Don Quixote: Cervantes' Masterpiece Unveiled

Don Quixote: Cervantes' Masterpiece

Genesis

Don Quixote is Cervantes' masterpiece. It consists of two parts: the first was published in 1605 and the second ten years later, in 1615. The first is more spontaneous; it seems written on the fly. The second is much more thought out and responds to a well-laid plan. Both show some structural parallelism. The apocryphal Quixote is very interesting because it reveals the outrage that the publication of the first part of Cervantes would have caused in the circle of Lope de Vega. El Quixote de Avellaneda becomes a spokesman for a noble reaction to the intrusion that the nobility led to the claim of a mere gentleman, like Alonso Quijano, passing as a gentleman.

Characters

There are two central characters of Cervantes' great novel, Don Quixote and Sancho Panza.

• Don Quixote is a gentleman from a modest village of La Mancha who decides to become a knight-errant. The design of the figure is very complex.
• Squire Sancho Panza, in the books of chivalry, came with the protagonist.

Characteristics of the two protagonists would be the transfer of traits from one another.

Intention and Meaning

The explicit purpose of Don Quixote is a parody mocking the books of chivalry. The novel would then be an ideal defense in a world in which the great ideals have lost their meaning. Chivalric literature was already largely discredited intellectually, and composing a work as hardworking and ambitious as Don Quixote merely for parodying makes no sense. The unyielding nature of the protagonist's madness against all common sense and all experience just makes the character pathetic and ends up producing the compassion of the reader.

Besides being a novel of humor, it is also a book of literary criticism and theory and a remarkable fresco of Spanish life of its time.

The work itself is an exercise in literary experimentation: in Don Quixote, there are relatively pastoral, Moorish, courtiers, poems, dialogues, etc. The great novel is also a social portrait: nobles, knights, squires, peasants, and more.

Alonso Quijano depicts one of those gentlemen who wish to ascend socially in La Mancha. That sad and mediocre life that we discover in the first chapter pushes the gentleman to flee the village and try to change his life. His ravings are related to the books of chivalry. Sancho Panza also responds to perfection as the poor peasant. Both characters would reflect the shortcomings of that society. Cervantes would be parodying the chivalric and pastoral illusion, the typical humanist utopia of the 16th century. The two protagonists achieved a knowledge of the harsh reality. The final lesson would therefore include, in Cervantes' famous phrase, that everyone is the son of his works and is worth as much as they are worth.

Language and Style

The language of Don Quixote is a summary of finishing the variety of styles typical of the Renaissance. Significant is the presence in a work as literary as Cervantes' own resources of oral tradition. Cervantes contributes to a new reader, an understanding and accomplice, who directs and preliminary prologues claim their connivance.