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( see spelling and pronunciation below), fully titled ("The Ingenious Hidalgo Don Quixote of La Mancha") is an early novel written by Spanish author Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra. Cervantes created a fictional origin for the story based upon a manuscript by the invented Moorish historian, Cide Hamete Benengeli.
Published in two volumes a decade apart , Don Quixote is the most influential work of literature to emerge from the Spanish Golden Age and perhaps the entire Spanish literary canon.
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Quotations
A knight errant who turns mad for a reason deserves neither merit nor thanks. The thing is to do it without cause.
A private sin is not so prejudicial in the world as a public indecency.
Every man is as Heaven made him, and sometimes a great deal worse.
Fortune leaves always some door open to come at a remedy.
I can tell where my own shoe pinches me; and you must not think, sir, to catch old birds with chaff.
I find my familiarity with thee has bred contempt.
Encyclopedia
( see spelling and pronunciation below), fully titled ("The Ingenious Hidalgo Don Quixote of La Mancha") is an early novel written by Spanish author Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra. Cervantes created a fictional origin for the story based upon a manuscript by the invented Moorish historian, Cide Hamete Benengeli.
Published in two volumes a decade apart , Don Quixote is the most influential work of literature to emerge from the Spanish Golden Age and perhaps the entire Spanish literary canon. As a founding work of modern Western literature, it regularly appears high on lists of the greatest works of fiction ever published.
Literary attributes
The novel's structure is in episodic form. It is a humorous novel in the picaresco style of the late sixteenth century. The full title is indicative of the tale's object, as ingenioso (Spain.) means "to be quick with inventiveness". Although the novel is farcical, the second half is more serious and philosophical about the theme of deception. Quixote has served as an important thematic source not only in literature but in much of art and music, inspiring works by Pablo Picasso and Richard Strauss. The contrasts between the tall, thin, fancy-struck, and idealistic Quixote and the fat, squat, world-weary Panza is a motif echoed ever since the book’s publication, and Don Quixote's imaginings are the butt of outrageous and cruel practical jokes in the novel. Even faithful and simple Sancho is unintentionally forced to deceive him at certain points. The novel is considered a satire of orthodoxy, truth, veracity, and even nationalism. In going beyond mere storytelling to exploring the individualism of his characters, Cervantes helped move beyond the narrow literary conventions of the chivalric romance literature that he spoofed, which consists of straightforward retelling of a series of acts that redound to the knightly virtues of the hero.
Farce makes use of punning and similar verbal playfulness. Character-naming in Don Quixote makes ample figural use of contradiction, inversion, and irony, such as the names Rocinante (a reversal) and Dulcinea (an allusion to illusion), and the word itself, possibly a pun on (jaw) but certainly (Catalan: thighs), a reference to a horse's rump. As a military term, the word quijote refers to cuisse, part of full suit of plate armour protecting the thigh.
The world of ordinary people, from shepherds to tavern-owners and inn-keepers, which figures in Don Quixote, was groundbreaking. The character of Don Quixote became so well-known in its time that the word quixotic was quickly calqued into many languages. Characters such as Sancho Panza and Don Quixote’s steed, Rocinante, are emblems of Western literary culture. The phrase "tilting at windmills" to describe an act of attacking imaginary enemies derives from an iconic scene in the book.
Because of its widespread influence, Don Quixote also helped cement the modern Spanish language. The opening sentence of the book created a classic Spanish cliché with the phrase , "whose name I do not want to remember."
"In a place at La Mancha, which name I do not want to remember, not very long ago lived a country hidalgo, one of those gentlemen or hidalgos who keep a lance in the lance-rack, an ancient shield, a skinny old horse, and a fast greyhound."
Plot summary
Alonso Quixano, a retired country gentleman in his fifties, lives in an unnamed section of La Mancha with his niece and a housekeeper. He has become obsessed with books of chivalry, and believes their every word to be true, despite the fact that many of the events in them are clearly impossible. Quixano eventually appears to other people to have lost his mind from little sleep and food and because of so much reading.
First quest
He decides to go out as a knight-errant in search of adventure. He dons an old suit of armor, renames himself "Don Quixote de la Mancha," and names his skinny horse "Rocinante." He designates a neighboring farm girl, Aldonza Lorenzo, as his ladylove, renaming her Dulcinea del Toboso, while she knows nothing about this. Eventually, he "acquires" his iconic "helmet":
He sets out in the early morning and ends up at an inn, which he believes to be a castle. He asks the innkeeper, who he thinks to be the lord of the castle, to dub him a knight. He spends the night holding vigil over his armor, where he becomes involved in a fight with muleteers who try to remove his armor from the horse trough so that they can water their mules. The innkeeper then "dubs" him a knight,and sends him on his way. Don Quixote battles with traders from Toledo, who "insult" the imaginary Dulcinea, and he also frees a young boy who is tied to a tree by his master because the boy had the audacity to ask his master for the wages the boy had earned but had not yet been paid. Don Quixote is returned to his home by a neighboring peasant, Pedro Crespo.
Second quest
Back at home, Don Quixote plots an escape. Meanwhile, his niece, the housekeeper, the parish curate, and the local barber secretly burn most of the books of chivalry, and seal up his library pretending that a magician has carried it off. Don Quixote approaches another neighbour, Sancho Panza, and asks him to be his squire, promising him governorship of an island. The rather dull-witted Sancho agrees, and the pair sneak off in the early dawn. It is here that their series of famous adventures begin, starting with Don Quixote's attack on windmills that he believes to be ferocious giants.
Part Two
Although the two parts are now normally published as a single work, Don Quixote, Part Two was actually a sequel to the original novel. The Don and Sancho are now assumed to be famous throughout the land because of the adventures recounted in the original novel. While the original novel was almost completely farcical, the second half is serious and philosophical about the theme of deception. Don Quixote's imaginings are made the butt of outrageously cruel practical jokes carried out by wealthy patrons. Even Sancho is unintentionally forced to deceive him at one point. Trapped into finding Dulcinea, Sancho brings back three peasant girls and tells Quixote that they are Dulcinea and her ladies-in-waiting. When Don Quixote only sees three peasant girls, Sancho pretends that Quixote suffers from a cruel spell which does not permit him to see the truth. Sancho eventually gets his imaginary island governorship and unexpectedly proves to be wise and practical; though this, too, ends in disaster.
Conclusion
The cruel practical jokes eventually lead Don Quixote to a great melancholy. The novel ends with Don Quixote regaining his full sanity, and renouncing all chivalry. But, the melancholy remains, and grows worse. Sancho tries to restore his quixotic faith, but his attempt to resurrect Alonso's quixotic alter-ego fails, and Alonso Quixano dies: sane and broken.
Other stories
Both parts of Don Quixote contain a number of stories which do not directly involve the two main characters, but which are narrated by some of the picaresque figures encountered by the Don and Sancho during their travels. Some abridged editions have been published which delete these tales in order to concentrate on the central narrative. .
Writing and publication
Cervantes' sources
Tirant lo Blanch
Sources for Don Quixote include the Valencian novel Tirant lo Blanch, one of the first chivalric epics, which Cervantes describes in Chapter VI of Quixote as "the best book in the world."
The scene of the book burning gives us an excellent list of Cervantes's likes and dislikes about literature.
Orlando furioso
Cervantes makes a number of references to the Italian poem Orlando furioso. In chapter 10 of the first part of the novel, Don Quixote says he must take the magical helmet of Mambrino, an episode from Canto I of Orlando, and itself a reference to Matteo Maria Boiardo's Orlando innamorato. The interpolated story in chapter 33 of Part four of the First Part is a retelling of a tale from Canto 43 of Orlando, regarding a man who tests the fidelity of his wife.
Publication
In July of 1604 Cervantes sold the rights of El ingenioso hidalgo don Quixote de la Mancha (known as Don Quixote, Part I) to the publisher-bookseller Francisco de Robles for an unknown sum. License to publish was granted in September, the printing was finished in December, and the book came out in January 1605. The novel was an immediate success. Most of the 400 copies of the first edition were sent to the New World, with the publisher hoping to make a better price in the Americas . Although a lot of them disappeared in a shipwreck near La Havana, approximately 70 copies reached Lima, from where they were sent to Cuzco in the heart of the defunct Inca Empire .
There is some evidence of its contents having been known before publication to, among others, Lope de Vega. There is also a tradition that Cervantes reread some portions of his work to a select audience at the court of the Duke of Bejar, which may have helped in making the book known. Don Quixote, Part One remained in Cervantes' hands for some time before he could find a willing publisher. The compositors at Juan de la Cuesta's press in Madrid are now known to have been responsible for errors in the text, many of which were attributed to the author.
No sooner was it in the hands of the public than preparations were made to issue derivative ("pirated") editions. "Don Quixote" had been growing in favour, and its author's name was now known beyond the Pyrenees. By August 1605 there were two Madrid editions, two published in Lisbon, and one in Valencia. A second edition with additional copyrights for Aragon and Portugal, which publisher Francisco de Robles secured. Sale of these publishing rights deprived Cervantes of further financial profit on Part One. In 1607, an edition was printed in Brussels. Robles, the Madrid publisher, found it necessary to meet demand with a third edition, a seventh publication in all, in 1608. Popularity of the book in Italy was such that a Milan bookseller issued an Italian edition in 1610. Yet another Brussels edition was called for in 1611.
In 1613, Cervantes published Novelas Ejemplares, dedicated to the Maecenas of the day, the Conde de Lemos. Eight and a half years after Part One had appeared, we get the first hint of a forthcoming Segunda Parte (Part Two). "You shall see shortly," Cervantes says, "the further exploits of Don Quixote and humours of Sancho Panza." Don Quixote, Part Two, published by the same press as its predecessor, appeared late in 1615, and quickly reprinted in Brussels and Valencia (1616) and Lisbon (1617). Part two capitalizes on the potential of the first while developing and diversifying the material without sacrificing familiarity. Many people agree that it is richer and more profound. Parts One and Two were published as one edition in Barcelona in 1617.
Some theories exist that question whether Cervantes alone wrote Don Quixote. Carlos Fuentes raises an intriguing possibility that, "Cervantes leaves open the pages of a book where the reader knows himself to be written and it is said that he dies on the same date, though not on the same day, as William Shakespeare. It is further stated that perhaps both were the same man."
Spurious Avellaneda Segunda Parte
It is not certain when Cervantes began writing Part Two of Don Quixote, but he had probably not gotten much further than Chapter LIX by late July of 1614. About September, however, a spurious Part Two, entitled "Second Volume of the Ingenious Gentleman Don Quixote of La Mancha: by the Licenciado (doctorate) Alonso Fernández de Avellaneda, of Tordesillas", was published in Tarragona by an unidentified Aragonese who was an admirer of Lope de Vega, rival of Cervantes. Avellaneda's identity has been the subject of many theories, but there is no consensus on who he was. In its prologue, the author gratuitously insulted Cervantes, who not surprisingly took offense and responded; the last half of Chapter LIX and most of the following chapters of Cervantes' Segunda Parte lend some insight of the effects upon him. Many scholars agree that this second book is of considerable literary merit. However, in his introduction to The Portable Cervantes, Samuel Putnam, a noted translator of Cervantes' novel, calls Avellaneda's version "one of the most disgraceful performances in history".
The second part of Cervantes' Don Quixote, finished as a direct result of the Avellaneda book, has come to be regarded by some literary critics as superior to the first part, because of its greater depth of characterization, its discussions, mostly between Quixote and Sancho, on random subjects, and its philosophical insights.
Editions in translation
There are many translations of the book, and it has been adapted many times in shortened versions. Many derivative editions were also being written at the time, as was the custom of envious or unscrupulous writers. Seven years after the Parte Primera appeared, Don Quixote had been translated into French, German, Italian, and English. (first French translation of 'Part II' (1618), first English translation (1620).) One abridged adaptation is authored by Agustín Sánchez, which runs slightly over 150 pages, cutting away about 750 pages.
The elusive Thomas Shelton's English translation of the First Part appeared in 1612. Some claim Shelton was actually a friend of Cervantes, although there is no credible evidence to support this claim. Although Shelton's version has been a cherished translation, according to John Ormsby and Samuel Putnam respectively, it was far from satisfactory as a carrying over of Cervantes's text. Shelton's translation of the novel's Second Part appeared in 1620.
Near the end of the 17th century, John Phillips, a nephew of poet John Milton, published what is considered by Putnam the worst English translated version. The translation, as literary critics claim, was not based on Cervantes' text but mostly upon a French work by Filleau de Saint-Martin and upon notes which Thomas Shelton had written previously. Around 1700, a version by Pierre Antoine Motteux appeared. As stated by translator John Ormsby, this version was "worse than worthless". The prevailing slapstick quality of this work, especially where Sancho Panza is involved, the obtrusion of the obscene where it is found in the original, and the slurring of difficulties through omissions or expanding upon the text all made the Motteux version irresponsible. In 1742, the Charles Jervas translation appeared, posthumously. Through a printer's error, it came to be known, and is still known, as "the Jarvis translation". The most scholarly and accurate English translation of the novel up to that time, it has been criticized by some as being too stiff. Nevertheless, it became the most frequently reprinted translation of the novel until about 1885. Another 18th century translation into English was that of Tobias Smollett, himself a novelist. Like the Jarvis translation, it continues to be reprinted today.
Most modern translators take as their model the 1885 translation by John Ormsby. It is said that his translation was the most honest of all translations, without expansions upon the text nor changing of the proverbs. The most widely read English-language translations of the mid-20th century are by Samuel Putnam (1949), J. M. Cohen (1950; Penguin Classics), and Walter Starkie (1957). The last English translation of the novel in the 20th century was by Burton Raffel, published in 1996. The 21st century has already seen two new translations of the novel into English — by John Rutherford, and by Edith Grossman. One New York Times reviewer called Grossman's translation a "major literary achievement" and another called it the "most transparent and least impeded among more than a dozen English translations going back to the 17th century."
Cultural legacy
Don Quixote is often nominated as one of the world's greatest works of fiction. Don Quixote's importance in literature has produced a large and varied cultural and artistic legacy. Many artists have drawn inspiration either directly or indirectly from Cervantes' work, including the painter Honoré Daumier, the composers Richard Strauss and Gara Garayev, the writer Henry Fielding, the novelist Milan Kundera and the filmmaker Terry Gilliam.
The cultural legacy of Don Quixote is one of the richest and most varied of any work of fiction ever produced. It stands in a unique position between medieval chivalric romance and the modern novel. The former consist of disconnected stories with little exploration of the inner life of even the main character. The latter are usually focused on the psychological evolution of their characters. In Part I, Quixote imposes himself on his environment. By Part II, people know about him through "having read his adventures," and so, he needs to do less to maintain his image. By his deathbed, he has regained his sanity, and is once more "Alonso Quixano the Good".
The novel contains many minor literary "firsts" for European literature—a woman complaining of her menopause, someone with an eating disorder, and the psychological revealing of their troubles as something inner to themselves.
Subtle touches regarding perspective are everywhere: characters talk about a woman who is the cause of the death of a suitor, portraying her as evil, but when she comes on stage, she gives a different perspective entirely that makes Quixote (and thus the reader) defend her. When Quixote descends into a cave, Cervantes admits that he does not know what went on there.
Quixote's adventures tend to involve situations in which he attempts to apply a knight's sure, simple morality to situations in which much more complex issues are at hand. For example, upon seeing a band of galley slaves being mistreated by their guards, he believes their cries of innocence and attacks the guards. After they are freed, he demands that they honor his lady Dulcinea, but instead they pelt him with stones and leave.
Different ages have tended to read different things into the novel. When it was first published, it was usually interpreted as a comic novel. After the French Revolution it was popular in part due to its central ethic that individuals can be right while society is quite wrong and seen as disenchanting—not comic at all. In the 19th century it was seen as a social commentary, but no one could easily tell "whose side Cervantes was on." By the 20th century it had come to occupy a canonical space as one of the foundations of modern literature.
The novel was recently voted The Greatest Book of All Time by the Nobel Institute.
The novel is also responsible for the adjective quixotic, which alludes to behavior that is noble in an absurd way, or the desire to perform acts of chivalry in a radically impractical manner.
Influences upon literature and literary theory
The novel's landmark status in literary history has meant it has had a rich and varied influence over later writers, from Cervantes' own lifetime to the present-day. Some leading examples of Don Quixote's influence include:
- Cardenio, a lost play attributed to Cervantes's contemporary William Shakespeare. Itself the source of later plays, it is assumed to be based on one of the interpolated novels.
- Joseph Andrews (1742) by Henry Fielding notes on the title page that it is "written in Imitation of the Manner of Cervantes, Author of Don Quixote".
- The Female Quixote (1752), a novel by Charlotte Lennox in which a young woman's reading of romances leads her to misinterpret the world around her.
- Tristram Shandy (1759–67) by Laurence Sterne is rife with references, including Slawkenbergius' Tale and Parson Yorick's horse, Rocinante.
- The Spiritual Quixote (1773) by Richard Graves is a satire on Methodism.
- Don Chisciotti e Sanciu Panza (1785-1787) by Giovanni Meli (1740-1815) is a Sicilian parody of Don Quixote.
- The Pickwick Papers (1837), by Charles Dickens. The characters of Samuel Pickwick and Sam Weller, who roam London and get into all sorts of comic predicaments, are often compared to Don Quixote and Sancho Panza, although in this case, "Quixote" is the short, plump one, and "Sancho" is the tall, thin one.
- "Three Musketeers" (1844) D'Artagnan is referred to as "A Don Quixote of eighteen".
- Madame Bovary (1856) by Flaubert was heavily influenced by Don Quixote.
- Prince Myshkin, the title character of Dostoyevsky's novel The Idiot (1869) was explicitly modelled on Don Quixote.
- "Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote" (1939) by Jorge Luis Borges is an essay about a (fictional) 20th century writer who re-authors Don Quixote. "The text of Cervantes and that of Menard are verbally identical, but the second is almost infinitely richer." Borges' story is also well known as a central metaphor in John Barth's famous essay "The Literature of Exhaustion".
- Don Quixote appears as a character in Tennessee Williams's Camino Real (1953).
- The Art of the Novel (1960) by Milan Kundera, extensively references and extolls Cervantes and Don Quixote as the first, and perhaps best, novel. Kundera writes of himself and, indeed, all other European novelists, being in homage to Cervantes.
- Rocinante was the name Steinbeck gave his converted truck in his 1960 travelogue Travels with Charley
- Asterix in Spain (1969) by Goscinny and Uderzo. Asterix and Obelix encounter Don Quixote and Sancho Panza on a country road in Spain, with Quixote becoming enraged and charging off into the distance when the topic of windmills arises in conversation. This is especially strange, because it is at this time still was not chivalry but that the Roman Empire under Julius Caesar conquered countries.
- A Confederacy of Dunces (1980) by John Kennedy Toole. The main character, Ignatius, is considered a modern-day Quixote.
- Monsignor Quixote (1982) by Graham Greene. Monsignor Quixote is said to be a descendant of Don Quixote.
- Don Quixote: Which Was a Dream (1986) also known as Don Quixote: a Novel by Kathy Acker, is a work of cyber-punk, post-feminist fiction that revisits the themes of the original text to highlight contemporary issues.
- The Moor's Last Sigh (1995) by Salman Rushdie, with its central themes of the world being remade and reinterpreted clearly draws enormous inspiration from Cervantes, with names and characters drawn from the earlier work.
- The novel plays an important part in Michel Foucault's book, The Order of Things. To Foucault, Quixote's confusion is an illustration of the transition to a new configuration of thought in the late sixteenth century. Quixote, by confusing semiology and hermeneutics, attempts to apply an anachronistic epistemological configuration to a new intellectual world, a new episteme, in which hermeneutics and semiology have been separated.
- The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: The Black Dossier (2007) by Alan Moore and Kevin O'Neill features Don Quixote as a member of the 17th century incarnation of the league.
- Lars and the Real Girl (2007) features a short passage from Don Quixote, read by the film's main character, a young man suffering from a delusional disorder.
- Neil Slaven titled his biography of Frank Zappa as the Electric Don Quixote: the definitive story of Frank Zappa (1996, Omnibus Press)
Influences upon the arts
Operatic, music, and ballet renditions of Quixote
The 18th century French baroque composer Joseph Bodin de Boismortier wrote a short ballet titled Don Quichotte chez la Duchesse. The ballet, which includes sung parts, is about a Duke's and Duchess' efforts to fool Don Quixote.
A play by Thomas D'Urfey with music and songs by Baroque composer Henry Purcell, entitled The Comical History of Don Quixote (1694), adapts and rearranges some of his adventures. The play, like other eighteenth-century adaptations of the novel, reflects that era's view of Don Quixote as a comic work, with no hint of seriousness.
Georg Philipp Telemann wrote an orchestral suite entitled Don Quichotte and an opera called Don Quichotte auf der Hochzeit des Camacho, based on an episode from the novel.
Die Hochzeit des Camacho, an early opera by Felix Mendelssohn (composed in 1827) is based on the same section of the book on which Telemann based his opera.
A scherzo for orchestra, Combate de Don Quijote contra las Ovejas, was composed in 1869 by the Spanish composer Ruperto Chapí.
Ludwig Minkus composed the music for Marius Petipa's ballet Don Quixote, which was staged for the Bolshoi Theatre of Moscow in 1869, and was revised in more elaborate production for the Imperial Ballet of St. Petersburg in 1871. The libretto was based on the same chapters in the novel which attracted Mendelssohn and Telemann. Petipa's ballet was substantially revised by Alexander Gorsky in 1900 for the Bolshoi Theatre in Moscow, a version which was staged for the Imperial in 1902. It is Gorsky's 1902 staging which has been revisited by several other choreographers in the course of the twentieth century in Soviet Russia, and has since been staged by ballet companies all over the world. In 1972, Rudolf Nureyev filmed his celebrated version of the ballet with the Australian Ballet. The choreography, credited to Nureyev, was based closely on the Soviet edition.
Jules Massenet's Don Quichotte premiered at Monte Carlo Opera on February 24, 1910. In the title role at the first performance was the legendary Russian bass Feodor Chaliapin, for whom the part was written.
Master Peter's Puppet Show, a puppet opera by Manuel de Falla, is based on an episode from Book II and was first performed at the Salon of the Princess de Polignac in Paris in 1923.
Maurice Ravel composed a set of three songs for voice and piano, Don Quichotte à Dulcinée (Don Quixote to Dulcinea) to poems by Paul Morand in 1932, and orchestrated them in 1934.
Jacques Ibert composed music for the 1933 film Adventures of Don Quixote starring the Russian bass Feodor Chaliapin, directed by G.W. Pabst. Three versions were filmed, in French, English, and German. The French and English versions have been released on home video.
Richard Strauss composed the tone poem Don Quixote, subtitling it "Introduction, Theme with Variations, and Finale" and 'Fantastic Variations for Large Orchestra on a Theme of Knightly Character.' The music makes explicit reference to many of the novel's most entertaining sections, including the sheep (described famously by flutter-tongued brass) and windmill episodes.
The Catalan composer Roberto Gerhard, shortly after being exiled to the United Kingdom at the end of the Spanish Civil War, composed in 1940–41 a ballet on Don Quixote as the most important of a number of tributes to Spanish culture. Not staged in this original form, the ballet became the source for a number of orchestral suites and Gerhard also used it in the extensive incidental music he provided for a BBC radio adaptation of Cervantes’s novel by Eric Linklater, The Adventures of Don Quixote (1940). Gerhard re-wrote the ballet in 1947–49 and it was staged by Sadler’s Wells Ballet at Covent Garden with choreography by Ninette de Valois and décor by Edward Burra.
In 1960 the Azerbaijani composer Gara Garayev wrote Symphonic engraving - "Don Quixote".
George Balanchine created another Don Quixote ballet in 1965, to music by Nicolas Nabokov. This was dedicated to the dancer Suzanne Farrell, whom he played opposite in the original production.
Man of La Mancha, with music by Mitch Leigh, lyrics by Joe Darion and book by Dale Wasserman based on his non-musical teleplay I, Don Quixote, is a one-act Broadway musical which combines episodes in the novel with a story about its author, Miguel de Cervantes, as a play within a play that premiered in 1965.
Israeli singer Dana International recorded a song entitled Don Quixote on her 1996 album Maganuna.
The British composer Ronald Stevenson has composed an extensive work for two guitars, Don Quixote and Sancho Panza, subtitled 'a Bagatelle Cycle' (1982–3) and consisting of a double theme with seventeen variations based on various events in Cervantes' novel. The work was premiered in Glasgow in 1998.
Also the Austrian-born Finnish composer Herman Rechberger wrote a piece for two guitars with the titel "Hola Miguel". It was premiered in 2001. His recent miniopera "La piedra the Don" is scored for historical instruments and three female singers. It was premiered in Helsinki in February 2007 by the Ensemble "Hi!Barock".
Don Quixote is a puppet show at the Center for Puppetry Arts adapted by Bobby Box and Manuel Morán of Teatro SEA
British singer-songwriter Nik Kershaw released a song entitled Don Quixote, which reached No. 10 in the UK top 40 in 1985.
Don Quixote was the title song of the eighth album released by Canadian singer/songwriter Gordon Lightfoot.
The 1998 Concept Album La Leyenda de la Mancha by popular Spanish Rock band Mägo De Oz is a modern retelling of the story of Don Quixote. The most popular song from that album 'Molinos De Viento' is about Don Quixote's conversation with Sancho Panza after the adventure with the windmills, in which Don Quixote attacks the windmills because he believes them to be giants.
Don Quixote is the subject of the song Windmills on the album The Village Lanterne released in 2006 by Renaissance-inspired folk rock band Blackmore's Night.
The story is the subject of the aptly named Don Quixote, a ska punk song off the album Kids on the Street by multi-genre band the Cherry Poppin' Daddies. In its lyrics, the narrator sympathizes with Quixote's chivalric code of honor, expressing resentment towards today's generation who, like Quixote's foes in the story, are too blind to see the true nobility of the love and honor he fights for.
Quixote is even referenced in the Moldy Peaches song - Anyone Else But You, stating "Don Quixote was a steel driving man"
Quixote in the visual arts
Don Quixote has inspired a large number of illustrators, painters and draughtsmen such as Gustave Doré, Pablo Picasso, Salvador Dalí and Antonio de la Gandara.The French artist Honoré Daumier produced 29 paintings and 49 drawings based on the book and characters of Don Quixote starting with an exhibition at the 1850 Paris Salon, which would later inspire Pablo Picasso. In 1863, Gustave Doré produced a large set of drawings based on Don Quixote. These include the famous, if fanciful, engraving of Don Quixote in his library. On August 10, 1955, Pablo Picasso drew an illustration of Don Quixote and Sancho Panza that has become the most iconic image ever made of these characters, drawn for the journal weekly Les Lettres françaises (week of August 18-24, 1955), and which quotes from the Daumier caricature of a century before, shown left. Widely reproduced, today it is the iconic image used by the Spanish government to promote Cervantes and Don Quixote.
Spelling and pronunciation
Quixote is the original spelling in medieval Castilian, and is used in English. However, modern Spanish has since gone through spelling reforms and phonetic changes which have turned the x into j.
The x was pronounced like an English sh sound (voiceless postalveolar fricative) in medieval times — — and this is reflected in the Galician and Leonese name Don Quixote, the Portuguese Dom Quixote , in the French name Don Quichotte, the Dutch Don Quichot (or Don Quichote), as well as in the Italian name Don Chisciotte. However, in Spanish such words (now virtually all spelled with a j) are now pronounced with a voiceless velar fricative sound like the Scottish or German ch . English speakers generally attempt something close to the modern Spanish pronunciation when saying Quixote/Quijote, as , although the traditional English pronunciation or is still frequently used, more in the United Kingdom than in the United States .
In Spanish, the "qu" in "qui" and "que" are pronounced almost identically to the English "k", so when people pronounce it , it is ultimately based on a misunderstanding. The e at the end of "Quixote" is pronounced, not silent. The traditional English rendering is also preserved in the pronunciation of the adjectival form quixotic.
Films based on or inspired by Don Quixote
- Don Quixote (1915), a silent film starring DeWolf Hopper.
- Don Quixote (1933), directed by Georg Wilhelm Pabst. This version was actually made three times in the same year, and in three different languages — French, English and German. All three versions used the same script, set designs, and costumes, and all three starred the great Russian bass Feodor Chaliapin.
- Don Quixote (1934), directed by Ub Iwerks and published as a Comicolor cartoon, is an animated cartoon loosely based on the novel. It takes great liberties with the story (e.g., Don Quixote demolishes the windmill and emits a Tarzan-like yell of triumph). It was made in color.
- Don Quijote de la Mancha (1947), the first full-length Spanish film version of the novel, directed by Rafael Gil, and allegedly the most faithful film version of the book ever made.
- ??? ????? (1957), a Soviet production by Grigori Kozintsev, music by Gara Garayev and starring Nicolai Cherkassov, the first live-action version in color.
- Don Quijote (1965), a French/German made-for-television miniseries comprising four feature length parts, directed by Carlo Rim. It stars the noted Austrian actor and keeper of the Iffland-Ring Josef Meinrad as Don Quijote.
- Don Quichotte de Cervantes (1965), a short (23 minute) French film by Éric Rohmer.
- They Might Be Giants (1971), based on the play by James Goldman, features George C. Scott as Justin Playfair, a modern New Yorker who believes he is Sherlock Holmes. The title is derived from a scene in which Playfair invokes Don Quixote, saying that to claim windmills are giants is madness but to say they might be giants is the wellspring of human imagination. The band They Might Be Giants derives its name from the film.
- Man of La Mancha (1972), directed by Arthur Hiller (a film version of the hit stage musical by Dale Wasserman, Mitch Leigh, and Joe Darion. The stage musical was, in turn, based on Wasserman's 1959 live TV drama, I, Don Quixote.) It stars Peter O'Toole as both Don Quixote and Miguel de Cervantes, as well as Sophia Loren as Aldonza / Dulcinea and James Coco as Sancho Panza and Cervantes's manservant.
- Don Quijote cabalga de nuevo (1973), directed by Roberto Gavaldón, a Mexican/Spanish comedy with Cantinflas in the role of Sancho Panza and Fernando Fernán Gómez as Don Quixote.
- The Adventures of Don Quixote (1973), a British made-for-television version first telecast on the anthology series Play of the Month, but shown as a television special in the U.S, presumably to capitalize on the publicity engendered by the then-recent release of the film version of Man of La Mancha. It stars Rex Harrison and Frank Finlay. Directed by Alvin Rakoff, with a script by Hugh Whitemore.
- Don Quixote (1973), a film version of the Minkus ballet, starring Rudolf Nureyev, Lucette Aldous, Robert Helpmann (as Don Quixote) and artists of the Australian Ballet. The third of three Don Quixote films shown in the U.S. that year (the others being Man of La Mancha, which, although released in 1972, was still playing in theatres in '73, and the aforementioned Rex Harrison The Adventures of Don Quixote.)
- Don Quixote: Tales of La Mancha (1980), a Japanese anime series produced by Ashi Productions and distributed by Toei Animation.
- The Adventures of Don Coyote and Sancho Panda
- Life of Don Quixote and Sancho (1988), 9 episode series, filmed in Georgia and Spain by Georgian director Rezo Chkheidze.
- Monsignor Quixote (1991), a television film of Graham Greene's 1982 novel, directed by Rodney Greene and starring Alec Guinness in the title role, Leo McKern (in the "Sancho" role, this time the Marxist mayor of the small Spanish town where Quixote is the Monsignor) and Ian Richardson, as a cardinal.
- El Quijote de Miguel de Cervantes (1991), a television miniseries version of Part I of the novel, directed by Manuel Gutiérrez Aragón, scripted by Nobel-prize-winner Camilo José Cela and starring Fernando Rey as Don Quixote and Alfredo Landa as Sancho. Project of a second miniseries including Part II was stopped because of Rey's death.
- Don Quixote, begun by Orson Welles but never finished; a reshaped version by Jesus Franco was released in 1992
- Don Quixote (2000), directed by Peter Yates, a made-for-TV version co-produced by Hallmark and Turner Network Television, starring John Lithgow, Bob Hoskins, Vanessa L. Williams, and Isabella Rossellini. The script was by noted British playwright John Mortimer.
- Lost in La Mancha (2002) is a documentary film about Terry Gilliam's failed first attempt to make a movie adaptation of Don Quixote. (Gilliam restarted pre-production on The Man Who Killed Don Quixote in 2008.)
- El Caballero Don Quijote (2002), Manuel Gutiérrez Aragon's belated filming of Part II of the novel, with an entirely different cast from the one that had appeared in his version of Part I. This was a two-hour theatrical film, not a miniseries. Juan Luis Galiardo starred as Quixote.
- Asparagus of LaMancha (2006), the first segment of Sheerluck Holmes and the Golden Ruler, is a Veggietales parody in which Archibald Asparagus portrays Don Quixote and Mr. Lunt portrays his sidekick, Poncho.
- Donkey Xote (2008),
- The Man Who Killed Don Quixote (2011), the upcoming Terry Gilliam adoption.
See also
Printed
Online
External links
- Project Gutenberg e-texts of
- Searchable version of the gutenberg text in
- Free e-book in PDF format.
- as a bilingual ebook with English and Spanish side by side.
- Virtual Museum of Don Quixote
- by Jose Faur, analyzing the story of Don Quixote as an example of Converso literature containing critical social commentary from the Jewish perspective.
- , by Ilan Stavans. A history of English translations. Humanities, September/October 2008. Volume 29, Number 5.
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