying ''Quixote'' (''Quijote''), as , although the traditional English pronunciation or is still sometimes used.
The traditional English rendering is preserved in the pronunciation of the adjectival form ''quixotic'', i.e., or , the foolishly impractical pursuit of ideals, typically marked with rash and lofty romantic ideals.
Plot summary
The protagonist of the book is Alonso Quixano (or Quijano), a retired country gentleman nearing 50 years of age, who 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 due to lack of sleep and food from dedicating all of his time to reading.
First quest
He decides to go out as a
knight-errant in search of adventure. He dons an old suit of armor, renames himself "Don Quixote de la Mancha," and names his skinny horse "
Rocinante". He designates a neighboring farm girl,
Aldonza Lorenzo, as his lady love, 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, who he thinks to be the lord of the castle, to dub him a knight. He spends the night holding vigil over his armor, where 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 a knight, and sends him on his way. He 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 had not yet been paid (who is promptly beaten as soon as Quixote leaves). Don Quixote has a run-in with traders from Toledo, who "insult" the imaginary Dulcinea, one of whom severely beats Don Quixote and leaves him on the side of the road. Don Quixote is found and returned to his home by a neighboring peasant, Pedro Crespo.
Second quest
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 uneducated 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.
In the course of their travels, the protagonists meet innkeepers, prostitutes, goatherds, soldiers, priests, escaped convicts, and scorned lovers. These encounters are magnified by Don Quixote’s imagination into chivalrous quests. Don Quixote’s tendency to intervene violently in matters which do not concern him, and his habit of not paying his debts, result in many privations, injuries, and humiliations (with Sancho often getting the worst of it). Finally, Don Quixote is persuaded to return to his home village. The author hints that there was a third quest, but says that records of it have been lost.
Part Two
Although the two parts are now normally published as a single work, ''Don Quixote, Part Two'' was a sequel published ten years after the original novel. While Part One was mostly
farcical, the second half is more serious and philosophical about the theme of deception.
As ''Part Two'' begins, it is assumed that the literate classes of Spain have all read the first part of the history of Don Quixote and his squire. When they encounter the duo in person, the young scholar Samson Carrasco, an unnamed "duke and duchess," and others, seize the opportunity to amuse themselves by playing on Don Quixote's imaginings. The result is a series of cruel practical jokes that put Don Quixote's sense of chivalry and his devotion to Dulcinea through many humiliating tests.
Even Sancho deceives him at one point. Pressured into finding Dulcinea, Sancho brings back three dirty and ragged peasant girls, and tells Don Quixote that they are Dulcinea and her ladies-in-waiting. When Don Quixote only sees the peasant girls, Sancho pretends that their derelict appearance results from an enchantment. Sancho later gets his comeuppance for this when, as part of one of the duke and duchess's pranks, the two are led to believe that the only method to release Dulcinea from her spell is for Sancho to give himself three thousand lashes. Sancho naturally resists this course of action, leading to serious friction with his master. Under the duke's patronage, Sancho eventually gets an imaginary governorship, and unexpectedly proves to be wise and practical; though this, too, ends in humiliation.
Near the end, defeated and trampled, Don Quixote reluctantly begins to move back toward sanity. An inn is now just an inn, not a castle.
Conclusion
Upon returning to his village, Don Quixote announces his plan to retire to the countryside and live the pastoral existence of shepherd, although his housekeeper, who has a more realistic view of the hard life of a shepherd, urges him to stay home and tend to his own affairs. Soon after, he retires to his bed with a deathly illness, possibly brought on by melancholy over his defeats and humiliations. One day, he awakes from a dream having fully recovered his sanity. Sancho tries to restore his faith, but Alonso Quixano can only renounce his previous existence and apologize for the harm he has caused. He dictates his will, which includes a provision that his niece will be disinherited if she marries a man who reads books of chivalry. After Alonso Quixano dies, the author emphasizes that there are no more adventures to relate, and that any further books about Don Quixote would be spurious.
Writing
Spurious Avellaneda ''Segunda Parte'' (part two)
It is not certain when Cervantes began writing ''Part Two'' of ''Don Quixote'', but he had 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 is no consensus as to 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 into the effects upon him; Cervantes manages to work in some subtle digs at Avellaneda's own work, and in his preface to Part II, comes very near to criticizing Avellaneda directly.
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 part of Cervantes' ''Don Quixote'', finished as a direct result of the Avellaneda book, has come to be regarded by some literary critics as superior to the first part, because of its greater depth of characterization, its discussions, mostly between Quixote and Sancho, on diverse subjects, and its philosophical insights.
Other stories
''Don Quixote, Part One'' contains a number of stories which do not directly involve the two main characters, but which are narrated by some of the picaresque figures encountered by the Don and Sancho during their travels. The longest and best known of these is "El Curioso Impertinente" (the impertinently curious man), found in Part One, Book Four. This story, read to a group of travelers at an inn, tells of a
Florentine nobleman, Anselmo, who becomes obsessed with testing his wife's fidelity, and talks his close friend
Lothario into attempting to seduce her, with disastrous results for all. In ''Part Two'', the author acknowledges the criticism of his digressions in ''Part One'' and promises to concentrate the narrative on the central characters (although at one point he laments that his narrative muse has been constrained in this manner). Nevertheless, "Part Two" contains several back narratives related by peripheral characters.
Several abridged editions have been published which delete some or all of the extra tales in order to concentrate on the central narrative.
Sources
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.
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 33 of Part four of the First Part is a retelling of a tale from Canto 43 of ''Orlando'', regarding a man who tests the fidelity of his wife.
Cervantes's most important source, however, appears to have been Apuleius's ''The Golden Ass'', one of the earliest known novels, a picaresque from late classical antiquity. The wineskins episode near the end of the interpolated tale "The Curious Impertinent" in chapter 35 of the first part of ''Don Quixote'' is a clear reference to Apuleius, and recent scholarship suggests that the moral philosophy and the basic trajectory of Apuleius's novel are fundamental to Cervantes's program.
Setting
Cervantes' story takes place on the plains of
La Mancha, specifically the ''
comarca'' of
Campo de Montiel.
The location of the village to which Cervantes alludes in the opening sentence of ''Don Quixote'' has been the subject of debate since its publication over four centuries ago. Indeed, Cervantes deliberately omits the name of the village, giving an explanation in the final chapter:
In 2004, a multidisciplinary team of academics from Complutense University, led by Francisco Parra Luna, Manuel Fernández Nieto and Santiago Petschen Verdaguer, deduced that the village was that of Villanueva de los Infantes. Their findings were published in a paper titled ''"'El Quijote' como un sistema de distancias/tiempos: hacia la localización del lugar de la Mancha"'', which was later published as a book: ''El enigma resuelto del Quijote''. The result was replicated in two subsequent investigations: ''"La determinación del lugar de la Mancha como problema estadístico"'' and "The Kinematics of the Quixote and the Identity of the 'Place in La Mancha'".
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 on January 16, 1605. The novel was an immediate success. The majority of the 400 copies of the first
edition were sent to the
New World, with the publisher hoping to get a better price in the Americas. Although most 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.
There is some evidence of its contents having been known before publication to, among others, Lope de Vega. There is also a tradition that Cervantes reread some portions of his work to a select audience at the court of the Duke of Bejar, which may have helped in making the book known. ''Don Quixote, Part One'' remained in Cervantes' hands for some time before he could find a willing publisher. 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 was produced 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 1611.
In 1613, Cervantes published the ''Novelas Ejemplares'', dedicated to the Maecenas of the day, the Conde de Lemos. Eight and a half years after ''Part One'' had appeared, we get the first hint of a forthcoming ''Segunda Parte'' (Part Two). "You shall see shortly," Cervantes says, "the further exploits of Don Quixote and humours of Sancho Panza." ''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). Part two capitalizes on the potential of the first while developing and diversifying the material without sacrificing familiarity. Many people agree that it is richer and more profound. Parts One and Two were published as one edition in Barcelona in 1617. Historically, Cervantes's work has been said to have “smiled Spain’s chivalry away”, suggesting that Don Quixote as a chivalric satire contributed to the demise of Spanish Chivalry.
English 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, with the first French translation of 'Part II' appearing in 1618, and the first English translation in 1620. One abridged adaptation is authored by Agustín Sánchez, which runs slightly over 150 pages, cutting away about 750 pages.
Thomas Shelton's English translation of the ''First Part'' appeared in 1612. Shelton is a somewhat elusive figure: some claim Shelton was actually a friend of Cervantes, although there is no credible evidence to support this claim. Although Shelton's version is cherished by some, according to John Ormsby and Samuel Putnam, it was far from satisfactory as a carrying over of Cervantes's text. Shelton's translation of the novel's ''Second Part'' appeared in 1620.
Near the end of the 17th century, John Phillips, a nephew of poet John Milton, published what is considered by Putnam the worst English translated version. The translation, as literary critics claim, was not based on Cervantes' text but mostly upon a French work by Filleau de Saint-Martin and upon notes which Thomas Shelton had written previously. Around 1700, a version by Pierre Antoine Motteux appeared. Ormsby considered this version "worse than worthless". What future translator Samuel Putnam called "the prevailing slapstick quality of this work, especially where Sancho Panza is involved, the obtrusion of the obscene where it is found in the original, and the slurring of difficulties through omissions or expanding upon the text" all made the Motteux version irresponsible. In 1742, the Charles Jervas translation appeared, posthumously. Through a printer's error, it came to be known, and is still known, as "the Jarvis translation". The most scholarly and accurate English translation of the novel up to that time, it has been criticized by some as being too stiff. Nevertheless, it became the most frequently reprinted translation of the novel until about 1885. Another 18th century translation into English was that of Tobias Smollett, himself a novelist. Like the ''Jarvis'' translation, it continues to be reprinted today.
Most modern translators take as their model the 1885 translation by John Ormsby. It is said that his translation was the most honest of all translations, without expansions upon the text or changing of the proverbs.
In 1922, Arvid Paulson and Clayton Edwards published a now-forgotten expurgated children's version printed under the title ''The Story of Don Quixote'' which has nevertheless recently been published on Project Gutenberg. It retains as much of the text as it could while leaving out the risque sections as well as those chapters that young readers might consider dull, and embellishes a great deal on Cervantes's original text (the title page actually gives credit to the two translators as if they were the authors, and leaves out any mention of Cervantes).
The most widely read English-language translations of the mid-20th century are by Samuel Putnam (1949), J. M. Cohen (1950; Penguin Classics), and Walter Starkie (1957). The last English translation of the novel in the 20th century was by Burton Raffel, published in 1996. The 21st century has already seen two new translations of the novel into English—by John D. Rutherford and by Edith Grossman. One ''New York Times'' reviewer called Grossman's translation a "major literary achievement" and another called it the "most transparent and least impeded among more than a dozen English translations going back to the 17th century."
In 2005, the year of the novel's 400th anniversary, Tom Lathrop published a new edition of the novel, based on a lifetime of specialized study of the novel and its history. Lathrop's edition includes a slightly modernized Spanish text of Cervantes' work with English annotations.
Themes
The novel's structure is in episodic form. It is written in the
picaresco style of the late sixteenth century. The full title is indicative of the tale's object, as ''ingenioso'' (Spanish) means "to be quick with inventiveness". Although the novel is
farcical on the surface, the second half is more serious and philosophical about the theme of deception. ''Quixote'' has served as an important thematic source not only in literature but in much of 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, 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. As a military term, the word ''quijote'' refers to ''cuisses'', part of a full suit of plate armour protecting the thighs. The Spanish suffix ''-ote'' denotes the augmentative—for example, ''grande'' means large, but ''grandote'' means extra large. Following this example, ''Quixote'' would suggest 'The Great Quijano', a play on words that makes much sense in light of the character's delusions of grandeur.
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 adopted by 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 attacking imaginary enemies 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 do not wish to recall"): ("In a village of La Mancha, whose name I do not wish to recall, there lived, not very long ago, one of those gentlemen with a lance in the lance-rack, an ancient shield, a skinny old horse, and a fast greyhound.")
It stands in a unique position between medieval chivalric romance and the modern novel. The former consist of disconnected stories with little exploration of the inner life of even the main character. The latter are usually focused on the psychological evolution of their characters. In Part I, Quixote imposes himself on his environment. By Part II, people know about him through "having read his adventures," and so, he needs to do less to maintain his image. By his deathbed, he has regained his sanity, and is once more "Alonso Quixano the Good".
When it was first published, ''Don Quixote'' was usually interpreted as a comic novel. After the French Revolution it was popular in part due to its central ethic that individuals can be right while society is quite wrong and seen as disenchanting—not comic at all. In the 19th century it was seen as a social commentary, but no one could easily tell "whose side Cervantes was on." By the 20th century it had come to occupy a canonical space as one of the foundations of modern literature.
See also
''Alonso Fernández de Avellaneda'' — sequel to ''Don Quixote''
''Amadis de Gaula'' — precursor to ''Don Quixote''
António José da Silva — writer of ''Vida do Grande Dom Quixote de la Mancha e do Gordo Sancho Pança'' (1733)
''Belianis'' — precursor to ''Don Quixote''
List of ''Don Quixote'' characters
List of works influenced by ''Don Quixote'' — including a gallery of paintings and illustrations
The 100 Best Books of All Time
''Tirant lo Blanc'' — precursor to ''Don Quixote''
References and sources
Further reading
Bloom, Harold (Ed.) (2000) ''Cervantes's Don Quixote (Modern Critical Interpretations)''. Chelsea House Publishers ISBN 0791059227
D' Haen, Theo (Ed.) (2009) ''International Don Quixote''. Editions Rodopi B.V. ISBN 9042025832
Echevarría, Roberto González (Ed.) (2005) ''Cervantes' Don Quixote: a casebook'' Oxford University Press USA ISBN 0195169387
Duran, Manuel and Rogg, Fay R. (2006) "Fighting Windmills: Encounters with Don Quixote". Yale University Press ISBN 9780300110227
Johnson, Carroll B (Ed.) (2006) ''Don Quijote Across Four Centuries: 1605–2005''. Juan de la Cuesta-Hispanic Monographs ISBN 1588710882
Graf, E. C. (2007) ''Cervantes and Modernity: Four Essays on Don Quijote''. Bucknell University Press ISBN 0-8387-5655-7
External links
Don Quixote, Volume 1 (volunteer-read audiobook) from LibriVox at Internet Archive.
"One Master, Many Cervantes", by Ilan Stavans. A history of English translations. ''Humanities'', September/October 2008. Volume 29, Number 5. Accessed 2010-08-04
The full text of Don Quijote in the original Spanish.
Background information about Don Quijote and Cervantes
Category:Fictional characters introduced in 1605
Category:1605 novels
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Category:Fictional knights
Category:Metafictional works
Category:Literary archetypes by name
Category:Novels by Miguel de Cervantes
Category:Prison writings
Category:Psychological novels
Category:Satirical novels
Category:Self-reflexive novels
Category:Spanish literature
Category:Spanish books
Category:Spanish novels
Category:Spain in fiction
Category:Fictional Spanish people
Category:Picaresque novels
Category:Don Quixote characters
Category:1600s fantasy novels
ar:دون كيخوت
an:Don Quixot d'A Mancha
ast:El Quixote
gn:Don Quijote
az:Don Kixot
bn:ডন কিহোতে
zh-min-nan:Don Quixote
bo:ཐང་རྗི་ཁོཏ།
bs:Don Kihot
bg:Дон Кихот
ca:Don Quixot de La Manxa
cs:Důmyslný rytíř Don Quijote de la Mancha
cy:Don Quixote
da:Don Quijote
de:Don Quijote
el:Δον Κιχώτης
es:Don Quijote de la Mancha
eo:Kiĥoto
eu:Kixotea
fa:دن کیشوت
fr:Don Quichotte
ga:Don Quixote
gl:O enxeñoso fidalgo Don Quixote da Mancha
ko:돈 키호테
hr:Don Quijote
ia:Don Quixote de La Mancha
is:Don Kíkóti
it:Don Chisciotte della Mancia
he:דון קישוט
ka:დონ კიხოტი
ku:Don Kîşot
la:El ingenioso hidalgo don Quijote de la Mancha
lv:Dons Kihots
lt:Don Kichotas
hu:Don Quijote
mk:Дон Кихот
ms:Don Quixote
mwl:Don Quixote
nah:El Ingenioso Hidalgo Don Quixote de la Mancha
nl:Don Quichot (boek)
ja:ドン・キホーテ
no:Don Quijote
oc:Don Quichòte
nds:Don Quijote
pl:Don Kichot (powieść)
pt:Dom Quixote
ro:Don Quijote
qu:Don Quijote
ru:Хитроумный идальго Дон Кихот Ламанчский
scn:Don Chisciotti
simple:Don Quixote
sk:Dômyselný rytier Don Quijote de la Mancha
sl:Don Kihot
sr:Дон Кихот
sh:Don Quixote
fi:Don Quijote
sv:Don Quijote
tl:Don Quixote
ta:டான் குய்க்ஸோட்
th:ดอนกิโฆเต้
tr:Don Kişot
uk:Дон Кіхот
vi:Đôn Kihôtê
fiu-vro:Don Quijote
zh:堂吉诃德