Don Quixote

Don Quixote believes that the windmills really were giants—but that they were turned into windmills by his nemesis, a magician named Friston. The windmills that Don Quixote spots in the distance...

It is difficult to say what exactly the windmills represent or why the author chose them as the target of Don Quixote's anger. There are two possible explanations for this, both of which are...

Like so much with him, Quixote's armor is his own creation. Quixote's armor is of his family name and something that is homemade: "The first thing he did was to clean up some armour that had...

Don Quixote, particularly in the first part of Don Quixote, changes extraordinarily little in response to the actions and words of the characters with whom he comes into contact. Taking the content...

The strictest definition of “tragedy” is a narrative that deals with the downfall of a protagonist, often due to their own error. Don Quixote is a hero who lives his life acting like a knight, a...

Whether or not Don Quixote is the first modern novel is debatable, but proponents of this notion argue their case with the following considerations: Don Quixote is a work of literature that...

The conclusion of Cervantes' Don Quixote, for all of its ostensible solemnity, is as satirical as the rest of the novel. The copious language indicating a return to sanity and the renunciation of...

Don Quixote is a satire of courtly romantic stories. The character of Don Quixote believes he is a real knight, and he comports himself with all the honor, grace, and bravery that he possibly can....

Humor is an integral part of Cervantes's classic novel Don Quixote. The most immediately apparent source of humor in the work arises from the distance between the protagonist Don Quixote's...

The title character in the Miguel de Cervantes novel Don Quixote is a man who chooses to see the world through the lens of his ideals rather than settle for the mundane reality of country life. Don...

On almost every scale that others have applied to him, Quixote measures up as idealist. His very name has become synonymous with idealism, and even his delusional behavior of tilting at windmills...

Cervantes’s novel Don Quixote reflects both a humorous and a satirical approach to its subject matter. Admittedly, it is a satire on chivalric romance. In fact, the word satire in the sense of...

Alonso Quixano is a middle-aged (about 50 years old), low-born noble (hidalgo) from the arid, windswept region of La Mancha in central Spain (present-day Castile–La Mancha) who spends his time...

Having made the fateful decision to set off on his adventures as a knight-errant, Don Quixote now has to look the part; he has to put on the armor of a knight before venturing forth to do battle...

It is interesting to mention that the creation of this novel was influenced by the societal, economical, moral, and psychological circumstances in which Cervantes lived and wrote. This is best...

Well, I don't see how it's possible, when looking at Don Quixote in context of .. well ... the text, to see him as a noble idealist. The dear man was a bit daft. He was obsessed, in his isolation,...

Don Quixote explains to Sancho that the windmills he thought were giants really were giants; he says that Friston turned them into windmills to prevent him from getting the glory of killing them....

Ok- I believe you are referring to the main character. His name, El Licenciado Alonso Quijano de La Mancha, (the attorney Alonso Quixano from La Mancha) changed his name to Don Quijote de La...

I can think of several examples of the theme of love in Don Quixote. In the very first chapter, when Don Quixote decides to undertake his quest and become a knight like the ones he has so admired...

We are told that all the books of knightly and courtly adventure Don Quixote reads have turned his mind and have, in fact, made him a bit crazy. (Whether or not Quixote truly is insane is one of...

The character of Don Quixote is complex, but is easily understood by the concepts of Chivalry, which are the direct cause of his insanity and subsequent actions. Don Quixote reads extensively in...

Don Quixote and Sancho Panza leave La Mancha because Don Quixote has read chivalric romances that make him want to right all the wrongs in the world. As Cervantes writes: In short, his wits being...

Don Quixote's (really Alonso Quijano's) occupation is not named. He is simply a "gentleman" from La Mancha (in the Dedication he is first called "The Ingenious Gentleman Don Quixote of la Mancha")...

Don Quijote de La Mancha is a parody based on historical fiction and stories of chivalry which are very inherent to the 16th century in both Spain and most of Europe. The mockery of historical...

In chapter one of Don Quixote, Quixote, in order to begin his quest to seek honor and glory as a knight, attempts to repair his great grandfather’s armor. The armor is very old, rust-eaten, and...

Don Quixote and Alonso Quijana are the same person. Don Quixote started life as Alonso Quijana, and Sancho and his wife were Quijana's loyal servants. Quijana is a typical gentleman of his time and...

I tend to read the theme of this book along rather specific lines: participating in popular fads is equivalent to living in a dream world. The young lovers are inauthentic, just as Don Quixote is...

The main themes in the novel and primarily in Chapter X are metafiction and metatheater. Metafiction, according to Patricia Waugh, is: fictional writing which self-consciously and systematically...

Don Quixote spent much of his time reading romances about the feats of noble knights doing good, and protecting the vulnerable. These highly idealized, unrealistic stories presented the world as...

One meaningful story that comes to mind occurs when Don Quixote comes upon a landowner beating his servant. Quixote intervenes, meaning to do good. He compels the man to stop the beating. However,...

It is difficult to say who Cervantes influences were because much of the literature that influenced him was anonymous. He was probably familiar with many of the Medieval legends and tales...

In this very famous scene, which has been immortalized by phrases such as "tilting a windmills" and in art by Pablo Picasso, Don Quixote mistakes some windmills for giants and, in true knightly...

As we might expect, the outcome of this encounter is not one that Don Quixote had bargained for. When the Don sees some prisoners in chains on their way to the ships to be used as galley-slaves,...

I don't think that Sancho believed in Quixote's dreams as much as Quixote did, but there is some level of adherence to Quixote's notion of reality. When Quixote sees monsters, Sancho sees them as...

Don Quixote has spent so much time reading courtly romances about knights and their ladies that it has addled the middle-aged man's mind, and, we are told, made him crazy. Whether or not he really...

In part I2 when Sancho Panza becomes governor of the island, Quixote gives him some advice about humility. Sancho is concerned, now that his dream is becoming a reality, about his lower-class birth...

The ability to dream is a powerful and almost universal concept. Cervantes' work makes this its central premise or idea and this might be a reason why the work has endured over time. Quixote is a...

The perception of reality is actually the mockery that Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra intended to emphasize in the story of Don Quixote. This is a quite tri-dimensional story, almost magical, which...

I think that Quixote was ahead of his time in articulating the need for dreams in the individual subconsciousness. Quixote is driven by the need to be a knight. It is a dream, a pursuit, embedded...

The second question is critical to answering the first one. I think that some level of discussion has to be established on whether Quixote is pretending to be mad in order to avoid a particular...

In this famous scene, which spawned the phrase "tilting at windmills" to describe an action that is an exercise in futility, Don Quixote believes he is doing his duty as a knight by taking on the...

Don Quixote asserts that chivalry and romantic love are the unrealistic ideals of romance novels. They may make entertaining reading in a book but they don't translate into real life. Don Quixote...

There is considerable supporting evidence. Don Quixote has many rejoinders on the occasions when he finds his sanity challenged. Speaking of the “fool” character in a man, he points out, “the man...

Don Quixote leaves his comfortable home to pursue a great romantic dream. He has lost touch with reality and fallen under the illusion that he is, in fact, a knight-errant of bygone days. His...

In the story, Don Quixote is really the alter ego of Senor Quijada. For his part, Senor Quijada is a middle-aged gentleman who lives an average life. In his spare time, he obsessively devours...

You should be able to get many different responses to this question in contrasting both heroes and their quests. I would say that the primary level of comparison between both is that they both...

Metafiction is fiction that reminds the reader of being inside a fictional universe. Cervantes does this by constantly juxtaposing the gritty reality of life in Spain against Don Quixote's desire...

Don Quixote tells the story of a character whose mission is to return chivalry to the world. The main character of the book is portrayed as clumsy and delusional and he often fails (comically) in...

The opening scene of Miguel de Cervantes’ novel, Don Quixote, invokes the generic conventions of the mock-epic by replicating traditional epic openings, albeit figured parodically. The prologue...

I think that you can find different answers or approaches to this question. I am going to throw my hat in the ring by suggesting that Quixote is not entirely a defender of Christianity. I am not...