This seems like an absurd notion if you read some of the book itself. Yah Don is goofy and does shit that is obviouly mental, But some of the deeper and more compelling parts of the early chapters are specificly about the virtues of chivalry. Don as Well as others like a passing Noble gives some extremely artistic love letters and musings to and about the nature of chivalry. There is a whole chapter dedicating to gushing about particularly good examples of chivalric romances and which ones should be thrown away as bad influences on the Don. There is a whole bit about Don defendnig the right of a well spoken lady to not marry because he saw the honest noble merits in her words when others would continue to chase her.And DESU these topics tend to be way more interesting and have more heart put into them than him lancing windmills and calling barmaids princesses, although they are more iconic. There is definitely critiques in there as well, but there is obviously a love for the genre too. It seems like a work that both pokes fun at the absurdity of as well as appreciates the genuineness of chivalry in turn.
True, and I also don't agree with the notion that it's about how reality and materiality always defeats ideas. Don Quixote takes a lot of L's but every time he just brushes it off and continues forward. The enemy that ultimately ended his adventures was a fantastical/ideological one in the Knight of the Moon, not one born from reality.Ideologues and zealots can never be destroyed with material means alone. Ideas can only be defeated by other ideas, fantasies can only be defeated by fantasies. When people lack a worldview of their own they will inevitably find themselves wrapped up in and consumed by the worldview of another man, no matter how ridiculous they initially find it, because man is primarily a spiritual/ideological creature and cannot survive in a spiritual/ideological void.This is why Sancho, and even the priest and barber who had been so critical of Don's lunacy, find themselves so enveloped in Quixote's fantasy and don't even question the notion of becoming shepherds with him by the end of the book.
>>25579367Put yourself in time and place. Spain's literature is realistic in extreme, as opposed to British fantasy. Imagine if it was about anime instead of chivalry and the protagonist started to talk about the virtues of Goku and Naruto in the middle of a political debate.
>>25579417If that was the case, you could tell the author himself was a massive fan of goku and naruto as well. He would gush on exactly why Goku and Naruto was cool in the eloquent detail of a superfan and put most of his passion into those topics, between misadventures. It would be a half love letter half critique.
>>25579447Oh, for sure. I also watched anime when I was a kid and a teenager. Never brought it to reality like some cosplayers or roleplayers do, though. And I think it would be ridiculous in any serious situation with non-otakus.
>>25579367yeah anyone who's read the books should know they are not criticizing chivalry, but the low quality entertainment books written about it. these were essentially the cape slop of that time.
>>25579367It's about chivalry being dead, he is mocked throughout the book for holding on to his old ways. You can decide for yourself whether chivalry is practical but it was written in a time where all the old chivalrous geezers had died off.
If Cervantes hated chivalry, why would he have read so many books about it? It looks like he wanted to write, but not in the manner everyone else did, so he invented this meta narrative, where he incorporates motifs of pastoral, chivalric and other types of literature, while at the same time giving himself the opportunity to comment on various aspects of it through Don Quixote, Sancho and the rest of the characters.
>>25579678Typical british with their extreme views. You can like something and still criticize it. You can criticize something without hating it. You can also, like Cervantes, criticize how PEOPLE interact with said thing.
>>25579367>can't mock empty observance of Christianity directly>use chivalry insteadIt's a picaresque. That's the point. The fool knight errant actually believes and acts on it, at least.
>>25579873But his primary view wasnt even critical, it was only partially critical, its pretty obviously even positively ROMANTIC at points about chivalry.Maybe thats a deficit in the English language that "critique" implies opposition.>>25579938Nah, Its pretty evidently something more artistically minded than theological.
>>25579938This, 100%.>>25579991A critique of religion doesn't have to be narrowly focused on its theology, but aim or extend to its ideals.
>>25580033>doesn't have to be narrowly focused on its theologyyah, but what I am saying is that Don Quixote isnt even particularly religiously charged. besides the inbaked religiosity that chivalry has within it. But even then, its more about the chivalry than the religion.
I haven't finished the book yet, so take what I have to say with a grain of salt, but I think that Don Quixote is not meant to be written as a dismissal of chivalry itself. I think there's a distinction to be made between the concept of chivalry and the state of chivalric writing by the time of Cervantes. Codes of chivalry did actually exist in historical Europe, which codified certain virtues that should be demonstrated by knights errant. However, chivalric writing had continued long after these codes, or knighthood in general, were relevant. By Cervantes' time, chivalric writing had grown fantastical and borderline debauched. The effect these writings were having on the populous was becoming a problem. I think Cervantes, in his writing of Don Quixote, set out to critique this, but not the concept of Chivalry itself.I recall a passage from the book where a shepherd learns about Don Quixote's habit of praying to Dulcinea del Toboso, and despite admiring the other aspects of his chivalry, he says it sounds like a pagan practice. I think this goes to show that Cervantes only wanted to criticize certain aspects of chivalry as it was understood at the time of writing.
>>25579367Thinking Don Quixote has anything to actually say about chivalry is like thinking Twilight is about vampires or werewolves.
I don't think anyone thinks that DQ is a book "hating on" chivalry. The notion of "hating on" something works in its context, which is something like a Juggalo defending cool ranch Doritos against a detractor. But it's not really a mode of critique that applies to a novel.
>>25579367It's satirizing chivalry. Your premise is unfounded.
>>25579552>Don Quixote was the Mel Brooks of literatureOh no Espanhermanos...
>>25579409>had been so criticalAnd also why the world seems so dead once the Don gives up and diesI love Part ii, the Duke and Duchess stuff, their need of the entertainments both Sancho and the Don provide-- their shutting it down once it becomes obvious that what the Don and Sancho 'provide' is far superior to their cynical attitude and titled, degenerate lifestyle that aside from keeping itself amused, does nothing. Don and Sancho cannot be seduced from both caring about and identifying with the humble 'people' --one of their triumphs. Another is that they are the source of their own entertainment. Reminds me of something obvious but often forgotten that Calasso said in a different context, 'in life, pursuit of the good is the only adventure' (something near this, aar)
>>25580044The Chilvalric ideals are thoroughly run through with Christian ideals. You don't see a connection between the Chivalric trope of needing a woman to fight for as connected with man's relationship to God? There's a passage where Quixote is defending Dulcinea to Sancho, and the language is straight out of Galatians and Acts.
>>25580486Every part of life under Christianity is run through with Christian ideals. That doesn't prove Quixote was critiquing chivalry as a workaround to critiquing Christianity, it's not even evidence of it. The connection is incidental.
>>25580565The critique of Chivalry isn't just some simple "the style is overwrought and the plots are nonsensical," but is a critique in Chivalric values and ideals, *which are necessarily Christian*. This is hammered away at over and over ESPECIALLY with Dulcinea, and that becomes more significant when you see how that trope connects with Christianity. It's in Dante, it's in Christian interpretations of Song of Solomon, it's in St. John of the Cross, it's in Christian Neoplatonists like Louis of Granada, and to make much of that trope isn't to amount to only criticizing a literary trope in a literary way, but to criticize the source of that trope that informs the trope. Again, Quixote's defense of Dulcinea to Sancho uses the language of Paul, and at one point praises her in language corresponding to *St. Ambrose's* division of the Good into honestum, utile, and delectabile.
>>25580373"satirizing" is a reductionistic label. Because it also genuinely extols many aspects of chivalry as well.Never even liked strict satires, because that focuses too strictly on flaws when most well founded examinations of topics dont just go after flaws, but can also give credit to things in turn.
>>25580486>The Chilvalric ideals are thoroughly run through with Christian ideals.I dont disagree, but it is not focused on wider christianity, but on the particularl institution of chivalry which is a particular confluence of martial secular traditons and religious traditions. A confluence that doesnt even strictly abide by catholic doctrine with its focus on forbidden loves, sensuality, and violence, in addition to its more christian characteristics of chastity, spirituality, and restraint. This is literally a major critique in the book that chivalry often breaks from church ways. Just before the Marcela episode, the noble comments this to don Quixote who then tries to reconcile this.
rápido rundown on this? does it play well on audio?
>>25579367Cervantes started out to write a novella sceptical of old romances and ended up creating the most beautiful apology for them that can be found in literature. He ended up writing a story about a knight, a real one. When you finish up with Quixote you know that he's the most perfect knight who ever rode out against a dragon. Under the scepticism, there was a man who loved the knights as much as Don Quixote himself. Above all, he was Spanish.
The character devours the chivalric romances to the point where the text devours him, altering his ontology to align with the story. Cervantes skillfully employs this madness to reflect upon the reader, inquiring about our vulnerability to the very fictions we live within. Quixote’s meaning is necessarily metatextual. It is a book about books and about reading and writing books, forewarning us of the intoxicating, even lethal, power of literature to transform the world, while at the same time demonstrating that those very same fictions are the only things that make the world bearable.
