Cervantes' Don Quixote has long been seen as the first modern novel, indeed as the fountainhead of European and American fiction, the work that teaches us both how to read and the ways that the world reads us. As we follow the meandering path of the deluded Don on his ancient horse, accompanied by his faithful squire Sancho Panza, we learn how to feel, how to think. As Nabokov said, Don Quixote "stands for everything that is gentle, forlorn, pure, unselfish, and gallant. The parody has become a paragon." In this SDG, we will read the novel in Edith Grossman's acclaimed translation, about 85 pages a week. We will conclude by discussing the novel's impact on later art and culture, taking Picasso's etchings of Don Quixote and Dale Wasserman's filmed musical, The Man of La Mancha, as jumping-off points and ending with a clip of Jim Nabors as Gomer Pyle.
Coordinator: Anne Mellor
Format: Gayley
Week 1 - Biography of Miguel de Cervantes (Wikipedia); Don Quixote, Prologue (pp. 1-9); First Part, chs. 1-13 (pp. 19-94)
Week 2 - Don Quixote, chs. 14-22
Week 3 - Don Quixote, chs. 23-30
Week 4 - Don Quixote, chs. 31-39
Week 5 - Don Quixote, chs. 40-49
Week 6 - Don Quixote, chs. 50-52; Second Part, chs. 1-8
Week 7 - Don Quixote, chs. 9-21
Week 8 - Don Quixote, chs. 22-33
Week 9 - Don Quixote, chs. 34-47
Week 10 - Don Quixote, chs. 48-59
Week 11 - Don Quixote, chs. 60-73 (end)
Week 12 - Picasso, etching of Don Quixote; The Man of La Mancha (1972 film based on the Broadway musical with Peter O'Toole, Sophia Loren and James Coco); a short clip of the original Broadway cast of Man of La Mancha performing on the Ed Sullivan show (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KyipQ9KrQ-k); and a short clip of Jim Nabors as Gomer Pyle singing "The Impossible Dream (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yJlgio-UOng).
Core Book: Miguel de Cervantes, Don Quixote, trans. Edith Grossman (2003, Harper Collins)
Bibliography
William Egginton, The Man who Invented Fiction - How Cervantes Ushered in the Modern World
Carroll B. Johnson, Don Quixote
Harold Bloom, Cervantes' Don Quixote (Modern Critical Interpretations, 2001)
Cambridge Companion to Cervantes, ed. Anthony Cascardi (2002)
Essays in Norton Critical Edition of Cervantes, Don Quijote, ed. Diana de Armas Wilson, 2020
Ian Watt, Myths of Modern Individualism (chapter on Don Quixote)