The Importance of Don Quixote

Although I have already written one post about the writing style in Don Quixote, it is so unique I feel obliged to write another post about it. As I mentioned in the previous post, Cervantes speaks directly to the reader throughout the novel, and at some points, he even describes how difficult it was/is to write the book. Cervantes mentions early on that he would have liked to publish the book, plain and simple, without all the "...sonnets, epigrams and eulogies." (12), but that he can't, because without them the book will be viewed poorly by public and scholars alike. As an author, Cervantes claims that he cannot avoid being concerned about the perception of his book, and so he is in a stump, unable to write anymore without putting in the sonnets and other things. So finally, with the help of a friend, he decides to write the sonnets, epigrams, and eulogies himself. The result is that throughout the novel, random sonnets, latin phrases, and quotes from famous people appear, adding zero value to the novel whatsoever. So why would Cervantes go through so much trouble to include them? The answer is that Cervantes is satirizing the main view of literature of his time. Cervantes wrote Don Quixote during the 16th century, a time when only a select few scholars decided what was good literature and what was not. Good literature had to meet certain requirements. First, the best canon rarely included fiction; the few cases where fiction was considered canon were if the author was known to have written other books, or the book was considered to be the first of its kind. Second, the text had to contain sonnets, epigrams, and other often useless devices in order to be considered well written. This lead to a majority of the writing being pretentious and unnecessarily boring to the uneducated masses.

What Cervantes does by mocking the use of these sonnets is show the world, or at least Spaniards, that good literature does not need to obey the rules. He also makes it obvious that he is mocking tradition so that the lay reader will understand him. He does this by making the material in his sonnets almost exactly the same as what he had written earlier. For example, at the end of Part I, Cervantes includes several sonnets about Lady Dulcinea del Toboso, and Don Quixote and his companions. In these sonnets, he writes about the beauty of Lady Dulcinea, and the courage of Don Quixote. In other words, he writes in his sonnets exactly what he has written perfectly well throughout Part 1. Even to the worst of readers, it this is obvious. Cervantes also includes random quotes and latin phrases, which also add zero value. One such quote, "And they should go, as they say, adventuring away" is mentioned a few times. It is separated from the paragraph because it is a quote by some famous author, but it could easily have been included in the paragraph as Don Quixote's dialogue.

Don Quixote was voted the Greatest Book of All Time by the Nobel Institute for a few reasons. One such reason is that by the satirical use of sonnets, epigrams, eulogies, latin phrases, and quotes, Cervantes paved showed authors that they can be successful without including them, allowing for a much larger variety of literature than had been previously thought possible.