Publishing Info: --Franklin Center: The Franklin Library, 1979 Translated in 1950 by J.M. Cohen for Penguin Books. Text illustrated by Jose and Luis Jimenez y Avanda
Genre: - Novel
Sub-genre: - Comic Romance (In his famous introduction to Joseph Andrews Fielding calls it a "Comic Epic")
Nationality: -Spanish
Time Period: - 16th Century
First and Last Read in entirety by Dr. Rearick - Spring 1997
Rated: - A+
Location: - Rearick Home Library
Some very helpful notes from Barrons
Booknotes on our J-Drive
Moments of Wonder: Something that I frequently attempt to lookout for are what I call "Moments of Wonder." These occur often in our lives, but they do not get noticed much. I'm thinking of that early morning when I came upon a lake with the mist like a dragon's breath hovering over the still water or the snow filled night in the woods lit by an almost elfin glow. I value these moments because they move me and connect me in a Wordsworthian manner with a greater, archetypal reality. The problem with reading Don Quixote is that he too has his eye out for such visions. Some of his visions are patently absurd like the famous windmill attack. However, there are others which make more sense. In chapter 19 he and Sancho encounter a powerful moment when in the midst of a wilderness they find a procession of white-robed, horse-riding individuals with candles escorting a corps. The result, however, is much the same as the windmill adventure. He attacks only to find what he had thought to be a mysterious and wonderful adventure was nothing more than the transportation of a long dead monk who had been declared a saint and had been reclaimed by his home town. The text makes Don Quixote look foolish, but his visions are sometimes beautiful and I fear that I am more allied with Don Quixote than with the narrator. So I guess I had better prepare myself to feel the barbs of sarcasm the book aims at Don Quixote himself.
The Struggle of Humor Through Filters: One aspect of this novel which I believe is difficult for many modern readers (including myself) to appreciate is its humor. I know that people through the ages have found Don Quixote intensely amusing, and several works which I personally find funny point to Cervantes as their inspiration (Fielding's Joseph Andrews and Dickens' Pickwick Papers especially). Thus, the question comes up why am I not rolling off my chair while reading this classic in humor?
The difficulty with Don Quixote, as with a lot of old humor, is that it must function through what I shall call "filters," elements which distance readers from an intended joke. Some examples of such filters might be the distance between a humorous work's time and that of the reader's or perhaps the difference between the novel's originating culture and ours. Both of these exist in Don Quixote. Such filters work against the very fabric of the way humor works.
Usually the stuff which makes us laugh achieves this affect with surprise, and this element of surprise requires an immediacy that pushes a "punch-line" into our consciousness, shocks us, and makes us start at its absurdity. Thus, we laugh. Therefore, humorous material which is current often has an easier task making us guffaw (does anyone actually make that noise?) than older material since it can use all sorts of current idioms in new and unique ways. (In fact, when humor fails in TV or film it is often because writers use gags that modern viewers or readers recognize ahead of the punch line and so are not surprised. There is nothing so deadly to comedy than an "old joke.") The be effective comedy requires the momentary bafflement of the viewer / reader.
Unfortunately filters, because they block recognition, delay or even deaden that "surprise element." In Don Quixote I suspect that the main difficulty for me is that I am simply not getting the jokes since I am from a different time, speak a different language and live in an anglo-based culture. On tope of this, since I have not read many of the chivalric romances Cervantes spoofs, I know I'm am missing a lot of the primary satire of the novel. Fortunately these difficulties can be lessened by acquiring information.
All of us are familiar with the experience of not getting a joke until important information is supplied. This has occurred many times to me with the old Warner Brother Cartoons (Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck). Of course, as a child I got most of the slapstick, but as my awareness of history and past cultural events spoofed by those cartoons developed, I am getting more and more of the jokes. (It wasn't until I learned about Home Defense Wardens during World War II that I understood Bugs wearing a helmet and yelling at his opponent to "Turn off that Light!").
Even today I don't understand everything. Of course, they're still funny. But the more old films I watch and the more history I learn, the more punch lines I recognize and the funnier the cartoons get. One can see why the humor of Don Quixote, a work written during the same period as Shakespeare, sometimes eludes the modern reader. Those cartoons sprang from our culture and were done in our language. The only filter (which still stops some of the punch-lines) is the separation from our culture by only about twenty to thirty years. Don Quixote is separated from us by about 300 years as well as by language (Spanish) and culture (Renaissance Spain). It's a wonder we get any of the jokes at all.
The Failure of Humor Through Filters: In Don Quixote, the initial scenes are for me funny enough as the mad knight mistakes inns for castles, inn wenches (prostitutes) as fair ladies, and the host as a mighty lord. The Host himself, in good humor, plays along with the Don Quixote, knights him and even advises him to be sure to pack clean shirts on his next adventures. This is all gently humorous. However, the brutal pain that Don Quixote and Sancho suffer--especially when he looses several teeth in a battle with shepherds and has his ribs broken in an inn--just do not strike me as very funny. I found myself wincing more often than laughing. And while I know this type of slapstick once appealed to readers (and viewers) and am reminded of similar comic "beatings" on Shakespeare's stage, to me--and I believe for many moderns--these events evoke pity more than mirth. The filter of cultural taste is too different.
Another case of a joke not making it to modern readers is Sancho's title
of Don Quixote--this time the problem lies in the filter of language. Most
translators write Sancho's title as "The Knight of the Rueful Figure" or
"Knight of the Woeful Countenance" (this term is used in the musical Man
of La Mancha). However, both of these sound rather elevated to the
ears of modern readers, and for Christian readers there is even a connection
with Jesus as "The Man of Sorrows." However, my Cliff Notes for
Don Quixote (yes I do read those) states that a translation more in
tune with the tone of the narrative would be "Sir Sad Sack." If I had actually
read that I certainly would have been startled and laughed. Here the joke
is lost because the translators have chosen to stay more with the literal
meaning rather than with the tone.
The Success of Humor Through Filters: Having written the above, lengthy comments I now must admit that I have just read several passages so funny that I laughed out loud. In chapter 20 (the same in which Sancho names Don Quixote 'Knight of the Rueful Figure), Sancho is terrified by a series of mysterious, earth-shaking thuds. Don Quixote believes that these foretell a grand adventure, but he too is frightened and gives Sancho all sorts of instructions of what to do if he should not return. Meanwhile, in the midst of his terror of the continuing thuds, Sancho secretly ties Don Quixote's horse's legs together in the dark so that it will not obey the knight's command to advance. Furthermore Sancho clings to his master, but at the same time he finds that he must do a poop. So he drops his drawers and attempts to relieve himself while not letting go of Don Quixote. The narrator goes to great lengths describing his attempts to defecate quietly, but he notes that the smell is still very noticeable. And Don Quixote, smelling the poop, thinks that Sancho has done it in his pants because of fright and suggests (while holding his nose) that his servant should go a few steps apace to fix himself since such distance would be more respectful of his knightly rank. I found all this very funny, so I guess bathroom humor is potent enough to pass through all the filters mentioned before.
What had terrified Sancho and Don Quixote so much were some automated fulling hammers used for. . .I don't know what, but obviously something very common in Cervantes' day. But what follows is interesting because Sancho in relief explodes with laughter, and even Don Quixote smiles to himself until he hears Sancho mimicking all his grave instructions on what to do if he failed to return. The point here is that Don Quixote is himself aware of his own absurdity, but he is angered by Sancho's overt humor and makes the following comment which is in itself very important to the nature of the novel's humor and serious side:
Do you think that if these fulling-hammers had really been some perilous adventure I should not have shown the courage necessary to undertake it and carry it through? Am I , by chance, being as I am a knight, to recognize and distinguish sounds and know whether they are fulling-hammers or not? For the case may be-as indeed it is-that I have never seen such things in my life, though you have seen them, wretched peasant that you are, and were born and brought up among them. But turn those hammers into six giants, and let them beard me one by one or all together, and if do not lay them all on their backs, make as much fun of me as you will. (198)The point is that Don Quixote did advance towards what he assumed were dangers and would have attacked if he had confronted monsters. His nobility is in his willingness to attempt the deed even though what he discovers in his attempts makes the reader, Sancho, and even himself (if on the sly) laugh. That is the basic mechanism of the novel.
Courtly Love's Endurance in the Modern Age: An interesting development in Don Quixote is how much the role of "Courtly Love" plays in the novel. My reference to "the modern age" has to do with the fact that for scholars the world of the novel is especially modern. Courtly Love, meanwhile, is one of the center points of many of the medieval romances involving knights. What is surprising is that while Don Quixote is alone in his following most of Chivalric ideals, he runs across a number of individuals who have followed extreme behavior in the name of love. Very early in the novel Sancho and Quixote discover the brier carrying the corps of a young shepherd (actually a noble lad in shepherd costume) who had "died for love." At his funeral a poem typeical of despairing lovers is read. Interestingly the young lady who had turned his love away and thus was blamed for his death arrives to defend herself. She does it so well that Don Quixote applauds her. But the fact remains that a young man is dead and no reason is given for his death other than love. That is Courtly Love. It is true that the behavior of the mad knight spoofs chivalric love when he "plans" to go mad in a wilderness (throwing off all of his clothes and embarrassing poor Sancho so much that he turns the eyes of Don Quixote's horse away, so he does not have to see his master naked. In spite of this satire there are in the same section a number of stories involving people going off into desolate places because of love (See also the following comments about Pastoralism). So I don't know what to think.
I have just finished a counter story to the "Courtly Love" theme in the "Tale of Unwise Curiosity." This is a sardonic story of a foolish man who literally pushes his wife and best friend into adultery. I will have to see where it all goes.
What is Pastoralism Doing Here? Another interesting element in Don Quixote is its inclusion of "Pastoralism." Although it did exist before and during the middle ages, it was not really until the Cervantes' day that the idea of high born people escaping into the wilderness to deal with their woes became popular. Shakespeare's comedy in the forest of Arden, As You Like It, is an example of this. This was also the same time as the publishing of 'Sydney's Arcadia. And, especially important to the chivalric tradition, this period also saw the sixth book of Spencer's Fairy Queen which follows the adventures a knight who withdraws to live with some shepherds and gain relief. What I can not tell yet is whether this is going to be a spoor of pastoralism or the actual celebration of the idea. Certainly several serious characters try the pastoral life-style.