![]() The rest of it went in a doublet of fine cloth and velvet breeches and shoes to match for holidays, while on week-days he made a brave figure in his best homespun. An olla of rather more beef than mutton, a salad on most nights, scraps on Saturdays, lentils on Fridays, and a pigeon or so extra on Sundays, made away with three-quarters of his income. In a village of La Mancha, the name of which I have no desire to call to mind, there lived not long since one of those gentlemen that keep a lance in the lance-rack, an old buckler, a lean hack, and a greyhound for coursing. Some questions to ponder while reading: How do the authorial intrusions make the reader aware of their own position within the reading practice and the world outside of the text? How is Cervantes creating an awareness of the new problems of early-modernity by utilizing a character “stuck in the past”? In other words, Cervantes uses the past to shed light on the present and what does this reveal about both the past and the present? What role does Sancho Panza play to both Don Quixote and the reader? Volume 1 Chapter 1 WHICH TREATS OF THE CHARACTER AND PURSUITS OF THE FAMOUS GENTLEMAN DON QUIXOTE OF LA MANCHA ![]() With Don Quixote, Cervantes breaks barriers of genre and creates something that is immensely insightful, deeply ironic, and all together enjoyable. Furthermore, there is also a warning here: what might it mean to desire a world of the past so fully that you no longer live in the world around you, but rather attempt to recreate a past world that may or may not have even existed? Once again, we are confronted with the dangers of nostalgia and the potential havoc it can wreak. This, of course, is an extreme example, but the fact remains, literature can allow us to see new things, to open us up to new possibilities if we only allow it to do so. He is not “crazy” or even delusional, he has allowed, or rather encouraged literary fiction to restructure his synaptic fibers to such an extent that it has changed his reality. Don Quixote, so emboldened and influenced by medieval romances of chivalric knights performing good deeds, cannot help but see the world in this light. But rather our brain uses previous experience to create a “predictive model” of events and objects so that we may better anticipate and engage with the world- if you are interested in this type of thing watch this fascinating TED talk. Recent cognitive scientist and neuroscientists are leaving behind the idea that images of objects and the world around us are passively accepted by the brain and processed. Don Quixote comes to embody everything we are (or will become): immersing ourselves in our interests only to find that they have so fundamentally changed our view of the world, that we can no longer see or imagine a world without those influences or desires. We want to follow this confused, but well-meaning knight not to mock him and not to exploit him for something (i.e., entertainment), but because we simply enjoy his company, thoughts, and the insights he has into the world before him (imaginary or not). But the bond the two men form through shared experience keeps Sancho Panza at Don Quixote’s side, enduring the absurdity and the beauty of life around them. Indeed, this was the plight of Don Quixote’s squire and companion Sancho Panza: he began traveling with the knight solely to gain ownership of an island promised to him as a result of his service, but eventually becomes enticed by the life of the knight-errant and preferred it to living the sedentary life in a village. Readers fall into the self-fashioned knight-errant’s world and often empathize (or maybe rather sympathize) with the man’s desire to perform good in a changing world. 10 From Don Quixote de la Manacha, Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra Introductionĭon Quixote is one of the most beloved character in all of literature.
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