Don Quixote
Don Quixote is a Spanish epic novel by Miguel de Cervantes. Originally published in two parts, in 1605 and 1615, its full title is The Ingenious Gentleman Don Quixote of La Mancha. A founding work of Western literature, it is often labelled as the first modern noveland one of the greatest works ever written. Don Quixote is also one of the most-translated books in the world and the best-selling novel of all time.
The plot revolves around the adventures of a member of the lowest nobility, an hidalgo from La Mancha named Alonso Quijano, who reads so many chivalric romances that he either loses or pretends to have lost his mind in order to become a knight-errant to revive chivalry and serve his nation, under the name Don Quixote de la Mancha. He recruits a simple farmer, Sancho Panza, as his squire, who often employs a unique, earthy wit in dealing with Don Quixote's rhetorical monologues on knighthood, already considered old-fashioned at the time, and representing the most droll realism in contrast to his master's idealism.
Don Quixote had a major influence on the literary community, as evidenced by direct references in Alexandre Dumas' The Three Musketeers (1844), Mark Twain's Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884), and Edmond Rostand's Cyrano de Bergerac (1897), as well as the word quixotic.
Many critics came to view the work as a tragedy in which Don Quixote's idealism and nobility are viewed by the post-chivalric world as insane, and are defeated and rendered useless by common reality; by the 20th century, the novel had come to occupy a canonical space as one of the foundations of letters in literature.
Excerpted from Don Quixote on Wikipedia.
Don Quixote
| Author | Miguel de Cervantes |
| Country | Habsburg Spain |
| Genre | Adventure, Romances, Picaresque Novel, Literary fiction |
| Copyright | Public domain worldwide. |
| Book cover | "The famous windmill scene" Image: Gustave Doré|wikipedia |
| Ebooks | Project Gutenberg |
| Scans | Google-digitized |
| Audio | Librivox | Internet Archive |
| Read online | Don Quixote I, II, III, IV --Read by Expatriate-- |
