Don Quixote in England: The Aesthetics of Laughter

Přední strana obálky
JHU Press, 1998 - Počet stran: 242

A significant reassessment of current assumptions about eighteenth-century literature and art.

Seldom has a single book, much less a translation, so deeply affected English literature as the translation of Cervantes' Don Quixote in 1612. The comic novel inspired drawings, plays, sermons, and other translations, making the name of the Knight of la Mancha as familiar as any folk character in English lore.

In this comprehensive study of the reception and conversion of Don Quixote in England, Ronald Paulson highlights the qualities of the novel that most attracted English imitators. The English Don Quixote was not the same knight who meandered through Spain, or found a place in other translations throughout Europe. The English Don Quixote found employment in all sorts of specifically English ways, not excluding the political uses to which a Spanish fool could be turned.

According to Paulson, a major impact of the novel and its hero was their stimulation of discussion about comedy itself, what he calls the "aesthetics of laughter." When Don Quixote reached England he did so at the time of the rise of empiricism, and adherents of both sides of the empiricist debate found arguments and evidence in the behavior and image of the noble knight. Four powerful disputes battered around his grey head: the proximity of madness and imagination; the definition of the beautiful; the cruelty of ridicule and its laughter; and the role of reason in the face of madness. Paulson's engaging account leads to a significant reassessment of current assumptions about eighteenth-century literature and art.

Vyhledávání v knize

Obsah

Quixote Mistakes an Inn for a Castle
1
Cervantes smiled Spains chivalry
32
Don Quixotes madness in one point
66
The Taste of Wine the Sight of Dulcinea
83
The Parliament of Death and the Puppet Show
108
Marcela Discourses on Beauty
161
NOTES
195
INDEX
233
Autorská práva

Běžně se vyskytující výrazy a sousloví

O autorovi (1998)

Ronald Paulson is professor of English and art history at the Johns Hopkins University. His many books include Breaking and Remaking: Aesthetic Practice in England, 1700-1820; Book and Painting: Shakespeare, Milton, and the Bible; Representations of Revolution, 1789-1820; and Literary Landscape: Turner and Constable.

Bibliografické údaje