Miguel de Cervantes’s Don Quijote de la Mancha is widely considered to be the first modern novel of the Western tradition. It has influenced the likes of Nabokov, Sterne, Melville, Dostoyevsky, Flaubert, Borges, Dickens, and Faulkner (who reread it every year), among others. In a recent literary poll of the “100 Best Books of All Time,” in which the aforementioned authors remained unranked and “all on an equal footing,” some of the greatest living writers (Salman Rushdie, Assia Djebar, Herta Müller, Orhan Pamuk, Doris Lessing, Milan Kundera, Amitav Ghosh, Nadine Gordimer, Christa Wolf…) made an exception for Don Quijote, calling it the “best literary work ever written.” To what is such ubiquitous and unparalleled praise due? The purpose of this course will be to read Don Quijote in its entirety and to gain a critical understanding of the major cultural, historical, and political issues at play in the novel. We will seek, on the one hand, to draw out the general or ‘universal’ features that have established its place in the international literary canon while, on the other, to understand these features within the unique context of early modern Spain. By exploring such themes as parody, humor, madness, metafiction, psychoanalysis, chivalric literature, translation, and Moorish culture, the class will establish connections with other disciplines and literary traditions as well. Taught in Spanish.
- Days/Times: TTh 12:00PM - 1:15PM
- Instructor: Johnson, Paul Michael; Sanchez, Loreto
- Room: Gilman 313
- Status: Open
- Seats Available: 4/15
- PosTag(s): n/a