Lectures On Don Quixote

If you love Don Quixote or are being forced to read it for class you're going to want Nabokovs insightful thoughts about the book to go along with it. This book really adds a new dimension of understanding to this classic work.

Bought as gift but to person said it was great!

William Faulkner is said to have reread Don Quixote every year. It’s not hard to understand why. The theme of different representations of reality run through both Faulkner’s corpus and the work of Cervantes.Nabokov’s lectures slide over this material. Originally this was the first part in a literary criticism course that then treated the Western European and Russian masterpieces of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.It’s fitting then that Nabokov focuses on the artistry that sustains the work. He’s very keen to emphasize the cruelty Cervantes subjects his characters to in order to make a larger point.That is, instead of the usual reading of Don Quixote as a screed against chivalric romances, he notes that in many ways the work embraces many of the conventions of the romance genre itself.This is because, far from the comical caricature that some make, Cervantes found himself with a character that transcended the slapstick comedy much of the tale involves. He’s akin to a Hamlet, uttering some of the most profound insights into the human condition, caught up in a medieval revenge play.The Knight of the Sorrowful Countenance eventually comes to embody the noble possibilities of human nature in a world that seems to have forgotten them. Quixote is thus deservedly well known beyond those who have read the novel.There’s much more to Nabokov’s analysis, of course. It’s a worthy companion to his other still published literary studies. I recommend it to anyone who wants to better understand Cervantes’ masterpiece or even anyone who merely wants to see why the Man of La Mancha continues to resonate in the twenty-first century world.

Fascinating contrary view of the Don. Illuminating reading.

Great, thanks!

This the worse piece of literary criticism I have ever read. It is 80% summary and 19% complaining about how bad the book, and 1% of the time he says what a genius Cervantes is.

Great analysis. One only wonders whether, assuming Nabokov did not read this in the original Spanish, some of the criticism should be leveled at the translation.

This is another great publication from Nabokov's "Lectures on Literature" series. In "Lectures on Don Quixote", Nabokov examines many of the themes that he would revisit in later works of fiction - most notably cruelty (Invitation to a Beheading, Bend Sinister, Lolita), madness (The Defense, Lolita, Pale Fire, Look at the Harlequins, Ada), the conflation of illusion and reality (again The Defense, Lolita, Pale Fire), and the nature of identity (Real Life of Sebastian Knight). In fact, as Guy Davenport deftly points out in the forward, Don Quixote almost seems like the initial template for Lolita given the treatment of similar themes such as the "generative power of delusions" and obsessions combined with the "journey" as the "harmonizing intuition" of the two works. I might add that Cervantes' parody of chivalry is similar to Lolita's parody of the detective novel and that elements of the Humbert/Lolita relationship can be found in Don Quixote's interactions with Sancho Panza.One quibble is that Nabokov seems convinced that Cervantes cruel/sadistic humor at Don Quixote and Sancho Panza's expense is meant to be funny rather than illicit the disgust which Nabokov emits - although I am not so sure. As Cervantes' narrator states, "in his opinion, the deceivers are as mad as the deceived, and that the duke and duchess came very close to seeming like fools since they went to such lengths to deceive two fools." Elsewhere he writes that "jests that cause pain are not jests and entertainments are not worthwhile if they injure another." Perhaps Cervantes was toying with his readers' internal sense of morality as Nabokov would do some 350 years later.Otherwise, Nabokov's is exactly correct when he describes the novel as a "very patchy haphazard tale which is saved from falling apart only by its creator's wonderful artistic intuition that has Don Quixote go into action at the right moments." His description of Don Quixote as a "gaunt giant on a lean nag" looming above the "skyline of literature" is priceless.

Libro non comune che analizza vari brani di Don Chisciotte. Forse un po' snob in alcune parti dell'analisi. Unica pecca sono i caratteri di stampa molto piccoli. Sarebbe stato preferibile con caratteri più grandi e più leggibili.

Great book to argue against. Used this in my dissertation on Don Quixote. Nabokov makes some interesting points about where Cervantes drew inspiration, but he neglects the socio-historical influences on Cervantes’ s humour and what the novel transcends into. I wonder if his dismissal has anything to do with the fact he was heavily influenced by it.

Excellent!

Probably illegal edition (xerox etc.), for £3.

"I remember with delight," said Nabokov, "tearing apart Don Quixote, a crude and cruel old book, before six hundred students, much to the horror of some of my more conservative colleagues." In Nabokov's opinion criticism of the Quixote had been far too sentimental, far too comfortable, leaving the word `quixotic' to mean anything but it's original sense of "hallucinated, self-hypnotised or play-in-collision-with-reality." In the same way that the noble Don's world was populated with brave knights, bountiful princesses and terrible foes, whilst the real Spain about him was all petty criminals and traffic, so Nabokov urged his students to see the real cruelty of 16th/17th century Spain with its dark, violent humour. Cervantes was writing with an eye for an audience which laughed at beatings, burnings, scrapes and general nastiness; unable to find similar amusement ourselves we read in a moral tale, we recreate the chivalry Cervantes himself was sending up, we romanticise our Don into a hero. Don't fall into the trap.Fittingly then, the lectures are painfully text-based; no room for waffle or airy theorising here. In fact, the second half, Text & Commentary, is almost entirely a summary of the book chapter by chapter, with little real commentary at all. The first half divides into chapters on character portraits, structure, types of torture and cruelty, the chronicler Cid Hamete Benengeli, and then, finally, a tally of victories and defeats (which Nabokov counts at 20-20). There are some gems here; sardonic quips on comparisons to Shakespeare, the genuine disbelief that a masterpiece could ever have a scene involving reciprocal vomiting, and Nabokov's own alternative ending, excusing Cervantes' tiredness in old age.Generally though I didn't find a great deal of depth here. I got the impression that whilst at one moment Nabokov berates critics for not having read the book, at the same time he assumes that none of his students have either, leaving much of the lectures recounting episodes and quoting long passages just to provide a context for assertions which any reader could easily place for themself. But anyway, Nabokov's sense of humour and obvious disdain for given opinion on the Quixote will keep a smirk on most faces. Read these lectures if you like, if you don't, you won't be missing a great deal.