Reading the Classics discussion

Hoping you're enjoying the Revised Reading Schedule for Don Quixote so far. This is our first week OFF! You can use this week to catch up, pursue other reading interests, and/or continue the discussion here in a leisurely manner.

I really enjoyed last week's reading, and look forward to picking it up again next week.

I enjoyed the reprieve as a chance to read a couple other books, but look forward to returning to Don Quixote's escapades!

I skipped ahead a bit. I love having multiple options for handling the week off, and I hope others are as well. REALLY enjoying learning the story of Cardeno. I love that I'm basically reading the background material for a lost Shakespeare play.

That is really cool about the Cardeno story.

So after you pointed it out, I started reading up a little on Cervantes' influence on Shakespeare with the Cardenio story. It is neat! Do you have a good resource to read more about it?

What I've read is that the first English translation of Cervantes appeared in 1612, and that The Story of Cardenio was performed by The King's Men in 1613. Per usual, there is more to the story, and this is as good a place to start as any :)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_His...

Like others I have read other novels.

However, I have also let my mind go “a-wandering”.

At the moment I am reading a variety of web articles on the history of the “novel”, here are links to two I thought interesting.

The “Rise of the Novel” at the British Library. (First is Robison Crusoe 1719)
https://www.bl.uk/restoration-18th-ce...

The History of Novels – Here Begynneth A Lytell Geste of Robin Hood…,
https://gesteofrobinhood.com/lectures...


Is Don Quixote a “novel”. At the moment I don’t think so, but better to decide at the end.

As I read Don Quixote, it seems more like a series or sequence of loosely related stories, scenes, even scenes of a play.

I have also been reading Commedia dell'arte, which arose during the lifetime of Cervantes. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commedi...

And a few other things I will write about separately.

Another question I have is "what did Cervantes want to accomplish with Don Quixote?"

I think he wanted to make money with it. And I think he wanted to entertain people with it. But what else? Was "Quixote" satire?? Philosophy? Maybe the answers to these questions will be more obvious by the end.

As to the question about Sancho's complaint that he might be king of a kingdom of blacks - I believe a thorough answer to that question might require a doctoral dissertation. Based on what I have read, the concept of race as we know it today did not exist at the time Don Quixote was written. Probably the best places to explore these ideas would be the copious amounts written about Shakespeare's play, "Othello".

However, be warned that a lot of essays on Othello reflect racial beliefs held by the writers and do not reflect the actual ideas of Shakespeare's day. It is hard to separate the ideas that evolved from colonization in the Americas and slave trade with Africa, and our modern understanding of race with the actual attitudes toward Jewish, Islamic Moors, and other peoples with dark skin at the time that Don Quixote was written.

Interesting comments! As for me, I think Don Quixote is very much a novel. I've seen it described in multiple places as the first Western novel, for one thing, but also the entire premise involves Don Quixote's attempt to live the novels which have heretofore captured his attention. It all gets even more interesting beginning this week in C33, when a novel in the care of the innkeeper draws the interest of Cardenio's party, and is subsequently read out loud. This is a novel borne of novels of chivalry, giving birth to other novels. For me, Cervantes brought the nascent Eastern tradition of the novel into the west.

Of course, I could also be batshit crazy lol!

I agree the subject of racial beliefs in the 17thc is beyond the scope of this forum, but at the same time, Sancho very explicitly states that if his subjects turn out to be black, he will simply sell them into slavery. The context of his comments make it pretty clear that Africans were seen by Europeans as chattel, even at the time.

Your questions as to whether DQ is satire, philosophy or something else entirely also gets me thinking. Maybe it's both? Quixote seems to embody satire and Sancho philosophy, tho each of them also crosses over at times.

So far it certainly is entertaining. I wonder how much of what Cervantes did here was influenced by The Arabian Nights and The Canterbury Tales, each of which was also a collection of somewhat loosely related tales.

I just finished Ch 32 last night, which left off with them preparing to read the novel. I got excited - oh, another story within a story! Looking forward to reading it tonight.