![]() ![]() ![]() In the space of a few pages, what started as an exercise in comic ridicule and, as the narrator insists on several occasions, a satirical send-up of the tales of chivalry, has taken on an entirely different dimension it has begun to transform itself into the story of a relationship between two characters whose incompatible takes on the world are bridged by friendship, loyalty, and eventually love.Įgginton identifies Cervantes' ability to allow his readers inside his character's heads, to provide them with a sense of empathy, as Don Quixote's literary innovation, laying the philosophical groundwork for our relationship to the novel in the centuries that followed. Instead of focusing on the absurd action, Egginton zeroes in on the response of Sancho Panza, Quixote's traveling companion, who recognizes the extent of Quixote's delusions, and accepts him nonetheless. William Egginton, professor in Johns Hopkins University's Department of German and Romance Languages and Literatures, tackles this most infamous adventure early on in his book The Man Who Invented Fiction (Bloomsbury), which was published earlier this year, the quadricentennial of Cervantes' death. The expression "tilting at windmills" has become colloquial shorthand for attacking imaginary enemies. This episode in Spanish author Miguel de Cervantes' Don Quixote, first published in 1605, is the most comically iconic scene in the novel and often the only thing that springs to mind when thinking about it. Don Quixote mistook windmills for giants and attacked them with his lance. ![]()
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