Miguel de Cervantes Writing Styles in Don Quixote

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

Miguel de Cervantes Writing Styles in Don Quixote

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 641 words
(approx. 2 pages at 400 words per page)
Buy the Don Quixote Study Guide

Structure

Cervantes switches between a style of narration that Boccacio employed in the Decamaron— a renowned collection of tales-to a more modern style. Like the Decamaron, Don Quixote is a medieval work wherein characters incorporate novellas, old ballads, and legends. Cervantes combines this style with the chivalric genre. This hybrid style is considered innovative.

Another result of Cervantes's unique style is that his characters have independent, interesting stories of their own. To offset this, Cervantes adds the device of the found manuscript; well into the story, the reader discovers the story is part of a manuscript found in the ruins of an old building. In fact, the history is the work of Cide Hamete Berengena, "the author of our true history."

This clever stylistic device does not change the tone of the narration, which is that of an omniscient, omnipresent, and amused narrator. This duplicity of narration only...

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This section contains 641 words
(approx. 2 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.