Don Quixote

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

Literary Influence

Influences for Don Quixote include the Valencian novel Tirant lo Blanc, 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.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

The novel's landmark status in literary history has afforded it a vast and nearly innumerable legacy of influence. To just enumerate a few examples:

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

• Cardenio, a lost play by Cervantes's contemporary William Shakespeare. Itself the source of later plays, it is based on one of the interpolated novels in the first part.
• A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole
• Joseph Andrews by Henry Fielding notes in the preface that it is "written in Imitation of the Manner of Cervantes, Author of Don Quixote"
• Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert is often attributed as a retelling of Don Quixote
• ' by Nikos Kazantzakis includes a character called Kapetan Enas whose alias is Don Quixote
• Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote 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"
• Tristram Shandy by Laurence Sterne is rife with references, including Parson Yorick's horse, Rocinante
• Monsignor Quixote by Graham Greene. Monsignor Quixote is said to be a descendant of Don Quixote.
• Asterix In Spain 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.