Cervantes' Don Quixote: A Casebook

by Roberto González Echevarría (Editor)

This casebook gathers a collection of ambitious essays about both parts of the novel (1605 and 1615) and also provides a general introduction and a bibliography. The essays range from Ramón Menéndez Pidal's seminal study of how Cervantes dealt with chivalric literature to Erich Auerbachs polemical study of Don Quixote as essentially a comic book by studying its mixture of styles, and include Leo Spitzer's masterful probe into the essential ambiguity of the novel through minute linguistic analysis of Cervantes' prose. The book includes pieces by other major Cervantes scholars, such as Manuel Durán and Edward C. Riley, as well as younger scholars like Georgina Dopico Black. All these essays ultimately seek to discover that which is peculiarly Cervantean in Don Quixote and why it is considered to be the first modern novel.

Genres: Criticism, Spain, Literary Criticism, Essays, Textbooks, Nonfiction

304 pages, Paperback

First published April 28, 2005

About the author

Roberto González Echevarría is Sterling Professor of Hispanic and Comparative Literature at Yale.

Reviews

[Caroline]

This is a very interesting collection of critical pieces selected by Gonzalez Echevarria, who teaches a terrific online (free) course on Don Quixote, through Yale University and iTunes university. (He is the Sterling Professor of Hispanic and Comparative Literatures.) I have never figured out how to identify specific pages in the iTunes store, just go to iTunes U, selected Colleges and Universities, Yale University, Literature, ‘Cervantes Don Quixote’.

The volume is intended as a reader for this undergraduate course, but it useful to the autodidact as well. Moreover, as I was reading I kept thinking that many of the observations were pertinent to a range of other books that are self-reflective, from Rabelais to the most recent postmodernist works.

Gonzalez Echevarria provides an excellent introduction: an insightful overview of the novel, and placement of the other essays in the landscape of Cervantean criticism. Most of the essays touch in some way on the perspectivism of Don Quixote, the differences in ‘reality’ and ‘truth’ that Cervantes shows as dependent on which of the characters (including the narrators/‘authors’) is doing the talking. The focus of each essay, however, may be on name-changing, libraries, the narrator (through the puppet play), Dulcinea, the sources and literary traditions that Cervantes was using and bending or leaving behind, etc.

I gave up on a couple of the chapters that pursued trails I wasn’t interested in, but I very much enjoyed the pieces by Bruce W. Wardropper (‘Don Quixote, Story or History?’), Leo Spitzer (‘Linguistic Perspectivism in the Don Quijote’), and George Haley (‘The Narrator in Don Quijote: Maese Pedro’s Puppet Show’). The volume also includes “The Genesis of Don Quixote” by Ramon Menendez Pidal, a critic referred to repeatedly by the other authors. (Note: Gonzalez Echevarria uses the spelling of ‘Don Quixote/Don Quijote etc used in teach author’s original.)

From Spitzer’s essay:

This means that, in our novel, things are represented not for what they are in themselves, but only as things spoken about or thought about; and this involves breaking the narrative presentation into two points of view. There can be no certainty about the “unbroken “ reality of the events; the only unquestionable truth on which the reader may depend is the will of the artist who chose to break up a multi-valent reality into different perspectives. In other words, perspectiveism suggests an Archimedean principle outside of hte plot--and the Archimedes must be Certantes himself.

Excellent.

[Leanne]

This is a fantastic collection of essays on el Quixote. Yale University does such a great thing in producing the open courses. The one on Don Quixote is taught by the editor of this collection of essays, Roberto Gonzalez Echevarria. Along with the novel and the casebook, the famous history by Elliot is also suggested reading for the course. I really recommend all the books, in addition to the course. The collection has all kind of essays--from introductory to classic essays. Georgina Dopico Black's essay "Cannons Afire: Libraries, Books and Bodies in DQ's Spain" alone is worth the price of this book! I really loved this essay.

The Enchanted Dulcinea by Erich Auerbach is brilliant and as a reviewer said below, it reminded me to get his Mimesis.

The only essay that overlapped with a DQ class I am taking was "DQ: Story of History" by Bruce Wardropper. It might be a must-read as well.

[Hans Otterson]

An illuminating collection of perspectives on the Quixote, this one is best left for after you've read the Quixote at least once. I read it along with my second read of the Quixote, which fit perfectly.

My only criticism is that a number of the essays quote Spanish-language criticism of the Quixote, and they do not translate these passages. It is incredibly frustrating to run into a passage that says, "and here you'll see the point I'm trying to make put perhaps better and in more detail by XXX when they say [long passage in Spanish]". What's the point of producing this book in English if you're not going to translate extremely salient passages?

Otherwise, though, it is approachable to the literary-minded layman.

[Billie Pritchett]

This is one of the most unilluminating collections of secondary literature I've ever read. Trees died for this.

[Ashley Adams]

A collection of critical essays on Don Quixote. My favorite was Leo Spitzer's piece on linguistic perspectivism and identity.

[Evan]

Of variable quality, as is usually the case with such compilations. Roberto González Echevarría's writing style irks me a bit, and Leo Spitzer should read a certain well-known Orwell essay, but the volume as a whole is well organized and all of the essays are valuable to read.

[Leonard Singer]

Should have translated all of the Spanish

[Luke]

“Nevertheless, when all is said and done, we believe that the ideal force of Don Quijote overcomes his abandonment of reason as well as all the other limitations imposed by reality. Being poor, he amazes us with his generosity; being weak and sickly, he is a hero possessed of unyielding courage in the face of misfortune; being old, he yet moves us with his absurd, mad first love; being crazy, his words and actions always stir vital chords in the enthusiastic heart.”

—Ramón Menéndez Pidal, The Genesis of Don Quixote

[Mark]

This with read along with Don Quixote and the Yale Open Course lectures which the professor does helped to fill in the back stories o the writer, his life and times and cetera.

[Debbie Baker]

Only a couple of these essays was worth reading. I usually enjoy criticism, but this was disappointing.

[Emma Lane]

I found a lot to disagree with in this book, chiefly the way he handles female characters like Dorotea and the overuse of psychoanalysis.

[Karen Carlson]

I read this collection of academic essays in conjunction with my reading of Don Quixote; it was recommended as a supplement by the Yale Open Course. They, along with the lectures, greatly increased my understanding of the original text.

FMI see my blog post at A Just Recompense.

[Chris Via]

Superb compendium of Quixote criticism! I think it's time I go ahead and read Auerbach's magnum opus, Mimesis.