Quixote: The Novel and the World

by Ilan Stavans

Overview

A groundbreaking cultural history of the most influential, most frequently translated, and most imitated novel in the world.

The year 2015 marks the four hundredth anniversary of the publication of the complete Don Quixote of La Mancha—an ageless masterpiece that has proven unusually fertile and endlessly adaptable. Flaubert was inspired to turn Emma Bovary into “a knight in skirts.” Freud studied Quixote’s psyche. Mark Twain was fascinated by it, as were Kafka, Picasso, Nabokov, Borges, and Orson Welles. The novel has spawned ballets and operas, poems and plays, movies and video games, and even shapes the identities of entire nations. Spain uses it as a sort of constitution and travel guide; and the Americas were conquered, then sought their independence, with the knight as a role model.

In Quixote, Ilan Stavans, one of today’s preeminent cultural commentators, explores these many manifestations. Training his eye on the tumultuous struggle between logic and dreams, he reveals the ways in which a work of literature is a living thing that influences and is influenced by the world around it.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780393248388
Publisher:	Norton, W. W. & Company, Inc.
Publication date:	08/20/2015
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	224
File size:	3 MB

About the Author

Ilan Stavans is Lewis-Sebring Professor in Latin American and Latino Culture at Amherst College. He is the author of many books, including Spanglish: The Making of a New American Language and A Most Imperfect Union. He is also general editor of The Norton Anthology of Latino Literature.

Editorial Reviews

05/04/2015
Tracing four centuries of influence of what hispanophones affectionately call “el Quijote,” Stavans (A Most Imperfect Union) takes an entertainingly idiosyncratic look at Don Quijote, the “novel of novels.” Offering more cultural history than literary criticism, Stavans begins with the novel as a product both of a man and an age. He progressively broadens his scope to examine the wildly varied interpretations of it, including a “cornerstone of Western civilization,” a foundation of Spanish nationhood, and the novel that “begat modernity.” Stavans’s work has the tone of a conversational lecture, with room for occasional digressions and jokes, but all the confident precision and clarity of a scholar working with material he knows and loves. Though an admirer, Stavans is no purist (or “Cervantisto”); he appreciates the variations wrought by numerous translations, including his own rendition of one passage into Spanglish, as much as the evolving applications of Quijote as adjective (quixotic), ideology (quijotismo), and Japanese retail chain (Donki). In the process, he defines the nature of this literary classic and shows the many ways in which Don Quijote has “unquestionably shaped our culture,” not just of Spain but of the Americas. A combination of celebration, meditation, and quest, Stavans’s book is bound to please el Quijote’s devoted readers and win new fans. Illus. (Sept.)

Publishers Weekly

"If, like me, you live with the guilt of not having read Don Quixote of La Mancha, this delightful romp will inspire you to act. It is a splendid work of historiography that looks at the knight’s influence on just about everything—including the Muppets. Ilan Stavans delivers another keen-eyed, delightful tour de force."

Barry Moser

"In this sparkling narrative, Ilan Stavans takes us on an exploration of a novel he reveres…. A fascinating, deeply enjoyable read."

Jon Lee Anderson

"Expertly connects Cervantes’ satire of then-popular novels of chivalry to the political climate of the time…. The combination of cultural analysis, textual examination, and enthusiastic commentary makes for an excellent primer to celebrate this momentous anniversary [of Quixote’s publication.]"

Booklist

"This enjoyable book, a fast and fun read, informs us deeply about [Don Quixote]. As such, it is a model work of criticism. It sends us back to the original work, eager and informed and moved to reread it or read it for the first time."

Dallas Morning News - Tim Redman

"Ilan Stavans, like Cervantes, tells stories of errantry: of his own travels with and through the book, of El Quijote’s journey across and around the world, of the characters’ voyages through the imaginations of creators and re-creators. The result is as engaging, funny, readable, and illuminating as the book it’s about: an idiosyncratic yet amazingly comprehensive companion, which all readers of El Quijote will want."

Felipe Fernández-Armesto

"Bold, imaginative, and deeply learned…. Stavans, one of our most gifted scholars of Hispanic literature, has arrived to narrate the tale of how modernity was birthed amid the whirl of windmills and all those chasing them."

Henry Louis Gates Jr.

"A masterly history of Don Quixote that approaches the book from multiple angles: literary, historical, cultural, linguistic, and personal. Ilan Stavans has given us a compelling, readable, and often humorous portrait of the book and its author."

Laila Lalami

★ 06/15/2015
Stavans (Lewis-Sebring Professor in Latin American and Latino Culture, Amherst Coll.; A Most Imperfect Union) writes about Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra's Don Quixote of La Mancha, originally published in two parts in 1605 and 1615. The result is a book of insights that could have been expanded into any number of larger studies but is ample as is and eminently readable. Stavans notes that we know little about Cervantes's looks and comments on the relationship of the Knight with other characters such as Sancho and Dulcinea. Later, the author muses on the absence of a bona fide antagonist in the novel, critiques Cervantes's baroque writing as rambling and flat at times, evaluates the words and punctuation (noting that Cervantes only uses 22,939 different words compared to Shakespeare's 29,066), and compares Don Quixote with successors, from Franz Kafka's Gregor Samsa (The Metamorphosis) to Mark Twain's Huck and Jim on the river (The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn). Stavans's closing chapter on translations ends with a translation of his own: a passage by Cervantes into Spanglish. The impression is of abundant intelligence poured into a vessel whose aim is not tidy scholarship but joyous insight. VERDICT Book lovers will relish this expansive and generous tome. [See Prepub Alert, 3/23/15.]—David Keymer, Modesto, CA

Library Journal

2015-04-21
The 400-year history of the deeply influential Spanish novel.Confessing his enduring love of Hispanic civilization, Stavans (Latin American and Latino Culture/Amherst Coll.; A Most Imperfect Union: A Contrarian History of the United States, 2011, etc.) claims that Cervantes' masterwork is the "essence, the blueprint" of that culture's DNA. The book's irresistible theme "is that one must live life in a genuine way, passionately, in spite of what other people think." Ranging across cultures and time, Stavans argues persuasively that Don Quixote has captivated the imaginations of writers (Dostoevsky, Flaubert, Borges, to name a few), artists (Picasso, Dalí, and Gustave Doré), filmmakers (Eric Rohmer, Peter Yates, and others), and even video game designers. Seven ballets are based on the novel, "all of them forgettable" in the author's estimation. Except for the Bible, he notes, the novel is the most translated book into English—and he has read all of the translations, from Thomas Shelton's (1612) to James H. Montgomery's (2009). Stavans considers John Ormsby's 1885 text the best. In Spain, the novel was rediscovered by the Generation of 1898, writers seeking "clues about Spain's future" after the country's devastating loss of its colonies. Quixotism, Stavans writes, "portrayed the idealism of the knight-errant as proof that Spain was delusional about its past, yet it implied that only idealism might help the country out of its depression." Investigating the novel's influence in the U.S., Stavans discovered that George Washington bought a copy on the day the Constitution was adopted; that Melville called Don Quixote "the greatest sage that ever lived"; and that Faulkner reread the novel every year. Quixote is the only literary character, Stavans notes, whose name has become an adjective, reflecting his "universal status." The novel "is a mirror," interpreted differently by different beholders. Stavans brings infectious enthusiasm and penetrating scholarship to this lively investigation of a grand novel and its readers.

Kirkus Reviews