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
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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
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