I’m loving “Don Quixote” - it is hilarious, interesting, romantic (OED: Romance - A tale in verse, embodying the adventures of some hero of chivalry, esp. of those of the great cycles of mediaeval ages, and belonging both in matter and form to the ages of knighthood; also, in later use, a prose tale of similar character).
Having studied medieval literature when I returned to school to get my degree (was it only 4 years ago that I graduated?), I have a particular fondness for this kind of story. The digressions and disquisitions that Cervantes throws in, if anything help keep the medieval flavor of the tale, with a more updated feel to the language (which is appropriate for a book written during the Renaissance).
Although Don Quixote and Sancho Panza are the official protagonists, we learn much more about the peripheral characters, their feelings, beliefs, and motivations. So far (roughly 1/3 in), the tale of DQ’s adventures seems more like a framework used by Cervantes on which to hang the stories of other characters than the point of the book itself. Time is very flexible - in a couple hundred pages, barely three days pass, but then in just a couple pages, three more days are blithely mentioned as having passed.
The mixed feelings come from the peripheral characters’ reaction to Don Quixote and his perceived madness. His friends laugh at him secretly, manipulate him through lies, and even strangers make fun of him by pretending to go along with his worldview and beliefs in order to see what sort of outrageous things he will say or do. On one level, I find the story amusing as DQ does say and do more and more outrageous things; but I also cringe when I read about his friends the priest and the barber telling him lies and laughing behind his back at how DQ believes the lies.
Madness is next up on the table - who is, who isn’t, what is it anyway? Perhaps that will be answered as I read further…
