"Don Quixote" and the Poetics of the Novel

Author: Felix Martinez-Bonati
Publisher: Cornell University Press
Total Pages: 317
Release: 2019-05-15
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1501745298

In response to the classic question whether Don Quixote is true to life, Felix Martinez-Bonati defines it as an unrealistic allegory of realism. He maintains that Cervantes's novel presents an ironized universe of literature that plays with the contradictions of traditional wisdom and the variety and limitations of literary forms—including those of verisimilitude. Drawing on Aristotle's Poetics, on the idealist and romantic traditions that originate in Kant, Schiller, Schelling, Hegel, and Coleridge, and on contemporary critical theory, Martinez-Bonati describes the stylistic matrix of Don Quixote as a combination of semirealism, romance fantasy, and comedy. He provides fresh insights into the character of Cervantes's imagination, the composition and unity of Don Quixote, and its generic structure, rhetorical force, and metafictional intentionality.

Handbook of Medieval Studies

Handbook of Medieval Studies
Author: Albrecht Classen
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter
Total Pages: 2822
Release: 2010-11-29
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 3110215586

This interdisciplinary handbook provides extensive information about research in medieval studies and its most important results over the last decades. The handbook is a reference work which enables the readers to quickly and purposely gain insight into the important research discussions and to inform themselves about the current status of research in the field. The handbook consists of four parts. The first, large section offers articles on all of the main disciplines and discussions of the field. The second section presents articles on the key concepts of modern medieval studies and the debates therein. The third section is a lexicon of the most important text genres of the Middle Ages. The fourth section provides an international bio-bibliographical lexicon of the most prominent medievalists in all disciplines. A comprehensive bibliography rounds off the compendium. The result is a reference work which exhaustively documents the current status of research in medieval studies and brings the disciplines and experts of the field together.

Cervantes

Cervantes
Author: Jean Canavaggio
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
Total Pages: 364
Release: 1990
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 9780393028126

Renowned Cervantes scholar Canavaggio (U. of Caen, France) won the Prix Goncourt for biography in 1987 with the original French edition of this speculative inquiry into the life of the great Cervantes, author of Don Quixote. Translated from the French by J.R. Jones. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

Law and History in Cervantes' Don Quixote

Law and History in Cervantes' Don Quixote
Author: Susan Byrne
Publisher: University of Toronto Press
Total Pages: 257
Release: 2012-01-01
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 144264527X

Law and History in Cervantes' Don Quixote is a deep consideration of the intellectual environment that gave rise to Cervantes' seminal work. Susan Byrne demonstrates how Cervantes synthesized the debates surrounding the two most authoritative discourses of his era – those of law and history – into a new aesthetic product, the modern novel. Byrne uncovers the empirical underpinnings of Don Quixote through a close philological study of Cervantes' sly questioning of and commentary on these fields. As she skilfully demonstrates, while sixteenth-century historiographers and jurists across southern Europe sought the philosophical nexus of their fields, Cervantes created one through the adventures of a protagonist whose history is all about justice. As such, Law and History in Cervantes' Don Quixote illustrates how Cervantes' art highlighted the inconsistencies of juridical-historical texts and practice, as well as anticipated the ultimate resolution of their paradoxes.

Cervantes' Don Quixote

Cervantes' Don Quixote
Author: Howard Mancing
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
Total Pages: 248
Release: 2006-04-30
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 0313081956

Recently voted the best literary work of all time, Cervantes' Don Quixote is widely read by students and has had enormous influence on popular culture. Written by a leading Cervantes scholar yet accessible to students and general readers, this book conveniently introduces Cervantes' masterpiece. Included along with a detailed plot summary are chapters on the novel's background, themes, style, and reception. The volume closes with an extensive bibliographical essay and a selected, general bibliography. In 2002, the Norwegian Book Club, affiliated with the Nobel Prize organization, polled 100 writers from around the world, asking each to name the 10 best works of imaginative literature of all time. Cervantes' Don Quixote, though first published in 1605, was the overwhelming winner. Don Quixote is a favorite among students and general readers alike. It has been translated into more languages than any book other than the bible; adapted to the stage more than any other non-dramatic text; illustrated more than any other novel; and inspired more films than any other literary work. Written by a leading scholar yet accessible to high school students, this guide is an indispensable introduction to the world's most important novel. An introductory chapter overviews Cervantes' life and career and discusses the background of his novel. The book then provides a detailed plot summary of Don Quixote and considers the merits of different editions. It then looks at the cultural and historical contexts surrounding the novel and gives extensive attention to the work's themes, style, and reception. A bibliographical essay and selected, general bibliography of major studies conclude the volume.

Tilting at Tradition

Tilting at Tradition
Author: Daniel Syrovy
Publisher: Rodopi
Total Pages: 271
Release: 2013-08-01
Genre: History
ISBN: 9401209650

Don Quijote and Le Berger extravagant criticize fiction but come in the shape of novels. Far from breaking with their respective traditions, they engage with the chivalric and the pastoral in a creative manner. Genre and imitation are key notions for assessing the status of the novels within literary history and the œuvres of Cervantes and Sorel. With emphasis on the continuity of each writer’s approach, Le Berger extravagant is considered in the context of Sorel’s aim to educate readers and avoid romance stereotypes, while the Quijote is read as an individual take on the chivalric novel, rejecting the Spanish tradition in favor of the ironic Italian romanzo cavalleresco. Like Cervantes’ Galatea and Persiles, Don Quijote reflects a specific tradition which in turn serves to illuminate the famous book. This study offers interpretations of the two novels, but extends its scope toward the authors’ other works and additional contemporary sources including Avellaneda’s 1614 continuation of Don Quijote.

The Transformations of Godot

The Transformations of Godot
Author: Frederick Busi
Publisher: University Press of Kentucky
Total Pages: 158
Release: 2014-07-11
Genre: Drama
ISBN: 0813148103

Didi, Gogo, Pozzo, Lucky—the bizarre names stand out strangely against the bare-bones landscape of Waiting for Godot. In an intriguing new study of one of the most haunting plays of this century, Frederick Busi shows that these names serve important dramatic functions, reinforcing the changing roles assumed by the mysterious characters in their tortuous search for—and avoidance of—self. Busi also explores Beckett's convoluted literary relationship with James Joyce, especially as revealed in the plays-within-the-play and verbal jigh jinks of Finnegan's Wake, where, as in Godot, the same characters keep dreamily encountering themselves in different disguises, under shifting names. Beckett's strong affinities with Cervantes and the common debt of these two authors to the traditions of commedia dell'arte lead Busi to important insights into the shifting master-slave relationship so prominent in Godot, as in Don Quixote. The religious implications of Godot—the subject of so much critical debate—are placed in a new perspective by Busi's provocative observation that certain early Christian heretical works and certain books of the Apocrypha contain not only the idea of the Devil/God, Judas/Jesus identifications implied in Godot but also a number of names that Beckett seems to have had in mind when he wrote his play. Rich in linguistic, historical, and psychological learning, Busi's examination of the names in Godot leads the reader to a fuller awareness of Beckett's extraordinarily complex imagination. As Wylie Sypher writes in the foreword, the book is "an invitation to expand our reading of Beckett in many directions."

Approaches to Teaching Cervantes's Don Quixote

Approaches to Teaching Cervantes's Don Quixote
Author: James A. Parr
Publisher: Modern Language Association
Total Pages: 250
Release: 2015-06-01
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 160329189X

This second edition of Approaches to Teaching Cervantes'sDon Quixote highlights dramatic changes in pedagogy and scholarship in the last thirty years: today, critics and teachers acknowledge that subject position, cultural identity, and political motivations afford multiple perspectives on the novel, and they examine both literary and sociohistorical contextualization with fresh eyes. Part 1, "Materials," contains information about editions of Don Quixote, a history and review of the English translations, and a survey of critical studies and Internet resources. In part 2, "Approaches," essays cover such topics as the Moors of Spain in Cervantes's time; using film and fine art to teach his novel; and how to incorporate psychoanalytic theory, satire, science and technology, gender, role-playing, and other topics and techniques in a range of twenty-first-century classroom settings.

Cervantes

Cervantes
Author: Jeremy Robbins
Publisher: Psychology Press
Total Pages: 292
Release: 2005
Genre: Literary Collections
ISBN: 9780415361439

This volume commemorates the quatercentenary of Don Quijote (Part I, 1604-05), widely acknowledged to be the 'first modern novel' and contains chapters written in both English and Spanish. A special issue of the journal Bulletin of Spanish