Essays on Don Quixote

In Miguel de Cervantes’ Don Quixote, the major motifs portrayed throughout the novel are honorable chivalry and the delusional perception of which Don Quixote views the world as enchanted. On several accounts throughout the story it becomes apparent that despite being delusional, Don Quixote reveals...

Both Don Quixote and Hamlet are exceptional examples of madness being used to drive a narrative. Their madness speaks to all of us though a multitude of different means. Showing us that there is reason behind their madness, despite what first impressions give us. Asking...

Madness and sanity seem to exist on opposite poles of a binary; one is defined by the absence of the other. However, this binary, though present in Fyodor Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment and Miguel de Cervantes’ Don Quixote, is problematic. The protagonists – who are...

As proposed by Immanual Kant, the Enlightenment consisted of having “the courage to use your own understanding,” and John Milton’s Paradise Lost, Descartes’ Meditations, and Cervantes’ Don Quixote collectively provide instances that both affirm and subvert Kant’s proposition. Paradise Lost’s Lucifer embodies Kant’s idea of...

The process of perception involves two steps: the recognition of sensory information and the interpretation of sensory information. In order for the truth to be perceived, or, in other words, for something to be perceived accurately, sensory information must be recognized or identified correctly and...

In Miguel de Cervantes’ Don Quixote, the titular character embarks on a journey to enact knight errantry, transfiguring the quotidian Spanish countryside into a world of his own making—one modeled after the many chivalric romances he has read and an alternate reality in which the...

King Lear and Don Quixote use madness to acknowledge the unpleasant truths of humanity. Don Quixote entertains a fundamentally comic madness; while, King Lear offers a more tragic interpretation of insanity. Both protagonists, King Lear and Don Quixote, ground their madness in powerful alternate realities....

In the Prologue to Don Quixote, Cervantes presents his protagonist as a “dry, shriveled, whimsical offspring… just what might be begotten in a prison, where every discomfort is lodged and every dismal noise has its dwelling” (41). But if conceived in an Iron Age of...

In her essay “Don Quijote’s Disappearing Act”, Anne J. Cruz argues that Don Quixote’s death can be predicted, and as early as Part 1. Her thesis is that the first and second parts of the novel can be understood thus: “ […] Don Quijote’s final...

It is difficult to read more than one or two pages of Don Quijote de la Mancha without coming across an example of the union (or conflict) between the extraordinary and the mundane. Indeed, Cervantes uses this juxtaposition repeatedly as his principal comic device, generally...

From its beginnings, literature has been characterized to a remarkable degree by narratives and images of journeys. What gets many texts started and what keeps them going is very commonly a journey of some sort. However, these journeys are not always simple physical journeys from...

The first time the Fool enters in Shakespeare’s King Lear he immediately offers Kent his coxcomb, or jester’s hat. Lear asks the Fool “My pretty knave, how dost thou?” (1.4.98) This initial action and inquiry of the Fool is representative of the relationship between the...

For much of the opening part of Don Quijote, the narrator contents himself with narrating. Though we are made aware of his presence as a character by his first-person style, his subjective interpretation of Quijote’s actions, and occasional references to his historical research, it is...

One recurring motif in Don Quijote is love relationships that develop between males and females and the many different consequences these relationships can have. In fact, most of the “stories” found within the text of the novel are driven in some way by the force...

Professor Kathryn Vomero Santos is a scholar of English literature who introduces and analyzes the question of what Don Quixote teaches us in the history and theory of interpretation from his novel. Despite the structure and theme of Don Quixote, it is known as a...