BOOK COVER
DESIGN CONTEST
BRIEF
Full title · “The Ingenious Gentleman Don Quixote of La Mancha”
Author · Miguel de Cervantes
Type of work · Published in two volumes a decade apart (1605 and 1615), “The
Ingenious Gentleman Don Quixote of La Mancha” is the most influential work of
literature to emerge from the Spanish Golden Age and the entire Spanish literary
canon.
As a founding work of modern Western literature, it regularly figures prominently on
lists of the greatest works of fiction ever published.
Genre · Novel. Fiction (medieval romance; parody; comedy).
Language · Spanish.
Time and place written · Spain; late Sixteenth and early Seventeenth centuries
Narrator · Cervantes, who claims to be translating the earlier work of Cide Hamete
Benengeli, a Moor who supposedly chronicled the true historical adventures of Don
Quixote.
Point of view · Cervantes narrates most often in the third person, following Don
Quixote’s actions and occasionally entering into the thoughts of his characters. He
switches into the first person whenever he discusses the novel itself or Benengeli’s
original manuscript.
Tone · Cervantes maintains an ironic distance from characters and events,
discussing them at times with mock seriousness.
Tense · Past, with some moments of present tense.
Setting · 1614· Spain.
Main character · Alonso Quixano, aka Don Quixote, a retired country gentleman in
his fifties, living in an unnamed town of La Mancha region with his niece and a
housekeeper. He has become obsessed with books of knights and gallant
adventures, believing their every word to be true. Quixano eventually appears to
have lost his mind from depravation of sleep and food because of intense reading.
Major conflict · In the First Part Don Quixote sets out with Sancho Panza on a life
of heroic adventures in a world no longer governed by chivalric values. He wanders
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throughout Spain encountering many strange characters and odd situations, while
family and friends attempt to bring Don Quixote home and cure his madness. In the
Second Part, Don Quixote continues his adventures with Sancho, with renewed
efforts by those who love him to return him home even by force.
Climax · The First Part: Don Quixote and the priest meet in the Sierra Morena
mountains, and Lady Dorothea begs for Don Quixote to help her avenge her stolen
kingdom. The Second Part: Sampson, a trusted friend disguised as the Knight of the
White Moon, defeats Don Quixote.
Falling action · In the First Part, his friends take Don Quixote home in a cage, and
Don Quixote resigns himself to the fact that he is enchanted. In the Second Part, Don
Quixote returns home after his defeat and in his waning days resolves to give up life
as an errant knight.
Themes · Conflict between unrestrained imagination and reality. Incompatible
systems of morality. Social analysis -differences between classes, self-esteem and
wealth-. Lack of (moral & practical) compromise.
Motifs · Honor; romance; justice; deliverance; the promise of better world; the fight
for (what we believe) worthy ideas.
Symbols · Books and manuscripts; knighthood lore and elements –codes of honor,
horses, armor, weapons…-; inns and windmills
1- AUTHOR´S BIOGRAPHY
For if he like a madman lived,
At least he like wise old died.
(Don Quixote epitaph)
Miguel de Cervantes, novelist, playwright and poet, the creator of Don Quixote, the
most famous figure in Spanish literature, was born in Alcala de Henares, a town 20
miles from Madrid, on September 29, 1547.
In 1570, he left for Italy, a usual move by Spaniards of his time to further their
careers. He joined the Spanish army in Naples. Around this time, relations between
the Ottoman Empire and the Christian countries in the Mediterranean were very
much strained and confrontation between the Turks and the Spanish and her allies
for control of the sea was inevitable. Cervantes valiantly fought in a major naval
battle at the Gulf of Lepanto, near Greece. He was badly wounded in his left hand
and thus earned the nickname "El manco de Lepanto" (the maimed of Lepanto).
After that, he continued fighting in the Mediterranean.
When sailing back to Spain in 1575, his ship was captured by pirates and he was
taken as a slave to Algiers, northern Africa. It is believed that his life as a slave from
1575 to 1580 became the source of inspiration for many an episode of Don Quixote.
In 1580 his family was finally able to raise the ransom money to free him.
Spain had changed drastically during Cervantes' absence: prices had increased
dramatically and the standard of living for people like his middle-class family had
fallen. As a consequence, Cervantes would spend several years shuffling among
minor jobs, continually short of money until he began his literary career. In 1585 he
published his first long work, La Galatea, a pastoral romance. Its publication brought
him success with the reading public. Cervantes decided next to try his luck as a
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dramatist but his early plays were average in comparison to the Don Quixote, which
he was to write in 1604.
The First Part of Don Quixote came out in 1605 and it became an immediate
success, so much so that it was translated into English, French, and Italian within the
next twenty years. In 1615, a year before his death, the Second Part was released
and was just as successful.
"The truth lies in a man's dreams... perhaps in this unhappy world of ours whose
madness is better than a foolish sanity."
2- PLOT
Don Quixote (part I 1605; part II 1615) - Often called the first modern novel, it was
originally conceived as a comic satire against knighthood romances. A mix between
tragedy and comedy, Don Quixote offers a panoramic and compelling view of 17thcentury Spanish society. The book has been interpreted in many ways: it has been
seen as a veiled attack on the Catholic Church, on contemporary Spanish politics, or
as a symbol of the duality of the Spanish character.
Cervantes himself believed in lofty ideals and uplifting rhetoric; he even enlisted and
fought valiantly for Spain. Much to his regret, though, he found that the government
ignored his wartime services when he returned to Madrid after slavery, and
developed a bitter conscience until his final days. The English writer Ford Madox
Ford stated in The March of Literature (1938) that Cervantes did with his book a
disservice to the world: "The gentle ideal of chivalry is the one mediaeval trait which,
had it survived as an influence, might have saved our unfortunate civilization."
Another major theme is the notion of quest, in this case not the Holy Grail, but reality:
by traveling in his pilgrimage for justice, Don Quixote is able to overcome his
madness and find light.
"Everyone is as God made him and oftentimes a good deal worse."
3- KEY CHARACTERS
The two main characters are the elderly, idealistic knight who sets out on his old
horse, Rocinante, to seek adventure, and the materialistic squire Sancho Panza, the
voice of reason and caution, who accompanies his master from one failure to
another. Their relationship, although they argue most fiercely, is ultimately founded
upon mutual respect and they gradually take on some of each other's attributes.
Don Quixote - The novel’s tragicomic hero. Don Quixote’s main quest in life is to
restore knighthood in a world devoid of chivalric virtues and values. He believes only
what he chooses to believe and sees things very differently from most people.
Honest, dignified, proud, and idealistic, he is on a mission to save the world. As
intelligent as he is mad, Don Quixote starts out as an absurd and isolated figure and
ends up as a pitiable and lovable old man whose strength and wisdom have utterly
failed him.
Sancho Panza - The peasant laborer whom Don Quixote takes as his squire. A
representation of the common man -greedy but kind, faithful but cowardly-, Sancho is
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a foil to Don Quixote and virtually every other character in the novel. His proverbridden peasant’s wisdom and self-sacrificing Christian behavior prove to be the
novel’s most insightful and honorable worldview. He has an awestruck love for Don
Quixote but grows self-confident and saucy, ending the novel by advising his master
in matters of deep personal philosophy.
4- BACK COVER TEXT
“In a village of La Mancha, the name of which I have no desire to call to mind, there lived not
long since one of those gentlemen that keep a lance in the lance-rack, an old buckler, a lean
hack, and a greyhound for coursing. An pot of rather more beef than mutton, a salad on most
nights, scraps on Saturdays, lentils on Fridays, and a pigeon or so extra on Sundays, made
away with three-quarters of his income. The rest of it went in a doublet of fine cloth and velvet
breeches and shoes to match for holidays, while on week-days he made a brave figure in his
best homespun. He had in his house a housekeeper past forty, a niece under twenty, and a
lad for the field and market-place, who used to saddle the hack as well as handle the billhook. The age of this gentleman of ours was bordering on fifty; he was of a hardy habit,
spare, gaunt-featured, a very early riser and a great sportsman. They will have it his surname
was Quixada or Quesada (for here there is some difference of opinion among the authors
who write on the subject), although from reasonable conjectures it seems plain that he was
called Quexana. This, however, is of but little importance to our tale; it will be enough not to
stray a hair's breadth from the truth in the telling of it.”
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