Perspectivism is the philosophical view developed by Friedrich Nietzsche that all ideations take place from particular perspectives. This means that there are many possible conceptual schemes, or perspectives in which judgment of truth or value can be made. This is often taken to imply that no way of seeing the world can be taken as definitively "true", but does not necessarily entail that all perspectives are equally valid.

View[link]

Perspectivism rejects objective metaphysics as impossible, claiming that no evaluation of objectivity can transcend cultural formations or subjective designations. Therefore, there are no objective facts, nor any knowledge of a thing-in-itself. Truth is separated from any particular vantage point, and so there are no ethical or epistemological absolutes.^[1] Rules (i.e., those of philosophy, the scientific method, etc.) are constantly reassessed according to the circumstances of individual perspectives.^[2] "Truth" is thus created by integrating different vantage points together.

People always adopt perspectives by default – whether they are aware of it or not – and the concepts of one's existence are defined by the circumstances surrounding that individual. Truth is made by and for individuals and peoples.^[3] This view differs from many types of relativism which consider the truth of a particular proposition as something that altogether cannot be evaluated with respect to an "absolute truth",^{[citation needed]} without taking into consideration culture and context.

This view is outlined in an aphorism from Nietzsche's posthumously-assembled collection The Will to Power:

In so far as the word “knowledge” has any meaning, the world is knowable; but it is interpretable otherwise, it has no meaning behind it, but countless meanings.—"Perspectivism."

It is our needs that interpret the world; our drives and their For and Against.[emphasis added] Every drive is a kind of lust to rule; each one has its perspective that it would like to compel all the other drives to accept as a norm.

— Friedrich Nietzsche; trans. Walter Kaufmann , The Will to Power, §481 (1883-1888)

Interpretation[link]

Richard Schacht, in his interpretation of Nietzsche's thought, argues that this can be expanded into a revised form of "objectivity" in relation to "subjectivity" as an aggregate of singular viewpoints that illuminate, for example, a particular idea in seemingly self-contradictory ways but upon closer inspection would reveal a difference of contextuality and of rule by which such an idea (e.g., that is fundamentally perspectival) can be validated. Therefore, it can be said each perspective is subsumed into and, taking account of its individuated context, adds to the overall objective measure of a proposition under examination. Nevertheless, perspectivism does not implicate any method of inquiry nor a structural theory of knowledge in general.^[4]

Related topics[link]

Thinking portal

• Truth is Subjectivity, a concept on subjectivity by Søren Kierkegaard
• Philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche
• Conceptual framework
• Empathy
• Fallibilism
• Anekantavada, a fundamental doctrine of Jainism setting forth a pluralistic metaphysics
• Rhizome (philosophy)
• Value pluralism
• Metaphilosophy
• Moral nihilism
• Moral skepticism
• Multiperspectivalism, a current in Calvinist epistemology
• Consilience, the unity of knowledge
• Intersubjectivity
• Constructivist epistemology

References[link]

External links[link]

• La Voluntad de ilusión en Nietzsche; bases del perspectivismo| in Konvergencias

v t e Friedrich Nietzsche Works The Birth of Tragedy Philosophy in the Tragic Age of the Greeks On Truth and Lies in a Nonmoral Sense Untimely Meditations Hymnus an das Leben Human, All Too Human The Dawn The Gay Science Thus Spoke Zarathustra Beyond Good and Evil On the Genealogy of Morality The Case of Wagner Twilight of the Idols The Antichrist Ecce Homo Nietzsche contra Wagner The Will to Power (posthumous) Concepts Amor fati Apollonian and Dionysian Eternal return Free will God is dead Herd instinct Last man Master-slave morality Nietzschean affirmation Perspectivism Ressentiment Transvaluation of values Tschandala Übermensch Will to power World riddle Related articles Works about Nietzsche Influence and reception of Nietzsche Anarchism and Nietzsche Nietzsche-Archiv Nietzsche-Haus, Naumburg Nietzsche-Haus, Sils-Maria Nietzsche Music Project Relationship with Max Stirner My Sister and I

Rick Roderick (1949–2002) was an American professor of philosophy, best known for his lectures for The Teaching Company.

Life[link]

Roderick was born in Abilene, Texas, son of (by his own description^[1]) a "con-man" and a "beautician". He was a teacher of philosophy at several universities, where he was much revered by many students for a socratic style of teaching combined with a brash and often humorous approach. His breakthrough into wider circles came with his engagement with The Teaching Company where he recorded several memorable lecture series. Rick Roderick died in 2002 from a congestive heart condition.

Academic career[link]

Roderick first studied communication (self-admittedly in order to focus on anti-establishment student and anti-war activities^[2]), but moved after a few years towards philosophy. He received his B.A. at the University of Texas at Austin, did post-graduate work at Baylor University and finally earned his Ph.D. at the University of Texas.

Since 1977, Professor Roderick taught at Baylor University, the University of Texas, Duke University and National University in Los Angeles. He was the recipient of the Oldright Fellowship at the University of Texas and served as associate editor to The Pawn Review and Current Perspectives in Social Theory. Dr. Roderick was the editor of the Baylor Philosophy Journal and a member of the Phi Sigma Tau National Honor Society of Philosophy. He presented more than 25 papers, and published 13 reviews and literary criticisms, as well as numerous articles in professional journals.

Roderick was the author of the book Habermas and the Foundations of Critical Theory (1986), which has been translated to German as: Habermas und das Problem der Rationalität. Eine Werkmonographie (1989).

Selected publications[link]

• 1986, Habermas and the foundations of critical theory, Macmillan, 194 pages. ISBN 0-333-39655-3
• 1986, Rick Roderick - Reading Derrida Politically (Contra Rorty), PRAXIS International, issue: 4 / 1986

The Teaching Company series[link]

• "Philosophy and Human Values", 1990
• "Nietzsche and the Post-Modern Condition", 1991
• "Self Under Siege - Philosophy in the 20th Century", 1993
• "Mill on Liberty", guest lecture from "The Great Minds of Western Intellectual Tradition" (1st ed), Part IV, Philosophy in the Epoch of Ideology, 2000

See also[link]

• American philosophy
• List of American philosophers

References[link]

External links[link]

• http://rickroderick.org - Video clips and transcripts
• Download Rick Roderick lecture series in video and audio format
• What happened to Rick Roderick?: The Bill Hicks of Philosophy – lectures and other material can be found here
• Rick Roderick's page at The Teaching Company

Werner Josef Krieglstein, Ph.D. (October 31, 1941), a Fulbright Scholar and University of Chicago fellow,^[1] is an award winning^[2] and internationally recognized scholar, director and actor. Krieglstein is the founder of a neo-Nietzschean philosophical school called Transcendental Perspectivism. Krieglstein's "philosophy of compassion"^[3] has been the subject of symposium lectures at many prominent conferences including the UNESCO section of the World Congress of Philosophy conference in Seoul Korea (August, 2008),^[4] the ISAIL "Fields of Conflict-Fields of Wisdom": 4th International Congress in Wuerzburg, Germany (May, 2008),^[5] the meeting of the American Philosophical Association in Washington D.C. (Symposium Chair: Sept. 2006),^[6] and the ISUD Fourth World Conference of the International Society for Universal Dialogue (Summer, 2001),^[1] among many others.

Career[link]

Academic background[link]

Krieglstein was born in Pilsen, Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia, which is now known as Plzeň, Czechoslovakia, but he grew up just outside of Frankfurt, Germany.^[7] In the Sixties, Krieglstein was a student at the Frankfurt School in Germany with Theodor W. Adorno. In his first book, Krieglstein credits the roots of his passion for the transformative aspects of philosophy to the tutelage of Adorno. As a German Jew, Adorno boldly returned to Germany almost immediately after WWII ended with the goal of challenging the indoctrination many university students had received in Hitler's youth education programs.^[8] Before moving to the United States, Krieglstein also studied at the Free University of Berlin.^[2] Following his studies in Germany, Krieglstein pursued his doctorate at the University of Chicago as a Fulbright Scholar and University Fellow.^[1]

Krieglstein has held teaching positions at the University of Helsinki, Finland, and Western Michigan University in Kalamazoo. He currently is professor emeritus of philosophy and religious studies at the College of DuPage, where he was awarded the Most Outstanding Teacher Award in 2003^[2] and the Distinguished Regional Humanities Educator Award^[2] from the Community College Humanities Association in 2008. In addition to his role as professor, Krieglstein is a course director at the Interuniversity Center in Dubrovnik, Croatia,^[9] and a board member of the International Society for Universal Dialogue.^[10] His philosophy of compassion is also finding an audience within the education reform movement, with symposium lectures at AEPL "Reclaiming the Wisdom Tradition for Education" conference in Northern California (May, 2008),^[11] the NISOD International Conference on Teaching and Leadership Excellence in Austin, TX (May, 2007),^[12] and the CCHA Creating Communities Conference hosted by the University of Chicago (Nov, 2006).^[13]

Actor and director[link]

While at the Johann Wolfgang Goethe University Frankfurt am Main, Krieglstein rose to prominence in theater when he was appointed as director of the avant-garde theater, Die Neue Bühne, at the Goethe University. While writing for the theater's paper, he interviewed members of the Living Theater including Jerzy Grotowski, and was fortunate enough to study mime under Marceau student Jeanne Winkler.^[5] An ISAIL bio notes that "his black light production of Kafka's Metamorphosis was performed over two hundred times at both European and American festivals."^[5] After emigrating to the US and while teaching at Western Michigan University in 1976, he founded and directed a small rural theater company in Lawrence, Michigan known as the Whole Arts Theater, which later moved to Kalamazoo.^[14] More recently, Krieglstein has shifted his acting focus to film. In the past few years, he has worked on several independent films including 'Urban Ground Squirrels' by Wiggle Puppy Productions, Chicago (Mark Krieglstein, 2002)^[15] and the internationally^{[16][17][18][19]} known 'Light Denied' by Delos Films, Warsaw (Paweł Kuczyński, 2008),^[20] along with a few smaller films.

Personal life[link]

Krieglstein is married to Maryann Krieglstein,^[21] also a professor at COD. After attaining his PhD, the two lived in a few places around the world including Finland and Morocco before settling down on an organic farm in Lawrence, Michigan. While farming, he continued to teach and pursue acting in nearby Kalamazoo.^[8] In 1990, Krieglstein moved with his family to Glen Ellyn, Illinois, home to the College of DuPage where he would begin his almost 20 year professorship. Together, Maryann and Werner have five sons and one grandson:^[22] Robin (07/01/71), married to Suruchi have a son named Milan (03/14/09); Mark (02/25/75); Daniel (03/31/79), married to Andrea Trocchio; Tomas (12/05/80), married to Annie Colbert; and Michael (09/02/84).

Philosophy[link]

Transcendental Perspectivism is a hybrid philosophy blending Friedrich Nietzsche's Perspectivism and the utopian ideals of the Transcendentalism movement. Transcendental Perspectivism challenges Nietzsche's claim that there is no absolute truths while fully accepting his observation that all truth can only be known in the context of ones perception. This is accomplished through an appreciation of the emotional relationship between two perceptions (the "perceiver" and the "other"). In the simplest of terms, a transcendental truth can only be known when two individuals come to agree on the truth by either force or cooperation, thus working together to build a shared reality.

Awards and academic achievements[link]

Publications[link]

• Krieglstein, Werner (1992). The Dice-Playing God. University of Michigan: University Press of America. ISBN 978-0-8191-8092-6. http://books.google.com/books?id=6iGDAAAACAAJ&dq=Werner+Krieglstein. Retrieved 11-07-09. 
• Krieglstein, Werner (2002). Compassion, A New Philosophy of the Other. Amsterdam: Rodopi. ISBN 978-90-420-0903-5. http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&id=RCuxPCV5sAYC&dq=Werner+Krieglstein&printsec=frontcover&source=web&ots=FIwen8Hr4Q&sig=-WpbC7T8jVEIinz5l9ckD9pMEdM&sa=X&oi=book_result&resnum=7&ct=result#v=onepage&q=&f=false. Retrieved 11-07-09. 
• Krieglstein, Werner (2006). Compassionate Thinking, An Introduction to Philosophy. Dubuque, IA.: Kendall Hunt Pub. Co.. ISBN 978-0-7575-3141-5. http://compassionatethinking.com/index.htm. Retrieved 11-07-09. 
• Krieglstein, Werner (2007). "Toward a Naturalistic Foundation of Community: How Science Can Solve the Spiritual Crisis?". In Ott, Michael R.. The Future of Religion: Toward a Reconciled Society. Leiden, The Netherlands: Koninklijke Brill NV. pp. 343–364. ISBN 978-90-04-16014-9. http://books.google.com/books?id=wo3VzZOmzHwC&pg=PA343&dq=Toward+a+Naturalistic+Foundation+of+Community:+How+Science+Can+Solve+the+Spiritual+Crisis%3F#v=onepage&q=Toward%20a%20Naturalistic%20Foundation%20of%20Community%3A%20How%20Science%20Can%20Solve%20the%20Spiritual%20Crisis%3F&f=false. Retrieved 11-07-09. 

See also[link]

• American philosophy
• List of American philosophers

References[link]

External links[link]

• Transcendental Perspectivism: The Third Enlightenment 'Home Page'
• Transcendental Perspectivism on MySpace
• Faculty page and class list
• Light Denied - Trailer
• Krieglstein's video lecture on the "Meaning of Life" (Italy, 2004)
• Krieglstein's video lecture on "action and reflection"
• Krieglstein in Chinese (conference paper)

Don Quixote
Title page of first edition (1605)
Author(s)	Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
Original title	El ingenioso hidalgo don Quixote De la Mancha
Country	Spain
Language	Spanish
Genre(s)	Picaresco, satire, parody, farce
Publisher	Juan de la Cuesta
Publication date	1605 (Part One) 1615 (Part Two)
Published in English	1612 (Part One) 1620 (Part Two)
Media type	Print
Dewey Decimal	863
LC Classification	PQ6323

Don Quixote ( /ˌdɒn kiːˈhoʊtiː/; Spanish: [ˈdoŋ kiˈxote] ( listen)), fully titled The Ingenious Gentleman Don Quixote of La Mancha (Spanish: El ingenioso hidalgo don Quixote de la Mancha), is a novel written by Miguel de Cervantes. The novel follows the adventures of Alonso Quijano, who reads too many chivalric novels, and sets out to revive chivalry under the name of Don Quixote. He recruits a simple farmer, Sancho Panza, as his squire, who frequently deals with Don Quixote's rhetorical orations on antiquated knighthood with a unique Earthy wit. He is met by the world as it is, initiating themes like Intertextuality, Realism, Metatheatre and Literary Representation.

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 and the entire 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".

Plot[link]

Part 1[link]

The First Sally

Alonso Quijano, the protagonist of the novel, is a retired directioner nearing fifty years of age, living in an unnamed section of La Mancha with his niece and housekeeper. While mostly a rational man of sound reason, his reading of books of chivalry in excess has had a profound effect on him, leading to the distortion of his perception and the wavering of his mental faculties. In essence, he believes every word of these books of chivalry to be true though, for the most part, the content of these books is clearly fiction. Otherwise, his wits, in regards to everything other than chivalry, are intact. He decides to go out as a knight-errant in search of adventure. He dons an old suit of armour, renames himself "Don Quixote de la Mancha," and names his skinny horse "Rocinante". He designates a neighboring farm girl 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, whom 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 to be rid of him, and sends him on his way. Don Quixote next "frees" a young boy who is tied to a tree and beaten by his master by making his master swear on the chivalric code treat the boy fairly. The boy's beating is continued 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.

The Second Sally

While Don Quixote is unconscious in his bed, 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. After a short period of feigning health, Don Quixote approaches his 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. The two next encounter a group of friars accompanying a lady in a carriage. They are heavily cloaked, as is the lady, to protect themselves from the hot climate and dust on the road. Don Quixote takes the friars to be enchanters who hold the lady captive. He knocks a friar from his horse, and is immediately challenged by an armed Basque travelling with the company. As he has no shield, the Basque uses a pillow to protect himself, which saves him when Don Quixote strikes him. The combat ends with the lady leaving her carriage and demanding those travel with her to "surrender".

The Pastoral Wanderings

Sancho and Don Quixote go on, and fall in with a group of goatherds. Don Quixote tells Sancho and the goatherds about the "Golden Age" of man, reminiscent of both Ovid and the later Rousseau in which property does not exist, and men live in peace. The goatherds invite the Knight and Sancho to the funeral of Grisóstomo, once a student who left his studies to become a shepherd after reading Pastoral novels, seeking the shepherdess Marcela. At the funeral Marcela appears, delivering a long speech vindicating herself from the bitter verses written about her by Grisóstomo, claiming her own autonomy and freedom from expectations put on her by Pastoral clichés. She disappears into the woods, and Don Quixote and Sancho follow. Ultimately giving up, the two stop and dismount by a pond to rest. Some Galicians arrive to water their ponies, and Rocinante attempts to mate with them. The Galicians hit Rocinante with clubs to dissuade him, which Don Quixote takes as a threat and runs to defend Rocinante. The Galicians beat Don Quixote and Sancho leaving them in great pain.

The Adventures with Cardenio and Dorotea

After leaving the prisoners, The Knight and Sancho wander into the Sierra Morena, and there encounter the dejected Cardenio. Cardenio relates the first part of his story, in which he falls deeply in love with his childhood friend Luscinda, and is hired as the companion to the Duke's son, leading to his friendship with the Duke's younger son, Don Fernando. Cardenio confides in Don Fernando his love for Luscinda and the delays in their engagement, caused by Cardenio's desire to keep with tradition. After reading Cardenio's poems praising Luscinda, Don Fernando falls in love with her. Don Quixote interrupts when Cardenio suggests that his beloved may have become unfaithful after the formulaic stories of spurned lovers in Chivalric novels.

Don Quixote de la Mancha and Sancho Panza, 1863, by Gustave Doré

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 2[link]

The Third Sally

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, a Duke and Duchess, and others, deceive Don Quixote for entertainment, setting forth a string of imagined adventures resulting in a series of practical jokes that put Don Quixote's sense of chivalry and his devotion to Dulcinea through many 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 a surplus of three thousand lashes. Sancho naturally resists this course of action, leading to friction with his master. Under the duke's patronage, Sancho eventually gets a governorship, though it be false, and proves to be a wise and practical ruler; though this, too, ends in humiliation.

Near the end, Don Quixote reluctantly sways towards sanity: an inn is just an inn, not a castle.

The lengthy untold "history" of Don Quixote's adventures in knight-errantry comes to a close after his battle with the Knight of the White Moon, in which we the readers find him conquered. Bound by the rules of chivalry, Don Quixote submits to prearranged terms that the vanquished is to obey the will of the conqueror, which in this case, is that Don Quixote is to lay down his arms and cease his acts of chivalry for the period of one year (a duration in which he may be cured of his madness). Defeated and dejected, he and Sancho start their journey home.

Part Two of Don Quixote is often regarded as the birth of modern literature, as it explores the concept of a character understanding that he is being written about. This is a theme much explored in writings of the 20th Century.

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, for that is his true name, 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.

Themes[link]

Don Quixote by Honoré Daumier (1868)

The novel's structure is in episodic form. It is written in the picaresco style of the late sixteenth century, and features reference other picaresque novels including Lazarillo de Tormes and The Golden Ass. The full title is indicative of the tale's object, as ingenioso (Spanish) means "quick with inventiveness".^[1] marking the transition of modern literature from Dramatic to thematic unity. The novel takes place over a long period of time, including many adventures all united by common themes of the nature of reality, reading, and dialogue in general.

Although the novel is farcical on the surface, the novel, especially in its 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.

From shepherds to tavern-owners and inn-keepers, the characterization 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.

It stands in a unique position between medieval chivalric romance and the modern novel. The former consist of disconnected stories featuring the same characters and settings 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." Many critics came to view the work as a tragedy in which Don Quixote's innate idealism and nobility are viewed by the world as insane, and are defeated and rendered useless by common reality. By the 20th century the novel had come to occupy a canonical space as one of the foundations of modern literature.

Background[link]

Sources[link]

Sources for Don Quixote include the Castillian novel Amadis de Gaula, which had enjoyed great popularity throughout the 16th century. Another prominent source, which Cervantes evidently admires more, is Tirant lo Blanch which the priest 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.^[2] 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.^[3]

Another important source 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.^[4] Similarly, many of both Sancho's adventures in Part II and proverbs throughout are taken from popular Spanish and Italian folklore.

[edit] Spurious Second Part by Avellaneda

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 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.^[5] 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".^[6]

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 ^[7] 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[link]

Don Quixote, his horse Rocinante and his squire Sancho Panza after an unsuccessful attack on a windmill. By Gustave Doré

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.^[8]

Style[link]

Spelling and pronunciation[link]

Cervantes wrote his work in a form of Old Castilian or Ladino, a Sephardic Jewish language derived from Hebrew and Aramaic and that became the medieval form of the Spanish language. The language of Don Quixote, although still containing archaisms, is far more understandable to modern Spanish readers than is, for instance, the completely medieval Spanish of the Poema de mio Cid, a kind of Spanish that is as different from Cervantes's language as Middle English is from Modern English. The Old Castilian language was also used to show the higher class that came with being a knight errant.

In Old Castilian the letter x represented the sound written with sh in modern English, so the name was originally pronounced "ki-SHOT-eh "[kiˈʃote]. However as Old Castilian became modern Spanish, the pronunciation of the sh sound changed, and came to be pronounced with a voiceless velar fricative sound like the Scottish or German ch and today the Spanish pronunciation of "Quixote" is ki-HO-teh [kiˈxote]. The original pronunciation is reflected in languages such as Astur-Leonese, Galician, Catalan, French, Italian and Portuguese that pronounce it with a "sh" or "ch" sound.

Today English speakers generally attempt something close to the modern Spanish pronunciation when saying Quixote (Quijote), as [dɒŋ kiːˈhoʊteɪ], although the traditional English spelling pronunciation pronouncing the name with the value of the letter x in modern English is still sometimes used, resulting in /ˈkwɪksət/ or /ˈkwɪksoʊt/. The traditional English rendering is preserved in the pronunciation of the adjectival form quixotic, i.e., /kwɪkˈsoʊtɨk/ or /kwɪkˈsɒtɪk/, the foolishly impractical pursuit of ideals, typically marked with rash and lofty romantic ideals.^[9]

Setting[link]

Cervantes' story takes place on the plains of La Mancha, specifically the comarca of Campo de Montiel.

In a village of La Mancha, the name of which I have no desire to call to mind, there lived not long since one of those gentlemen that keep a lance in the lance-rack, an old buckler, a lean hack, and a greyhound for coursing.

—Miguel de Cervantes, Don Quixote, Volume I, Chapter I

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:

Such was the end of the Ingenious Gentlemen of La Mancha, whose village Cide Hamete would not indicate precisely, in order to leave all the towns and villages of La Mancha to contend among themselves for the right to adopt him and claim him as a son, as the seven cities of Greece contended for Homer.

—Miguel de Cervantes, Don Quixote, Volume II, Chapter 74

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.^[10] 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'".^[11][12]

Language[link]

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 "de cuyo nombre no quiero acordarme" ("whose name I do not wish to recall"): "En un lugar de la Mancha, de cuyo nombre no quiero acordarme, no hace mucho tiempo que vivía un hidalgo de los de lanza en astillero, adarga antigua, rocín flaco y galgo corredor." ("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.")

The novel's farcical elements make 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^[13] (a reversal) and Dulcinea (an allusion to illusion), and the word quixote itself, possibly a pun on quijada (jaw) but certainly cuixot (Catalan: thighs), a reference to a horse's rump.^[14] 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. La Mancha is a region of Spain, but mancha (Spanish word) means spot, mark, stain, region and word are not etymologically related (from Arab origin the former, from Latin macula the latter), so "de La Mancha" (lit. both Stained Quixote and Quixote from La Mancha) is a hilarious name for a spotless knight.

Publication[link]

Bronze statues of Don Quixote and Sancho Panza, at the Plaza de España in Madrid

In July 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.^[15][16] 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.^[17] 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.^[17]

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.^[18] 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.^[16] In total, the novel is believed to have sold more than 10 million copies worldwide.^[19]

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."^[20] 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.^[21]

English editions in translation[link]

Don Quixote goes mad from his reading of books of chivalry. Engraving by Gustave Doré.

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.^{[22][dead link]}

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.^[18] 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).^[23]

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 three new translations of the novel into English. The first is by John D. Rutherford and the second by Edith Grossman. Reviewing the novel in the New York Times, Carlos Fuentes called Grossman's translation a "major literary achievement"^[24] and another called it the "most transparent and least impeded among more than a dozen English translations going back to the 17th century."^[25] In 2005, the year of the novel's 400th anniversary, Tom Lathrop published a new English translation of the novel, based on a lifetime of specialized study of the novel and its history.^[26]

See also[link]

	Novels portal
	Spain portal

• Alonso Fernández de Avellaneda – author of a spurious sequel to Don Quixote, which in turn is referenced in the actual sequel
• List of best-selling books
• 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 – one of the chivalric novels frequently referenced by Don Quixote
• Amadis de Gaula – one of the chivalric novels found in the library of Don Quixote
• António José da Silva – writer of Vida do Grande Dom Quixote de la Mancha e do Gordo Sancho Pança (1733)
• Belianis – one of the chivalric novels found in the library of Don Quixote
• coco - In the last chapter, the epitaph of Don Quijote identifies him as el coco

References and sources[link]

Further reading[link]

• Bloom, Harold (Ed.) (2000) Cervantes's Don Quixote (Modern Critical Interpretations). Chelsea House Publishers ISBN 0-7910-5922-7
• D' Haen, Theo (Ed.) (2009) International Don Quixote. Editions Rodopi B.V. ISBN 90-420-2583-2
• Echevarría, Roberto González (Ed.) (2005) Cervantes' Don Quixote: a casebook Oxford University Press USA ISBN 0-19-516938-7
• Duran, Manuel and Rogg, Fay R. (2006) "Fighting Windmills: Encounters with Don Quixote". Yale University Press ISBN 978-0-300-11022-7
• Johnson, Carroll B (Ed.) (2006) Don Quijote Across Four Centuries: 1605–2005. Juan de la Cuesta-Hispanic Monographs ISBN 1-58871-088-2
• Graf, E. C. (2007) Cervantes and Modernity: Four Essays on Don Quijote. Bucknell University Press ISBN 0-8387-5655-7

External links[link]

Find more about Don Quixote on Wikipedia's sister projects:
	Definitions and translations from Wiktionary
	Images and media from Commons
	Quotations from Wikiquote
	Source texts from Wikisource

• Don Quixote on In Our Time at the BBC. (listen now)
• 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
• Works by Cervantes at Project Gutenberg
• The full text of Don Quijote in the original Spanish.
• Background information about Don Quijote and Cervantes

Felice Varini is a Swiss artist who was nominated for the 2000/2001 Marcel Duchamp Prize, known for his geometric perspective-localized paintings of rooms and other spaces, using projector-stencil techniques. According to mathematics professor and art critic Joël Koskas, "A work of Varini is an anti-Mona Lisa."

5 Open Ellipses. Urban painting of Felice Varini, in Metz, 2009.

Felice paints on architectural and urban spaces, such as buildings, walls and streets. The paintings are characterized by one vantage point from which the viewer can see the complete painting (usually a simple geometric shape such as circle, square, line), while from other view points the viewer will see ‘broken’ fragmented shapes. Varini argues that the work exists as a whole - with its complete shape as well as the fragments. “My concern,” he says “is what happens outside the vantage point of view.”^[1]

He was born in 1952 in Locarno, Switzerland and lives in Paris.

References[link]

External links[link]

• Home page (French)

• Artist's rationale (English)

• Interview and images (English)
• Critique by Joël Koskas (French; translate to English)
• Selection of perspective space paintings
• Felice Varini Year-By-Year: short chronology of works (English)

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