Seldom has a single book, much less a translation, so deeply
affected English literature as the translation of Cervantes' "Don
Quixote" in 1612. The comic novel inspired drawings, plays,
sermons, and other translations, making the name of the Knight of
la Mancha as familiar as any folk character in English lore.
In this comprehensive study of the reception and conversion of
"Don Quixote" in England, Ronald Paulson highlights the qualities
of the novel that most attracted English imitators. The English Don
Quixote was not the same knight who meandered through Spain, or
found a place in other translations throughout Europe. The English
Don Quixote found employment in all sorts of specifically English
ways, not excluding the political uses to which a Spanish fool
could be turned.
According to Paulson, a major impact of the novel and its hero
was their stimulation of discussion about comedy itself, what he
calls the "aesthetics of laughter." When Don Quixote reached
England he did so at the time of the rise of empiricism, and
adherents of both sides of the empiricist debate found arguments
and evidence in the behavior and image of the noble knight. Four
powerful disputes battered around his grey head: the proximity of
madness and imagination; the definition of the beautiful; the
cruelty of ridicule and its laughter; and the role of reason in the
face of madness. Paulson's engaging account leads to a significant
reassessment of current assumptions about eighteenth-century
literature and art.
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