Raffel, Burton : University of Southwestern Louisiana
Burton Raffel is Distinguished Professor of Humanities at the University of Southwestern Louisiana. He is the
translator of many works, including Gargantua and Pantagruel (awarded the French-American Foundation Translation
Prize), Père Goriot, Beowulf, and the five romances of Chrétien de Troyes.
Wilson, Diana De Armas : University of Denver
Diana de Armas Wilson is Professor of English and Renaissnace Studies at the University of Denver. She is the
author of Allegories of Love: Cervantes's "Persiles & Sigismunda," co-editor of Quixotic Desire:
Psychoanalytic Perspectives on Cervantes, and author of the forthcoming Cervantes, the Novel, and the New World.
Summary
The text reprinted here is based on award-winning translator Burton Raffel's masterful translation of Don Quijote,
which is consistent, fluid, and modeled closely on the original Spanish.
Backgrounds and Context invites readers to explore the creative process that culminated in the publication of Don
Quijote. Included are selections from works parodied by Cervantes (Amadis of Gaul and Orlando Furioso) and a portion
of the spurious sequel to Part 1 written by Fernándes de Avellaneda.
Criticisms presents fifteen major interpretations of both the novel and selected episodes, describing Cervantes'
intellectual milieu, revealing how he infused new life into the literary modes and motifs he had inherited, and
illustrating the fundamental importance of Don Quijote in the history of modern fiction.
Table of Contents
Editor's Introduction
Translator's Note
The Text of Don Quijote
MAP: Spain at the End of the Sixteenth Century
MAP: Cervantes's Andalusia
Don Quijote
Backgrounds and Contexts
CERVANTES IN HIS OWN VOICE
[Fear of Publishing] (from Prologue to La Galatea)
[Portrait of the Artist as an Old Man] (Prologue to Exemplary Novels)
[Cervantes's Self-Critique] (from Voyage to Parnassus)
[Cervantes's Last Words] (from Prologue to Persiles and Sigismunda)
SOURCES AND INFLUENCES
Jacopo Sannazaro · From Arcadia (Chapter One)
Garci Rodri!gues de Montalvo · From Amadis of Gaul (The Penance of Poor Cliff)
Ludovico Ariosto · From Orlando Furioso (Canto 23)
Alonso Ferna!ndez de Avellaneda · Prologue to the "False Quijote"
Patricia Finch and John J. Allen · Don Quijote across the Centuries
Criticism
GENERAL ESSAYS ON DON QUIJOTE
Carlos Fuentes · Foreword
Harold Bloom · Cervantes: The Play of the World
Javier Herrero · Who Was Dulcinea?
Anthony J. Cascardi · Personal Identity in Don Quixote
Michel Foucault · [Don Quixote as Hero of the Same]
ESSAYS ON SELECTED EPISODES OF DON QUIJOTE
Elias L. Rivers · [Cervantes's Revolutionary Prologue]
Ruth Anthony El Saffar · In Marcela's Case
Robert ter Horst · Sex and the Chain Gang
Edward Dudley · [Rescuing Dorotea]
Nicolás Wey-Gómez · Anselmo's Eating Disorder
Maria Antonia Garce!s · [Cervantes's Veiled Woman]
Henry W. Sullivan · [The Duke's Theatre of Sadism]
Carroll B. Johnson · [Dreaming in the Cave of Montesinos]
Anne J. Cruz · Don Quijote's Disappearing Act
FICCIONES ON DON QUIJOTE
Jorge Luis Borges · Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote
Miguel de Cervantes: A Chronology
Selected Bibliography
