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Commentary on Don Quixote is as universal as affirmations of the novel's importance, yet until now no study has examined what Cervantes said about it. In the prologue to the first half of the work (1605) the self-conscious author, in a tongue-in-cheek dialogue with the reader and an unconventional friend, makes a good number of comments on his own book. In the opening chapters of Part 2 (1615), the same sort of witty evaluation continues with remarks by Sancho Panza, Sansón Carrasco and Don Quixote in a lively and extended conversation focused on what has been said about Part 1 since its publication and how the characters feel about those readings. The present study carefully examines and compares these and other self-reflective passages to clarify the work's successes and failures as interpreted by a privileged reader - the author himself.
List of contents
Contents: The Cervantes' game of the work's fictional authors - Ridicule of literary affectation - The nature of the connections to chivalric romance - Seeing both sides of human behaviour - The ironies inherent in insisting on the truth of a narrative - Perspectives on the two protagonists - The relevance of the inserted tales - Don Quixote as meta-literature and as a work of entertainment - The widely divergent readings that it has provoked.
About the author
The Author: Emilio Martínez Mata, professor
at the University of Oviedo, Spain, and visiting professor in several universities, is a specialist in Golden Age Spanish literature and the chair of an international team of scholars studying the worldwide reception of
Don Quixote. He is the author or editor of several books, including
Cervantes y el «Quijote», Cadalso's
Cartas marruecas and
Noches lúgubres, Iriarte's
Los literatos en cuaresma, Samaniego's
Fábulas and Moratín's
El sí de las niñas.
