Literature’s Most Misunderstood Novel

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No foreigner who has been in Spain more than a few days will fail to recognize them. Statues, portraits and images of Don Quixote and Sancho Panza stare out at you from tiled murals on the walls of schools, museums, shops and cultural centers. The familiar figures of the tall, lanky and gaunt knight-errant with his rusty sword, crooked lance and broken helmet, perched on his emaciated old plough horse turned charger, Rocinante, towers over the pudgy peasant Sancho Panza sitting astride his mule.

After the Bible and the Tales of Hans Christian Andersen, Don Quixote is the most widely translated literary work in history and a significant demonstration of self-satire and criticism of the established social values of Cervantes’ Spanish homeland time, knighthood and chivalry, the romantic idealized medieval view of women, patriotism, the aristocracy, monarchy and the Church.

This book, considered by many as the first true novel, has gained world renown and contributed words and metaphors in many languages including English terms such as ‘Quixotic’, ‘Tilting at Windmills’, ‘Putting all your eggs in one basket’, ‘Judging people by the company they keep’, ‘The lance has never blunted the pen’, and ‘An honest man’s word is his bond’. Don Quixote is the subject of a hit Broadway musical (‘Man of La Mancha’ with its hit song – ‘The Impossible Dream’), a Russian ballet, posters by Picasso, an opera by the composer Cristóbal Halffter, and great musical works by Richard Strauss and Bedrich Smetana. It is the name of an American left-wing political forum with its own website, a Latin American institute for social justice and greater involvement of the Catholic Church on behalf of the poor as well as a high risk mutual investment firm (with their own impossible dream). … more>>

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Tags: Cervantes, Don Quixote