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Tags: Literature, Lang:en
Summary
Graf argues that the doubts expressed by both historicists
and postmodernists regarding the progressive nature of
Don Quijote are exaggerated. He also argues that
interpretations that abstain from this debate by emphasizing
authorial ambivalence or positioning the novel at a crossroads
do not seem as responsible as they once did. Beyond these
skeptical and neutral alternatives, there are key steps forward
in Cervantes's worldview. These four essays detail
Don Quijote's anticipations of many of the same ideas
and values that drive today's multiculturalism, feminism,
secularism, and materialism. An important thesis here is that
the Enlightenment remains the best vantage point from which to
appreciate the novel's relation to the discourses of such
movements. Thus Voltaire's
Candide (1759), Feijoo's
Defensa de las mujeres (1726), and Hobbes's
Leviathan (1651) are each shown to be logical
extensions of some of Cervantes's most fundamental
propositions. Finally, this book will still be of interest to specialists
immune to the ideological anxieties arising from debates over
notions of modernity. Graf also explores the interrelated
meaning of a number of
Don Quijote's symbols, characters, and episodes,
pinpoints several of the novel's most important classical and
medieval sources, and unveils for us its first serious English
reader. **