2015 Is the 4th Centennial of Don Q, Second Part

[dulcinea]

In what ways have Alonso Quijano, Sancho Panza and Aldonza Lorenzo touched you? I myself like to think that my ancestors include the hidalgo from Argamasilla de Alba and the dove from El Toboso.

[dulcinea]

In what ways have Alonso Quijano, Sancho Panza and Aldonza Lorenzo touched you? I myself like to think that my ancestors include the hidalgo from Argamasilla de Alba and the dove from El Toboso.

All right, so nobody here has read DON QUIXOTE; what other classics you are happy you skipped? THE DIVINE COMEDY? ORLANDO FURIOSO? JERUSALEM LIBERATED?
A classic is a book you wish you had read but don't really want to read--paraphrase of a quote of Samuel Langhorne Clemens, whose stuff I bet you haven't read either.

[jbuck919]

In what ways have Alonso Quijano, Sancho Panza and Aldonza Lorenzo touched you? I myself like to think that my ancestors include the hidalgo from Argamasilla de Alba and the dove from El Toboso.

All right, so nobody here has read DON QUIXOTE; what other classics you are happy you skipped? THE DIVINE COMEDY? ORLANDO FURIOSO? JERUSALEM LIBERATED?
A classic is a book you wish you had read but don't really want to read--paraphrase of a quote of Samuel Langhorne Clemens, whose stuff I bet you haven't read either.

Correct.

[John F]

Your CMG handle shows your special feeling for "Don Quixote" - happy anniversary!

2010 is also the 4th centennial of "The Winter's Tale," and next year will be the 400th birthday of "The Tempest," so I'll throw a party for Shakespeare while you're cutting the cake for Cervantes.

Astonishingly, both died on the same day, April 23, 1616. And yet another very great though much less well known playwright, Tang Xiansu, author of "The Peony Pavilion," died in 1616, though a little later (July 29). A deadly year for belles lettres, then, but one I hope is marked all over the world in 2016.

[dulcinea]

Has anybody ever commented on how unhappy Alonso Quijano must have been?
If he was in his fifties in 1604, he was born around 1550, the very exciting time when America was being explored and settled. As an hidalgo=squire, he belonged to the social class from which came the civil servants and the professional military of Spain. Very likely he yearned to participate in the wars of the period, and perhaps even to emigrate to America, a prospect that Cervantes himself considered for a time. Unfortunately his position as the leading citizen of Argamasilla de Alba forced him to stay in the village; later he had to take care of his niece, which meant that he could not marry and start his own family.
So there you have him: lonely and with frustrated ambitions, the kind of situation that leads middle aged people to take dramatic risks in order to improve their unsatisfactory lives. His romances of chivalry were not idle entertainment; they inspired in him the desire to prove himself a worthy descendant of the great-grandfather whose armour he wore--to prove himself truly worthy of being nicknamed El Bueno=the Good, which in medieval Spain also stood for Bueno en la Batalla=Brave in Battle.