Reading Criticism In Don Quixote

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“In a village of La Mancha the name of which I have no desire to recall” is the starting phrase of the worldwide distinguished and praised novel “Don Quixote” that is in fact, the second best-selling book around the world after the Bible. The author of this novel, Miguel De Cervantes was a Spanish soldier, novelist, and poet born in 1547 in Alcala de Henares, a small town near Madrid. He wrote the first part of “Don Quixote de la Mancha” in 1605, and 10 years later the second part, in 1615. This novel has always been considered not only the birthplace of Spanish literature, but in fact, of literature in Spanish (as a language,) and admired by important writers around the world for the significant morals behind his metaphors. Moreover, “Don …show more content…

De Cervantes was eager to express his thoughts about contemporary literature written about the Middle Ages. Therefore, he did so by condemning the leading character of his book “Don Quixote” to lose his sanity after reading such books, imagining that only the content of the literature he read was not only his, but everybody’s reality. As De Cervantes states [Don Quixote felt those books] “were more real to him than anything else in the world” (392). Accordingly, he felt the need to fight against everything he would not recognize, such as windmills thinking they were giants, or flocks of sheep thinking they were armies that fought against him. He also believed that Dulcinea was a lady for whom he must earn his love, however, she was just a peasant named Aldonza Lorenzo. Each of these are examples to illustrate how distorted his mind stood after reading various 16th and 17th century books focused on knights, castles, princesses, etc. De Cervantes used his main character to show that such books were not educational, but rather they distorted one’s mind, as happened to Don Quixote that would distort the reality. According to Liu and Xin, both lecturers of the Department of English Language and Literature in China, “By making the image of Don Quixote, the novel adopts parody and irony to satirize the popular knight novel at that time in Spain” (669). Furthermore, Quixote’s imagination caused a great number of problems during his adventures with Sancho Panza, to the point that people mocked him and accused him of being crazy since he altered his entire life to be alike those tales, confusing ordinary dwellings with castles and maids with princesses. The author of the book showed that by reading these books one would lose his mind, and therefore the imagination would grow resulting in the misrepresentation of everything. As a matter of fact, Don Quixote’s imagination resulted in tremendous experiences and adventures,

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