Don Quixote
Steven Wagschal
Spanish & Portuguese
This course explores Miguel de Cervantes’s Don Quixote, the two-part novel widely considered to be one of the greatest pieces of fiction ever written.
We will read the novel within its socio-historical context of late Renaissance Spain, a turbulent time in which powerful monarchs and the Spanish Inquisition kept a tight grip on what people were allowed to believe, do, say or write. Nonetheless, with subtlety and ingenuity, Cervantes was able to escape notice by the authorities and official censors, while including in his novel a critique of the Inquisition, the monarchy, the Church, the lack of autonomy that women were permitted, and an overall dearth of justice in the society of his time.
Yet Don Quixote is much more than a social critique. Many students have found reading it to be a peak experience, one that mixes a sense of the comic with the tragic, while engaging in a plethora of human emotions and perspectives on what it means to be human. In English, the word “Quixotic” can be found in the dictionary and is often used in contemporary media (for instance, the New York Times) to describe a certain combination of behavior and belief that bears similarity to that of the novel’s protagonist, Don Quixote.
We will also analyze several of the innumerable artistic and other creative responses to Don Quixote, including drawings and paintings by artists Salvador Dalí and Pablo Picasso, as well as imitations and parodies in modern writing, film and music.
Throughout the course, on a regular basis, students will be provided with opportunities to think about what creativity is and to engage creatively with Don Quixote in multiple modalities.
Required Text: Don Quixote de la Mancha (Parts I & II) by Miguel de Cervantes. Trans. by Edith Grossman (Harper Collins, 2005).
Catalog Information: HON-H 234 LITERATURE OF TIME AND PLACE