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Don Quixote, tr. John Ormsby

Miguel de Cervantes

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Don Quixote follows Alonso Quixano, a minor country gentleman near fifty who reads so many tales of knights that he sets out as a knight-errant himself. He takes the name Don Quixote, a farmer called Sancho Panza as his squire, and a village woman as the lady Dulcinea. Windmills become giants and inns become castles, and he is beaten again and again. In the second part he meets readers who know his earlier story and plays tricks on him. He finally gives up his dream, dies sane, and is called Alonso Quixano the Good.

Where it happens

  1. La Mancha The region of Spain that gives Quixote his title and where the story opens.1
  2. El Toboso Village of Dulcinea, which Quixote and Sancho travel toward.1
  3. Toledo City of the traders Quixote challenges to praise Dulcinea.1
  4. Sierra Morena Mountains the pair wander into after the galley slaves, where Quixote plays the hermit.1
  5. Barcelona Setting of Quixote's defeat by the Knight of the White Moon, and of the 1617 joint edition.1
  6. Madrid Where the first part was printed and two editions appeared by August 1605.1
  7. Tarragona Place of publication of Avellaneda's false second part.1
  8. Lisbon Two editions of the first part were published here by August 1605.1

Through time

  1. 1604Cervantes sells the rights to the first part to Francisco de Robles.1
  2. 1605The first part comes out on 16 January, and by August there are five editions in Madrid, Lisbon and Valencia.1
  3. 1612Thomas Shelton's English translation of the first part appears.1
  4. 1614A false second part under the name Avellaneda is published.1
  5. 1615Cervantes's own second part is published.1
  6. 1617Both parts are printed together as one edition in Barcelona.1
  7. 1885John Ormsby's English translation is published.3

Who is in it, and behind it

Miguel de Cervantes author

Spanish author who wrote both parts, published in 1605 and 1615.1

Don Quixote (Alonso Quixano) character

A hidalgo of about fifty from La Mancha who takes up knight-errantry.1

Sancho Panza character

The farm labourer who becomes Quixote's squire and answers his lofty speech with plain wit.1

Dulcinea del Toboso character

The lady Quixote invents out of Aldonza Lorenzo, a village woman.1

Cide Hamete Benengeli character

The Moorish historian Cervantes names as the source of much of the story.1

Francisco de Robles printer

Madrid bookseller who bought the rights to the first part in 1604.1

Alonso Fernandez de Avellaneda subject

Pen name of the unidentified author of the false second part of 1614.1

Thomas Shelton translator

Made the first English translation of the first part, in 1612.1

John Ormsby translator

Translator of the version read here, dated 1885.13

What it is about

Books remake a reader

Quixote lives out chivalric romances as if they were fact, and the book keeps asking where reading ends and life begins.1

Illusion against reality

Quixote and Sancho move in opposite directions, he sees the world as a knightly tale and Sancho climbs from reality toward illusion.1

A book that knows itself

Cervantes names a Moorish historian as source, and in the second part Quixote meets people who have read the first, including a printing house reprinting Avellaneda.1

Names carry the joke

Rocinante reverses the meaning of a horse's name and Dulcinea alludes to illusion.1

In its own words

Idle reader: thou mayest believe me without any oath that I would this book, as it is the child of my brain, were the fairest, gayest, and cleverest that could be imagined. But I could not counteract Nature’s law that everything shall beget its like;
THE AUTHOR’S PREFACE. Cervantes opens the book speaking straight to the reader about his own work. Read on
In a village of La Mancha, the name of which I have no desire to call to mind, there lived not long since one of those gentlemen that keep a lance in the lance-rack, an old buckler, a lean hack, and a greyhound for coursing.
CHAPTER I. WHICH TREATS OF THE CHARACTER AND PURSUITS OF THE FAMOUS GENTLEMAN DON QUIXOTE OF LA MANCHA. The famous opening sentence that introduces the gentleman and his habits. Read on
Fortune is arranging matters for us better than we could have shaped our desires ourselves, for look there, friend Sancho Panza, where thirty or more monstrous giants present themselves, all of whom I mean to engage in battle and slay, and with whose spoils we shall begin to make our fortunes;
CHAPTER VIII. OF THE GOOD FORTUNE WHICH THE VALIANT DON QUIXOTE HAD IN THE TERRIBLE AND UNDREAMT-OF ADVENTURE OF THE WINDMILLS, WITH OTHER OCCURRENCES WORTHY TO BE FITLY RECORDED. The windmill adventure, source of the phrase tilting at windmills. Read on
Freedom, Sancho, is one of the most precious gifts that heaven has bestowed upon men; no treasures that the earth holds buried or the sea conceals can compare with it; for freedom, as for honour, life may and should be ventured; and on the other hand, captivity is the greatest evil that can fall to the lot of man.
CHAPTER LVIII. WHICH TELLS HOW ADVENTURES CAME CROWDING ON DON QUIXOTE IN SUCH NUMBERS THAT THEY GAVE ONE ANOTHER NO BREATHING-TIME. Quixote speaks on freedom as one of the greatest gifts heaven gave. Read on
Knight of the White Moon, whose unheard-of achievements will perhaps have recalled him to thy memory. I come to do battle with thee and prove the might of thy arm, to the end that I make thee acknowledge and confess that my lady, let her be who she may, is incomparably fairer than thy Dulcinea del Toboso.
CHAPTER LXIV. TREATING OF THE ADVENTURE WHICH GAVE DON QUIXOTE MORE UNHAPPINESS THAN ALL THAT HAD HITHERTO BEFALLEN HIM. The challenge by the knight who beats Quixote at Barcelona. Read on
no longer Don Quixote of La Mancha, but Alonso Quixano, whose way of life won for him the name of Good. Now am I the enemy of Amadis of Gaul and of the whole countless troop of his descendants; odious to me now are all the profane stories of knight-errantry; now I perceive my folly, and the peril into which reading them brought me; now, by God’s mercy schooled into my right senses, I loathe them.”
CHAPTER LXXIV. OF HOW DON QUIXOTE FELL SICK, AND OF THE WILL HE MADE, AND HOW HE DIED. At death Quixote sets aside the knight and takes back his own name. Read on

The shape of the book

144 chapters, 421,017 words. Point at a bar.

How it came to be here

Cervantes sold the rights to the first part to the Madrid bookseller Francisco de Robles in 1604, and it came out on 16 January 1605. A false second part by a writer calling himself Avellaneda appeared in 1614, which pushed Cervantes to finish his own. His second part followed in 1615 and the two were printed together in Barcelona in 1617. Thomas Shelton's English version of the first part came out in 1612. The site reads John Ormsby's translation of 1885, also given by Project Gutenberg.

Free to read elsewhere

Sources

  1. Don Quixote - Wikipedia
  2. Don Quixote, by Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, translated by John Ormsby - Project Gutenberg
  3. Don Quixote, translated by John Ormsby - Standard Ebooks

Text: Ormsby translation (see also improved PG 5921, 5946 vols). Public domain in the USA (Project Gutenberg).

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