R.K. Britton
Don
Quixote and the subversive tradition of Golden Age Spain
Brighton/ Chicago: Sussex Academic Press, 2018, 240 pp.
ISBN: 9781845198619
This study offers a reading of Don Quixote, with
comparative material from Golden Age history and Cervantes' life, to argue that
his greatest work was not just the hilariously comic entertainment that most of
his contemporaries took it to be. Rather, it belongs to a 'subversive
tradition' of writing that grew up in sixteenth-century Spain and which
constantly questioned the aims and standards of the imperial nation state that
Counter-reformation Spain had become from the point of view of Renaissance
humanism. Prime consideration needs to be given to the system of Spanish
censorship at the time, run largely by the Inquisition albeit officially an
institution of the crown, and its effect on the cultural life of the country.
In response, writers of poetry and prose fiction - strenuously attacked on
moral grounds by sections of the clergy and the laity - became adept at
camouflaging heterodox ideas through rhetoric and imaginative invention.
Ironically, Cervantes' success in avoiding the attention of the censor by
concealing his criticisms beneath irony and humour was so effective that even
some twentieth-century scholars have maintained Don Quixote is a brilliantly
funny book but no more. Bob Britton draws on recent critical and historical
scholarship - including ideas on cultural authority and studies on the way
Cervantes addresses history, truth, writing, law and gender in Don Quixote -
and engages with the intellectual and moral issues that this much-loved writer
engaged with
Preface and Acknowledgements
Chapter 1 – Don
Quixote: Its Author, its Readers and its Critics
Chapter 2 – Cervantes’ Laboratory of Literary Ideas
Chapter 3 – Don
Quixote: A Book of Two Halves
Chapter 4 – Truth and Lies in Real Life and Fiction: Don
Quixote as a Defence of Imaginative Literature
Chapter 5 –: Justice, Law and Politics. The Novel as a
Vehicle for Debate in Don Quixote
Chapter 6 – Humour, Irony and Satire in Don Quixote: Public Merriment and
Private Laughter
Chapter 7 – The Novel as a Mirror to Society: Women,
Social Class and Social Conflict in Don Quixote
Chapter 8 – Authority and Subversion in Don Quixote: The Novel as Moral Dialectic
Afterword: Don Quixote and the 20th Century Reader
Notes
Bibliography
Index
ChaR. K. Britton is an honorary research fellow in the Department of Hispanic Studies, Sheffield University, where he is also a part-time tutor in Spanish in The Institute of Lifelong Learning. His research interests are modern Latin American literature, the literature and culture of Golden Age Spain and literary translation. His The Poetic and Real Worlds of César Vallejo (1892–1938) was widely reviewed: “Bob Britton’s book brings César Vallejo fascinatingly to life”, Adam Feinstein – Don Quixote: Its
Author, its Readers and its Critics
Chapter 2XXX__XXX
– Cervantes’ Laboratory of
Literary IdeasUn acierto el de los editores al acudir para diseño de cubierta a una reproducción del óleo Vista de la ciudad de Sevilla (1575-1600), atribuido a Alonso Sánchez Coello (1532-1588)
Chapter 3Panorama del puerto de Sevilla, con los barcos que van y vienen de América. En primer término resalta la gran actividad del puerto sevillano. También se puede apreciar el trabajo de los astilleros y cómo se reparan y construyen las naves destinadas a la navegación atlántica. Al fondo, la ciudad en la que desde 1503 se encontraba la Casa de Contratación. – Don Quixote: A Book
of Two Halves
Chapter 4 – Truth and Lies in Real Life
and Fiction: Don Quixote as a Defence of Imaginative Literature
Chapter 5 –: Justice, Law and
Politics. The Novel as a Vehicle for Debate in Don Quixote
Chapter 6 – Humour, Irony and Satire
in Don Quixote: Public Merriment and Private Laughter
Chapter 7 – The Novel as a Mirror to
Society: Women, Social Class and Social Conflict in Don Quixote
Chapter 8 – Authority and Subversion in Don
Quixote: The Novel as Moral Dialectic
Afterword: Don Quixote
and the 20th Centu
Bib
Chapter 2 – Cervantes’
Chapter 3 – Don Quixote: A Book
of Two Halves
Chapter 4 – Truth and Lies in Real Life
and Fiction: Don Quixote as a Defence of Imaginative Literature
Chapter 5 –: Justice, Law and
Politics. The Novel as a Vehicle for Debate in Don Quixote
Chapter 6 – Humour, Irony and Satire
in Don Quixote: Public Merriment and Private Laughter
Chapter 7 – The Novel as a Mirror to
Society: Women, Social Class and Social Conflict in Don Quixote
Chapter 8 – Authority and Subversion in Don
Quixote: The Novel as Moral Dialectic
Afterword: Don Quixote
and the 20th Century Reader
Notes
Bibliography
Index
Chapter 1 – Don Quixote: Its
Author, its Readers and its Critics
Chapter 2 – Cervantes’ Laboratory of
Literary Ideas
Chapter 3 – Don Quixote: A Book
of Two Halves
Chapter 4 – Truth and Lies in Real Life
and Fiction: Don Quixote as a Defence of Imaginative Literature
Chapter 5 –: Justice, Law and
Politics. The Novel as a Vehicle for Debate in Don Quixote
Chapter 6 – Humour, Irony and Satire
in Don Quixote: Public Merriment and Private Laughter
Chapter 7 – The Novel as a Mirror to
Society: Women, Social Class and Social Conflict in Don Quixote
Chapter 8 – Authority and Subversion in Don
Quixote: The Novel as Moral Dialectic
Afterword: Don Quixote
and the 20th Century Reader
Notes
Bibliography
Index
