Cervantes' Don Quixote
Yale, , Prof. Roberto González Echevarría
Updated On 02 Feb, 19
Yale, , Prof. Roberto González Echevarría
Updated On 02 Feb, 19
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.
4.1 ( 11 )
Cervantes Don Quixote (SPAN 300)
As we approach the end of the novel, Cervantes compresses and combines elements from different types of romances (morisco, Greek, pastoral) in what seems to be an attempt to create a new literary genre; the modern novel. In the episodes in Barcelona, the prank with the talking head makes literal the figure of prosopopeia; Don Quixotes visit to the printing shop explores the very origin of the book; the sign the boys hang on Don Quixotes back also reduces him to language. Avellanedas misreading of the Quixote coincides with that of the dueñas who punish Sancho, and is also ironically represented in Altisidoras dream. By taking literature to its limits, by incorporating Avellanedas book into the Quixote, by rejecting bookish knowledge in favor of experience, Cervantes seems to point to the idea that there is no position from which to stand outside of the world of fiction. The only way out would be through a voluntary act of the will, equivalent to the one Don Quixote makes after being defeated by the Knight of the White Moon.
Complete course materials are available at the Open Yale Courses website httpopen.yale.educourses
This course was recorded in Fall 2009.
Sam
Sep 12, 2018
Excellent course helped me understand topic that i couldn't while attendinfg my college.
Dembe
March 29, 2019
Great course. Thank you very much.