Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra Essay

Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra - Essay Example At the same time, the novel depicts the contradictory state of Spain, which was at that time engulfed by the uneasiness of a period of change, and Cervantes correspondingly attempted in "Don Quixote" to ponder over issues of human nature and morality during this time (Cascardi, 2002, pp. 58-79). Even though a new European literature emerged after the Renaissance, romances about chivalry, with stories about the defense of the weak, romantic women, and, of course, brave errant knights and their good and fantastic deeds, were still much popular at the time of Cervantes, who opens his narration with the establishment of this fact: ". . . there lived . . . one of those gentlemen who keep a lance in the lance-rack, an ancient shield . . ." (Cervantes, 1999, p.13). In this regard, from one side "Don Quixote" contains a powerful parody of such romances, as Don Quixote seeks to establish ideals of chivalry. During his 'battles' for chivalric principles he mentions romantic ideals even in his most absurd undertakings. At the same time, the story of Don Quixote nevertheless offers a certain standard of honor which could be applicable for Spain that had to face wars and results of its own development. From this point of view, Cervantes offers these values to a society that had abandone d them. Thus, Cervantes not only correlates his work with a literary tradition of his time, but also employs numerous debates about literature, poetry, etc. contained in the novel as a means to uncover the shifts in the contemporary intellectual milieu. In general, "Don Quixote" undertakes an in-depth examination of the potential of literary narration. Indeed, the initial part of the book parodies the genre of romance, the second section of the First Part pretends to be a historic document, and the Second Part of the book is again different because it is composed as a traditional novel. Here Cervantes, along with a fictional historian Benengeli, is present in the novel as a character. This complex narrative composition tends to confuse readers who may find it difficult to differentiate between the plot itself and the alleged factual base. However, this approach of the author very well supports another important theme that permeates the book and concerns the problem of sanity, as it is perhaps impossible to fully understand the mixture of madness and sanity of Don Quixote who on one hand could impress us as a very intellectual man as ". . . he relished . . . complicated arguments . . . like: The ability to reason the un-reason which has afflicted my reason saps my ability to reason. . . " (Cervantes, 1999, p.13), and who on the other hand was demonstrating throughout the novel the inability to understand the simplest facts of life. In this regard, he stays mysterious throughout the story so that for readers it is hard to find a proper way to interpret Don Quixote as a character. Moreover, Cervantes at some points suggests that in fact Don Quixote is really aware of the real state of things around him, but he rather had chosen to neglect the world and to ignore possible results of his often pernicious deeds. When in the end Don Quixote unexpectedly claims to be sane, one may suspect that throughout the story he was at least to some degree only pretending to be insane. Alternatively, this controversy may serve as a precaution that even intelligent