Don Quixote

:This page is about the fictional character. For the spacecraft, see Don Quijote (space mission).

Importance

Don Quixote is often nominated as the best work of fiction ever. It stands in a unique position between medieval chivalric romance and the modern novel. The former were mostly disconnected stories with little exploration of the inner life of even the main character. The latter, of course, is focused almost always on the psychological evolution of a single character. In Part I, Quixote imposes himself on his environment. By Part II, he is no longer physically capable, but people know about him, "having read his adventures", and so, he needs to do less to maintain his image. By his deathbed, he has begun to assume a new identity, including a nickname, "the Good".

Related Topics:
Chivalric romance - Modern novel

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There are many minor literary "firsts" for European literature—a woman complaining of her menopause, someone with an eating disorder, and the psychological revealing of their troubles as something inner to themselves.

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Subtle touches regarding perspective are everywhere: characters talk about a woman who is the cause of the death of a suitor, portraying her as evil, but when she comes on stage, she gives a different perspective entirely that makes Quixote (and thus the reader) defend her. A grand discourse on beauty and its relation to truth follows. When Quixote descends into a cave, Cervantes admits he does not know what went on there.

Related Topics:
Beauty - Truth

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Like his contemporaries, Cervantes believed that literature had to contain moral messages, but, he disliked preaching in works of comic entertainment. His solution was to include almost all the moral advice of the age, but to place it in Quixote's voice, an idiosyncratic and immobile character, whose solutions most often go wrong. For instance when he frees a gang of galley slaves, who have proclaimed their innocence, by attacking their guards, then demands that they pay homage to Dulcinea, they pelt him with stones and leave. Accordingly, it is quite easy to read literally anything as the moral message.

Related Topics:
Immobile - Galley slave

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Different ages have tended to read different things into the novel. When it first came out, it 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 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 became clear that it was not simply a unique and great moral work, but the first true modern novel, a systemical and structural masterpiece.

Related Topics:
Comic novel - French Revolution - 19th century - 20th century

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Following the Cuban revolution, the revolutionary government founded a publishing house called Instituto Cubano del Libro (Cuban Book Institute), to publish large runs of great literature for distribution at low prices to the masses. The first book published by the Instituto was Don Quixote.

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For the 400th anniversary of the original publication of the novel, the Venezuelan government printed one million copies to be freely distributed. Similar initiatives took place in Spain and other Spanish-speaking countries around the world.

Related Topics:
Venezuelan - Spain

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