Don Quixote Criticism

This Study Guide consists of approximately 137 pages of chapter summaries, quotes, character analysis, themes, and more - everything you need to sharpen your knowledge of Don Quixote.
Study Guide

Don Quixote Criticism

This Study Guide consists of approximately 137 pages of chapter summaries, quotes, character analysis, themes, and more - everything you need to sharpen your knowledge of Don Quixote.
This section contains 874 words
(approx. 3 pages at 400 words per page)
Buy the Don Quixote Study Guide

Readers have always loved Don Quixote. Critics, however, have offered mixed assessments of the novel. For example, Lord Byron asserted that Cervantes was responsible for finally extinguishing the flame of chivalry in Europe. This charge was repeated by the English author Ford Madox Ford. Other negative reviewers, like Miguel de Unamuno and Giovanni Papini, consider Don Quixote a brilliant novel but deem its author a disorganized hack.

Yet, these authors are in the minority. Most critics appreciate the achievement of the novel and the author. Highest praise for the author came from Victor Hugo: "Cervantes sees the inner man."

Don Quixote's popularity spread throughout Europe soon after the first English translation of the first part of the novel appeared in 1612. By the eighteenth century, Cervantes was a literary icon. In his biography of the author, Tobias Smollet recalled that dignitaries visiting Spain were appalled by...

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This section contains 874 words
(approx. 3 pages at 400 words per page)
Buy the Don Quixote Study Guide
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Don Quixote from Gale. ©2005-2006 Thomson Gale, a part of the Thomson Corporation. All rights reserved.