Don Quixote

by Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

Bought for $2 on August 2, 2019 just because, and finally reading Part 1 in March 2023 for an Osher class with Álvaro Antonio Bernal, PhD (Pitt J-town). First session: intro. Second session: the first 10 chapters Third session: chapters 11-20 Fourth session: chapters 21-31 Fifth session: Final chapters 32-52 The course will cover a variety of topics, including: * Cervantes and the world of Don Quixote * What makes Don Quixote so special? * Spanish Golden Age * The concept of Chivalric Romances * Basic Literary concepts applied to the novel– Polyphony and Intertextuality * The risk of translations * The Spain of Don Quixote * Exploring the meaning of some adventures * The game of the authorship * Indoor vs outdoor settings * Fantasy, Dreams, and Decline * Metafiction * Humor Fortunately (and sometimes unfortunately), everyone quickly realizes that Don Quixote is mad. E.g., “being crazy he would be absolved even if he killed them all.” p. 33 Proverb / proverbial - 85 of them Terrible / O gawd Sanchismos The laws of chivalry Metafiction - second author, lacunae in the text Blame, always fins a way to blame Sancho beats regularly, by DQ’s enemies, and by DQ QUESTIONS: Did Cervantes read Italian? (e.g., Ariosto - p. 47) YES: https://doi.org/10.1017/CCOL0521663210.003 (Cambridge Companion to Cervantes, ch. 3 C. and the Italian Renaissance) Relationship of Castilian to Spanish to Catalan to ? Is there a “formal” or old-fashioned Spanish to suggest what English does with its “thee and thou” constructions when D.Q. is speaking formally? Note some folk, e.g., the innkeeper folk pp.111, 113, cannot understand him. Cf. DQ’s formalisms with Sancho p. 150 fn.4 It becomes a relief when an encounter does not end in violence. But meanwhile, I am compulsively drawn on to see how he gets out of one scrape and into another. Despite the slow pacing and thematic repetitions, the adventures and conversations evince an imaginative fecundity worthy of L. Frank Baum and JRRT. Marcela as feminist philosopher, ch.14 pp. 97-100 COMEDY OF ERRORS: the fight at the inn, pp. 115 The flocks of sheep, pp. 125-131 concludes with projectile vomit MOCK: Chivalric romance Egotistical gentry sycophantic servants Storytelling144 99 bottles of beer on the wall 146 Sancho mocks DQ’s rhetoric of courage, 150 RELIGION: Roman Catholic - ritualistic and habitual; incantatory and magical; rhetorical and superstitious Priests rarely permit themselves to go hungry p. 140 **** Occasional narrator’s (Cervantes) intrusions about what he’s reading in the translated “manuscript” and hence bound to include. E,g., pp. 129, After being beaten soundly repeatedly, DQ still attacks, and when he does, Sancho says, “No doubt about it, this master of mine is as courageous and brave as he says.” p. 137

Bought In August 2019 and I’m glad to have it! Originally published in two parts, in 1605 and 1615, a simple farmer, Sancho Panza, as the squire, often employs a unique, earthy wit in dealing with Don Quixote's rhetorical monologues on knighthood, already considered old-fashioned at the time. 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. While Part One was mostly farcical, the second half is more serious and philosophical about the theme of deception. Cervantes' 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. Read for class with Álvaro Antonio Bernal with Osher, March 14-April 11, 2023. Satire: Inquisition of books in the library scene pp. 45-54 Knights are more useful than priests, p. 88

For Unamuno, Alonso Quixano is the Christian saint, while Don Quixote is the originator of the actual Spanish religion, Quixotism.

Cervantes, like Shakespeare, gives us a secular transcendence.

When he ceases to assert his autonomy, there is nothing left except to be Alonso Quixano the Good again,

Nabokov is very illuminating on this in his Lectures on Don Quixote,

Why does Cervantes subject Don Quixote to the physical abuse of part I and the psychic tortures of part II?

Twelfth Night is comedy unsurpassable, and on the stage we are consumed by hilarity at Malvolio’s terrible humiliations.

When we reread the play, we become uneasy, because Malvolio’s socioerotic fantasies echo in virtually all of us.

Lucidity keeps breaking in, reminding him that Dulcinea is his own supreme fiction, transcending an honest lust for the peasant girl Aldonza Lorenzo.

Erich Auerbach

Sorrowful Face’s

For many translations, see: https://franklycurious.com/wp/2015/10/03/don-quixote-and-his-sorry-face-translation-comparison/ For other translation issues and examples, see: https://franklycurious.com/wp/don-quixote-english/

why "discreet"? question

person begotten in a prison,

Tranquility,

Quijote, modern spelling of Quixote, is a monotypic genus of gastropods (slugs and snails) belonging to the monotypic family Quijotidae. The only species is Quijote cervantesi.

you have a soul in your body and a will as free as anyone’s, and you are in your own house, where you are lord, as the sovereign is master of his revenues,

that old legislator, the public,

Sinile

lacking all erudition and doctrine,

Haha - proving he is familiar with all the authorities.

Haha - he has the right connections, but chooses not to rely on them. N

Don Quixote should remain buried in the archives of La Mancha

Haha

Simile haha

bring clarity to the chaos of my confusion?”

Alliteration in Spanish too? Trans. Question

Pallida mors aequo pulsat pede pauperum tabernas, Regumque turres.

Haha - it’s in the Valley of Elah recounted in 1 Samuel 17, mocking pedantry again.

Lamia,

the couple of ounces of Tuscan that you know

Question

perhaps someone will be naive enough to believe you have consulted all of them

Haha - that’s what a I do.

no one will try to determine if you followed them or did not follow them, having nothing to gain from that.

Haha

all of it is an invective against books of chivalry,

A fair summary? Question

whose unbelievable absurdities do not enter into the calculations of factual truth,

preach to anyone, weaving the human with the divine, which is a kind of cloth no Christian intelligence should wear.

mimesis

See Mimesis: The Representation of Reality in Western Literature (1946, tr. ) by Erich Auerbach, chapter 15 of which deals with Don Quixote.

this work of yours intends only to undermine the authority and wide acceptance that books of chivalry have in...

reading your history should move the melancholy to laughter, increase the joy of the cheerful, not irritate the simple, fill the clever with admiration for its invention, not give the serious reason to scorn it, and allow the prudent to praise it.

keep your eye on the goal of demolishing the ill-founded apparatus of these chivalric books,

the most chaste lover and most valiant knight seen in those environs for many years.

the great mass of inane books of chivalry.

gentleman from La Manch- whose idle reading of nov- caused him to lose his reas-:

Orlando Furio-,

AMADÍS OF GAUL

mimesis

El CID’s horse

Haha - he eats oats and hay!

Our gentleman was approximately fifty years old;

the authors who write of this matter,

Source

Haha - when even his name is in dispute.