Don Quixote Book
Don Quixote was originally thought to be a comedic novel when it was first published. It became better known after the French Revolution for its basic principle that individuals can be right while society is completely incorrect and disenchanting.
It was seen as social criticism in the nineteenth century, but no one could tell “which side Cervantes was on.”
Don Quixote Summary
The initial chapters were obtained from “the archives of La Mancha,” and the rest were translated from an Arabic manuscript by Cide Hamete Benengeli, a Moorish author. This metafictional method attempts to lend the work more credibility, claiming that Don Quixote is a real person and that the events described happened several decades before the poem was written. However, it was normal practice in that age for fictitious works to pretend to be true, such as the popular fairy tale beginning line “Once upon a time in a land far away.”
The characters meet innkeepers, prostitutes, goatherders, soldiers, priests, escaped criminals, and scorned lovers on their journey. The aforementioned characters occasionally recount stories that include real-life incidents. Don Quixote’s imagination turns their encounters into gallant missions. Don Quixote’s proclivity for intervening aggressively in situations unrelated to himself, as well as his propensity of failing to pay his debts, result in privations, injuries, and humiliation (with Sancho often the victim). Don Quixote is finally persuaded to return to his hometown. The narrator implies that a third quest existed, but that no records of it have been found.
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Many reviewers saw the work as a tragedy in which Don Quixote’s idealism and nobility are dismissed as irrational by the post-chivalric society, and are ultimately vanquished and rendered useless by ordinary reality. The novel had grown to occupy a canonical role as one of the cornerstones of contemporary literature by the twentieth century.
