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Cervantes' Don Quixote

Yale, , Prof. Roberto González Echevarría

Updated On 02 Feb, 19

Overview

The course facilitates a close reading of Don Quixote in the artistic and historical context of renaissance and baroque Spain. Students are also expected to read four of Cervantes' Exemplary Stories, Cervantes' Don Quixote: A Casebook, and J.H. Elliott's Imperial Spain. Cervantes' work will be discussed in relation to paintings by Velazquez. The question of why Don Quixote is read today will be addressed throughout the course. Students are expected to know the book, the background readings and the materials covered in the lectures and class discussions.

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Lecture 16:

4.1 ( 11 )

Lecture Details

Cervantes Don Quixote (SPAN 300)

The loose format of the Quixote allows for the incorporation of different stories and texts, such as the Camachos wedding, which was going to be a play. The episode, a form of epithalamium based on the myth of Pyramus and Thisbe, states one of the main themes of part two, that art corrects nature. As a way of turning deceit, which would normally lead to disillusionment, into a happy ending, in Camachos wedding episode art helps nature to attain good ending. González Echevarría claims that in this episode there is a subtext in which marriage is not only a legal institution but also a transcendental metamorphosis of matter, or transubstantiation. The literal blending of bloods that makes marriage indivisible is echoed here through what González Echevarría calls the itinerary of blood. In the interpretation of the myth Cervantes resembles Velázquez in that they both show the inner recesses of representation they show creation as a layered process that ultimately involves the real.

Complete course materials are available at the Open Yale Courses website httpopen.yale.educourses

This course was recorded in Fall 2009.