Don Quixote

Don Quixote (/ˌdɒn kiːˈhoʊti/^[1] Spanish: [doŋ kiˈxote] ( listen), fully titled The Ingenious Nobleman Mister Quixote of La Mancha (Spanish: El ingenioso hidalgo don Quixote de la Mancha [el iŋxeˈnjoso iˈðalɣo ðoŋ kiˈxote ðe la ˈmantʃa]), is a Spanish novel by Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra. Published in two volumes, 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, such as the Bokklubben World Library collection that cites Don Quixote as authors' choice for the "best literary work ever written".

The story follows the adventures of a hidalgo named Mr. Alonso Quixano who reads so many chivalric romances that he loses his sanity and decides to set out to revive chivalry, undo wrongs, and bring justice to the world, under the nameDon Quixote de la Mancha. He recruits a simple farmer, Sancho Panza, as his squire, who often employs a unique, earthy wit in dealing with Don Quixote's rhetorical orations on antiquated knighthood. Don Quixote, in the first part of the book, does not see the world for what it is and prefers to imagine that he is living out a knightly story. Throughout the novel, Cervantes uses such literary techniques as realism, metatheatre, and intertextuality. It had a major influence on the literary community, as evidenced by direct references in Alexandre Dumas' The Three Musketeers (1844), Mark Twain's Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884), and Edmond Rostand's Cyrano de Bergerac (1897), as well as the word "quixotic" and the epithet "Lothario". Arthur Schopenhauer cited Don Quixote as one of the four greatest novels ever written, along with Tristram Shandy, La Nouvelle Héloïse, and Wilhelm Meister.

Summary[edit]

Don Quijote (Don Quixote) Illustration by Gustave Doré, depicting the famous windmill scene.

Cervantes wrote that the first chapters were taken from "The Archive of La Mancha", and the rest were translated from Arabic by the Moorish author Cide Hamete Benengeli. This metafictional trick appears to give a greater credibility to the text, implying that Don Quixote is a real character and that the story truly occurred several decades back. However, it was also common practice in that era for fictional works to make some pretense of being factual, such as the common opening line of fairy tales "Once upon a time in a land far away..."

Part 1

The First Sally (Chapters 1–5)

Alonso Quixano, the protagonist of the novel (though he is not given this name until much later in the book), is a Hidalgo (member of the lesser Spanish nobility), nearing 50 years of age, living in an unnamed section of La Mancha with his niece and housekeeper, as well as a boy who is never heard of again after the first chapter. Although Quixano is usually a rational man, in keeping with the humoral theory of the time, not sleeping adequately — because he was reading — has caused his brain to dry; Quixano's temperament is thus choleric, the hot and dry humor. As a result, he is easily given to anger and believes every word of these fictional books of chivalry to be true.

Imitating the protagonists of these books, he decides to become a knight-errant in search of adventure. To these ends, he dons an old suit of armour, renames himself "Don Quixote", names his exhausted horse "Rocinante", and designates Aldonza Lorenzo, a neighboring farm girl, as his lady love, renaming her Dulcinea del Toboso, while she knows nothing of this. Expecting to become famous quickly, he arrives at an inn, which he believes to be a castle; calls the prostitutes he meets "ladies" (doncellas); and asks the innkeeper, whom he takes as the lord of the castle, to dub him a knight. He spends the night holding vigil over his armor and becomes involved in a fight with muleteers who try to remove his armor from the horse trough so that they can water their mules. In a pretended ceremony, the innkeeper dubs him a knight to be rid of him and sends him on his way.

Don Quixote next "frees" a young boy tied to a tree and beaten by his master, and makes his master swear to treat the boy fairly; but the boy's beating is continued as soon as Quixote leaves. Don Quixote then encounters traders from Toledo, who "insult" the imaginary Dulcinea. He attacks them, only to be severely beaten and left on the side of the road, and returned to his home by a neighbouring peasant.

The Second Sally

After a short period of feigning health, Don Quixote requests his neighbour, Sancho Panza, to be his squire, promising him a petty governorship (ínsula). Sancho, who is both greedy and unintelligent, agrees to the offer and sneaks away with Don Quixote in the early dawn. It is here that their 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. Don Quixote takes the friars to be enchanters who hold the lady captive, knocks a friar from his horse, and is immediately challenged by an armed Basque traveling with the company. As he has no shield, the Basque uses a pillow to protect himself, which saves him when Don Quixote strikes him. Cervantes chooses this point, in the middle of the battle, to say that his source ends here. Soon, however, he resumes Don Quixote's adventures after a story about finding Arabic notebooks containing the rest of the story by Cid Hamet Ben Engeli. The combat ends with the lady leaving her carriage and commanding those traveling with her to "surrender" to Don Quixote.

Part 2

The Third Sally

Although the two parts are now 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 story. Cervantes's meta-fictional device was to make even the characters in the story familiar with the publication of Part One, as well as with an actually published, fraudulent Part Two. When strangers encounter the duo in person, they already know their famous history. 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. Some of them put Don Quixote's sense of chivalry and his devotion to Dulcinea through many tests. Pressed into finding Dulcinea, Sancho brings back three 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 (reversing some incidents of Part One) 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 friction with his master. Under the Duke's patronage, Sancho eventually gets a governorship, though it is false; and he proves to be a wise and practical ruler; though this ends in humiliation as well. Near the end, Don Quixote reluctantly sways towards sanity.

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 (a young man from Don Quixote's hometown who had previously posed as the Knight of Mirrors) on the beach in Barcelona, in which the reader finds 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: here, it is that Don Quixote is to lay down his arms and cease his acts of chivalry for the period of one year (in which he may be cured of his madness).

Upon returning to his village, Don Quixote announces his plan to retire to the countryside as a shepherd, but his housekeeper urges him to stay at home. Soon after, he retires to his bed with a deathly illness, and later awakes from a dream, having fully recovered his sanity. Sancho tries to restore his faith, but Quixano (his proper name) only renounces his previous ambition and apologizes 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.

Part Two of Don Quixote explores the concept of a character understanding that he is written about: an idea much explored in the 20th century.