Cervantes’ masterpiece Don Quixote is a novel that satirically depicts the conflict between ideals and reality. Through the adventures of Don Quixote, captivated by chivalry, and the realist Sancho, it humorously explores human dreams and frustrations.
Work Introduction
The full title is El Ingenioso Hidalgo Don Quixote de la Mancha. The first part was published in 1605, and the second part in 1615. Cervantes stated his purpose in writing this work was “to overthrow the authority and popularity of chivalric romances,” meaning he intended to create a parody of the chivalric romances that were immensely popular in Spain at the time. However, as he wrote freely, without a fixed plan, following his inspiration, he forgot his original intent and became absorbed in a new purpose: creating the characters of the protagonist Don Quixote and his squire, Sancho Panza. This evolved into a monumental work encompassing their entire lives.
This book is by no means a simple comic or satirical novel. French critic A. Thibaudet called it ‘the book of mankind’ and praised it as the first and greatest novel to truly depict ‘humanity’.
Plot
Alonso Quijano, a country gentleman from Spain, becomes so obsessed with reading chivalric romances day and night that he loses his mind. Declaring himself “Don Quixote of La Mancha,” he sets out on a quest to rid the world of injustice and corruption and aid the oppressed, riding his scrawny horse Rocinante. The Princess Dulcinea, whom Don Quixote loves, is a woman born of his madness and delusions. He also takes as his squire Sancho Panza, a simple and honest farmer living nearby. The madness and fantasies of his chivalric spirit clash with the real world wherever the two go, earning them the ridicule of those around them, while he and his squire Sancho taste bitter failure and defeat. Eventually, his niece and housekeeper, blaming his strange behavior entirely on those bizarre chivalric novels, burn every book in his library. Yet he sets out on the road again, mistaking windmills for giants and charging at them, only to be thrown from his horse; mistaking sheep grazing on grass for soldiers and attacking them, only to be beaten by the shepherds; and attacking a wineskin, believing it to be a giant, only to be beaten by the innkeeper. Even then, he remains undeterred, convinced that a sorcerer has cast a spell to disguise his enemies.
Character Introduction
Don Quixote
A country gentleman from La Mancha who has read so many chivalric romances that he can no longer distinguish reality from fantasy. Though prone to daydreaming and eccentric behavior, he possesses strong convictions, unwavering will, and a clear moral compass.
Sancho Panza
A country squire who follows the protagonist Don Quixote like a shadow. In stark contrast to his master Don Quixote’s noble and idealistic character, he is a unique figure who is materialistic and pragmatic, yet foolish and common.
Princess Dulcinea
The beautiful princess imagined by Don Quixote and his beloved, though in reality she is the daughter of a large, strong tenant farmer from the same village. She never actually appears in the work.
Rocinante
The emaciated, old horse ridden by Don Quixote.
Work Commentary
If asked to name just two of the most representative Western authors, many would likely cite William Shakespeare and Miguel de Cervantes. These two are like the two pillars supporting the house of Western literature. They were born and active in nearly the same era, and interestingly, died in the same year. One excelled in the genre of drama, while the other played a midwife role in the birth of the novel genre. Shakespeare is revered as the ‘National Poet of England,’ while Cervantes is revered as the ‘Spirit of Spain.’ Some scholars even call Cervantes the ‘Prince of Wisdom.’
Cervantes virtually touched every literary genre, leaving scarcely any untouched. He wrote novellas—short stories that had begun to gain popularity in Italy around this time—and also penned full-length novels. He wrote numerous plays and composed poetry as well. Thus, he dabbled in every genre except criticism. However, Cervantes’ literary fame was ultimately brought by Don Quixote. Having once worked as a tax collector, he was imprisoned in the Royal Prison of Seville due to irregularities in tax accounting. It was precisely during this imprisonment that he first conceived the work.
Background and Content of the Work
Miguel de Cervantes’s Don Quixote originally bore the title El Ingenioso Hidalgo Don Quixote de la Mancha. Part I was published in 1604, and Part II in 1615, the year before the author’s death. This vast work comprises 126 chapters—52 in Part I and 74 in Part II—featuring an astonishing cast of over 650 characters.
Interestingly, before Cervantes published his sequel, a man named Alonso Fernández de Avellaneda released his own “sequel” in 1614. This forgery spurred Cervantes to hastily write his own sequel. Beyond Avellaneda’s forgery, works based on Don Quixote, such as The Life of Don Quixote, The History of Don Quixote, and The Female Don Quixote, continued to flood the market.
In the 16th century, in the small village of La Mancha in Spain, there lived a gentleman named Alonso Quijano. His sole pleasure was reading chivalric romances about knights rescuing beautiful women from peril, battling giants, and slaying dragons. However, due to reading far too many books, he lost the ability to distinguish between reality and fiction. Quijano’s mind became so unhinged that he began to believe these tales were actual events. Eventually, he resolved to become a knight himself and take action. Armed with old armor, a rusty sword, and a helmet, he set off on his adventures riding an old horse. Just as the hero of chivalric romance loves an ideal, beautiful lady, he bestows the splendid name ‘Dulcinea’ upon a country maiden he barely knows and changes his own name to ‘Don Quixote’. He also takes a country farmer named Sancho Panza as his squire and sets off on adventures together.
This work recounts the various adventures the protagonist experiences. He mistakes windmills for giants and attacks them, only to fall from his horse. He also mistakes sheep grazing on grass for soldiers and attacks them, only to be beaten by the shepherd. The story of attacking the windmills is so famous that the expression ‘attacking windmills’ has become an idiom in the West, meaning ‘recklessly charging at an imaginary enemy’. Then there’s the time he attacks a wineskin filled with red wine, mistaking the spilled liquid for blood. Whenever his actions reveal his mistakes, he invariably believes a sorcerer has cast a spell to trick him.
Don Quixotism
Don Quixote paints a panoramic picture of all manner of human types. While Shakespeare is famously known for depicting various human archetypes in his plays, Cervantes is no less accomplished than this English writer. This is precisely why the French literary critic Charles Auguste Sainte-Beuve called this work ‘the Bible of Humanity’. The term ‘Don Quixotism’, named after him, is often used to describe an attitude of pretending to be a knight, being lost in fantasy and failing to grasp reality properly, or having outlandish ideas.
Among the many characters, the protagonist Don Quixote and his squire Sancho Panza stand out most for their distinct personalities. These two figures are as contrasting as fire and ice. Despite his flights of fancy and eccentric behavior, Don Quixote is an exemplary knight, strong in conviction and will, with a clear moral compass. He symbolizes idealism, dreams, spirit, and fantasy.
On the other hand, his squire Sancho Panza is an utterly ordinary, worldly man. He knows full well that Don Quixote’s actions are madness, yet follows him solely for material compensation. Sancho Panza symbolizes realism, reality, materialism, and facts. Because of these contrasting character types, some critics seek the work’s theme in the conflict between idealism and realism.
However, what deserves careful attention here is how the two gradually begin to resemble each other’s character. Initially, Sancho Panza believes Don Quixote is mentally ill, confronting him and sometimes arguing with him. Yet, during their adventures, their personalities fuse together into one. Even in their speech, Don Quixote begins to use the proverb-laced country dialect of Sancho Panza, while Sancho mimics Don Quixote’s chivalrous, refined speech. Ultimately, the two characters fuse into one, becoming indistinguishable. In a sense, it would not be far off to say that Don Quixote and Sancho Panza are not two separate individuals, but rather different facets of the same person.
Every human being, to varying degrees, possesses both a Don Quixote-like and a Sancho Panza-like aspect. Humans dream of heavenly idealism while rooted in the muddy earth. These two characters can also be seen as representing imagination and rationality, symbolizing the human soul and body. In late medieval literature, the ‘dialogue between body and soul’ format was immensely popular. Just as idealism and realism, imagination and rationality, and soul and body cannot be separated, Don Quixote and Sancho Panza cannot be separated either.
Central Themes of the Work
Cervantes addresses numerous themes in Don Quixote, but the relationship between fiction and fact, fantasy and reality, is particularly striking.
The theme surrounding fiction and fact, fantasy and reality, becomes more clearly evident when we ask, ‘How deeply is Don Quixote consumed by madness?’ From a psychiatric perspective, Don Quixote is clearly delusional and disoriented, yet from another angle, he behaves like an utterly normal person. In this situation, distinguishing what is fantasy and what is reality, or what is fiction and what is fact, is not so easy.
Like many great classics, Don Quixote is a work ahead of its time. Reading this work, the shadow of postmodernism frequently flickers before one’s eyes. Though published in the 17th century, postmodern elements are readily apparent. This self-conscious novel can be seen as opening the first chapter of metafiction. Cervantes constantly breaks down the boundaries between reality and fiction within the work. For him, works rooted in the realist tradition that foster illusions about reality hold little significance. Cervantes does not seek to give readers of Don Quixote illusions about reality; rather, he aims to shatter them. He reminds us that literary works are not reflections of reality but artificial constructs created by the author through language. From the perspective of classical aesthetics, which strives to accept events within a work as actual reality, the author’s direct intervention to shatter illusions or reveal the creative process is akin to a curse.
In another sense, this work can be called a ‘novel about the novel.’ Throughout Western literary history, countless authors have drawn artistic inspiration from Cervantes and written their own works. For instance, British writers like Daniel Defoe, Henry Fielding, Tobias Smollett, Laurence Sterne, Walter Scott, and Charles Dickens owe him an immense debt. Authors such as Gustave Flaubert, Pérez Galdós, Herman Melville, Nikolai Gogol, and Fyodor Dostoevsky were also profoundly influenced by him. Flaubert, in particular, called the heroine of Madame Bovary “Don Quixote in a petticoat.” The situation was not much different in the 20th century, with writers like James Joyce and Jorge Luis Borges being directly or indirectly profoundly influenced by Cervantes.
Don Quixote inspired not only literary figures but also artists across other mediums. Since the 17th century, numerous plays, operas, ballets, and musical works have been created based on this novel. Even in the 20th century, it inspired films, television programs, and comics. Meanwhile, painters like William Hogarth, Francisco de Goya, Honoré Daumier, and Pablo Picasso were also profoundly influenced by Cervantes. Precisely for this reason, Cervantes is not merely called a novelist of the Renaissance era, but rather, he is further referred to as ‘the artist among artists’.
