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This study offers a reading of Don Quixote to argue that this work was more than just hilariously comic entertainment. Rather, it belongs to a “subversive tradition” which constantly questioned the aims and standards of the imperial nation state that Counter-reformation Spain had become from the point of view of Renaissance humanism. In response to censorship run largely by the Inquisition, writers became adept at camouflaging heterodox ideas. Ironically, Cervantes’ success in avoiding the attention of the censor by concealing his criticisms beneath irony and humour was so effective that even some twentieth-century scholars have maintained Don Quixote is a brilliantly funny book but no more. R.K. Britton draws on scholarship—including ideas on cultural authority and studies on the way Don Quixote addresses history, truth, writing, law, and gender—and engages with the same issues as Cervantes did.
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Don Quixote and the Subversive Tradition of Golden Age Spain
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This study offers a reading of Don Quixote, with comparative material from Golden Age history and Cervantes’ life, to argue that his greatest work was not just the hilariously comic entertainment that most of his contemporaries took it to be. Rather, it belongs to a “subversive tradition” of writing that grew up in sixteenth-century Spain and which constantly questioned the aims and standards of the imperial nation state that Counter-reformation Spain had become from the point of view of Renaissance humanism. Prime consideration needs to be given to the system of Spanish censorship at the time, run largely by the Inquisition albeit officially an institution of the crown, and its effect on the cultural life of the country. In response, writers of poetry and prose fiction – strenuously attacked on moral grounds by sections of the clergy and the laity – became adept at camouflaging heterodox ideas through rhetoric and imaginative invention. Ironically, Cervantes’ success in avoiding the attention of the censor by concealing his criticisms beneath irony and humour was so effective that even some twentieth-century scholars have maintained Don Quixote is a brilliantly funny book but no more. Bob Britton draws on recent critical and historical scholarship – including ideas on cultural authority and studies on the way Cervantes addresses history, truth, writing, law and gender in Don Quixote – and engages with the intellectual and moral issues that this much-loved writer engaged with. The summation and appraisal of these elements within the context of Golden Age censorship and the literary politics of the time make it essential reading for all those who are interested in or study the Spanish language and its literature.
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Cover illustration: “Vista de Sevilla,” attributed to Alonso Sánchez Coello (1532–1588). Reproduced with the kind permission of the Museo de América, Ministerio de Educación, Cultura y Deporte, Madrid, Spain. R. K. Britton is an honorary research fellow in the Department of Hispanic Studies, Sheffield University, where he is also a part-time tutor in Spanish in The Institute of Lifelong Learning. His research interests are modern Latin American literature, the literature and culture of Golden Age Spain and literary translation. His The Poetic and Real Worlds of César Vallejo (1892–1938) was widely reviewed: “Bob Britton’s book brings César Vallejo fascinatingly to life”, Adam Feinstein, author of Pablo Neruda: A Passion for Life.
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Don Quixote and the Subversive Tradition of Golden Age Spain R. K. BRITTON
Copyright © R. K. Britton, 2019. P