Tells the story of how Flaubert's admiration for Cervantes' Don Quijote unfolded, and how profoundly it shaped and influenced Flaubert's ambition and his approach to all his major works, beginning with his breakthrough novel "Madame Bovary".

This is the author's most influential work of literary theory and criticism in which she explores the relations between literature, philosophy, and psychoanalysis.

Contains Don Quixote, in Samuel Putnam's acclaimed translation, substantially complete, with editorial summaries of the omitted passages; two 'Exemplary Novels, 'Rinconete and Cortadillo' and 'Man of Glass'; and 'Foot in the Stirrup,' Cervantes's extraordinary farewell to life from The Troubles of Persiles and Sigismunda.

Soledad Fox's study situates each author in his respective historical and aesthetic context, and provides key examples of how the French author penetrated deeply into Cervantes' novelistic approach and how his relationship to Don Quijote directly shaped his success at the crux of his career."--BOOK JACKET.

This book is a unique scholarly attempt to examine Don Quixote from multiple angles to see how the re-accentuation of the world’s greatest literary hero takes place in film, theatre, and literature. To accomplish this task, eighteen scholars from the USA, Canada, Spain, and Great Britain have come together, and each of them has brought his/her unique perspective to the subject. For the first time, Don Quixote is discussed from the point of re-accentuation, i.e. having in mind one of the key Bakhtinian concepts that will serve as a theoretical framework. A primary objective was therefore to articulate, relying on the concept of re-accentuation, that the history of the novel has benefited enormously from the re-accentuation of Don Quixote helping us to shape countless iconic novels from the eighteenth century, and to see how Cervantes’s title character has been reinterpreted to suit the needs of a variety of cultures across time and space.

Cervantes’ Don Quixote is the most widely read masterpiece in world literature, as appealing to readers today as four hundred years ago. In Fighting Windmills Manuel Durán and Fay R. Rogg offer a beautifully written excursion into Cervantes’ great novel and trace its impact on writers and thinkers across centuries and continents. How did Cervantes write such a rich tale? Durán and Rogg explore the details of Cervantes’ life, the techniques with which he constructed the novel, and the central themes of the adventures of Don Quixote and his earthy squire Sancho Panza. The authors then provide an insightful, panoramic view of Cervantes’ powerful influence on generations of writers as diverse as Descartes, Voltaire, Dickens, Dostoyevsky, Twain, and Borges.

"Diana de Armas Wilson's introductory study captures the true essence of why Cervantes's novel has become a valuable piece of our shared cultural heritage. Humour, satire, and the religious and political conflicts that plagued the era all form part of Cervantes's great vision, and Wilson's study provides thorough analysis of why we still want to read the adventures of his would-be knight errant and his loyal squire over four centuries later." --AARON KAHN, University of Sussex

"A new translation by Burton Raffel"--Cover.

A groundbreaking cultural history of the most influential, most frequently translated, and most imitated novel in the world. The year 2015 marks the four hundredth anniversary of the publication of the complete Don Quixote of La Mancha—an ageless masterpiece that has proven unusually fertile and endlessly adaptable. Flaubert was inspired to turn Emma Bovary into “a knight in skirts.” Freud studied Quixote’s psyche. Mark Twain was fascinated by it, as were Kafka, Picasso, Nabokov, Borges, and Orson Welles. The novel has spawned ballets and operas, poems and plays, movies and video games, and even shapes the identities of entire nations. Spain uses it as a sort of constitution and travel guide; and the Americas were conquered, then sought their independence, with the knight as a role model. In Quixote, Ilan Stavans, one of today’s preeminent cultural commentators, explores these many manifestations. Training his eye on the tumultuous struggle between logic and dreams, he reveals the ways in which a work of literature is a living thing that influences and is influenced by the world around it.