Synopses & Reviews
Widely regarded as the world's first modern novel,
Don Quixote chronicles the famous picaresque adventures of the noble knight-errant Don Quixote de la Mancha and his faithful squire, Sancho Panza, as they wend their way across sixteenth-century Spain. Milan Kundera calls Cervantes “the founder of the Modern Era and Lionel Trilling “observes that it can be said that all prose fiction is a variation on the theme of Don Quixote.”
This Modern Library Paperback Classics edition reproduces the acclaimed Tobias Smollett translation; as Salman Rushdie declares, “To my mind, this is the only English rendering of the Quixote that reads like a great novel, a novel of immense daring, much wildness and many colours. It releases Don Quixote from the grey academic prison of many more recent translations, unleashing him upon the English language in all his brilliant, foolish glory”. This edition also contains new endnotes.
Review
"The highest creation of genius has been achieved by Shakespeare and Cervantes, almost alone." Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Review
"A more profound and powerful work than this is not to be met with...The final and greatest utterance of the human mind." Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Synopsis
Widely regarded as the world's first modern novel, Don Quixote chronicles the famous adventures of the noble knight-errant on a picaresque quest across 16th-century Spain. This edition reproduces the acclaimed Smollett translation and a reading group guide. TP Modern Library.
About the Author
Carlos Fuentes is the author of more than a dozen novels, including The Years with Laura Diaz, The Old Gringo, and The Death of Artemio Cruz.
Reading Group Guide
1. Don Quixote is often called the first modern novel. Do you agree? Why or why not?
2. Many critics have interpreted Don Quixote as a sustained exploration of madness. How is madness represented in the novel?
3. Italian literary critic Giovanni Papini famously argued in the early 1920s that "by virtue of [the power of Cervantes's genius] the shade of Don Quixote has succeeded in deceiving us. We have been led to think that his life was full of deception in the sense that he was himself deceived by carnivorous men, decadent times, and impossible books. His life was indeed full of deception, but he was himself the deceiver, and we of the succeeding generations have been the ones deceived." Papini suggests that generations of critics have idolized Quixote, held him up as a "martyr of pure, militant, and derided Christianity," when in fact the character is vain and proud, thinks only of earthly glory, and aspires to material conquests. He was not, Papini claims, mad at all, but merely pretended to be. What is your opinion of this argument?
4. Critics have debated the question of whether Cervantes's intention in Don Quixote was to ridicule the chivalric romances-which typically featured knights accomplishing the most impossible things-that were so popular in the Middle Ages. Northrop Frye, for instance, writes that "with every beating he gets, [Don Quixote's] dignity grows on us, and we realize how genuinely faithful he is to the code of chivalry. He is courteous, gentle, chaste, generous (except that he has no money), intelligent and cultured within the limits of his obsession, and, of course, courageous. Not only was the code of chivalry a real code that helped to hold a real civilization together, but these are real virtues, and would be if chivalry had never existed." Do you think the book repudiates chivalry?
5. In his 1935 book Don Quixote: An Introduction to Psychology, leading Spanish literary expert Salvador de Madariaga refers to what he calls the "sanchification" of Don Quixote and the "quixotification" of Sancho. How does each character affect the other?
6. Lionel Trilling once claimed that "All prose fiction is a variation of the theme of Don Quixote: . . . the problem of appearance and reality." Discuss.
7. The names of the main characters in the novel are not stable: for example, Don Quixote is variously called Quixada, Quesana, Quixana, Quixote, Jigote, Knight of the Mournful Countenance, and Knight of the Lions; Sancho's wife is known as Juana Guti?rrez, Mari Guti?rrez, Teresa Cascajo, Teresa Panza or Teresa Sancho, Teresaina, and Teresona. What is the significance of the change of name and why are the characters so concerned with coming up with etymologies (most of which are wrong) for explaining how another character has come to have a particular name?
8. Many readers have been disturbed by the fact that Don Quixote recovers his sanity before dying, instead of venturing forth again, as Sancho would have him do. How do you feel about his regaining his sanity? What do you think is the significance of it?
From the Trade Paperback edition.