RLSP 301
Cervantes' "Don Quijote"
Last Offered Spring 2023
Division I
This course is not offered in the current catalog

We will devote the semester to the study of one novel: Miguel de Cervantes’ Don Quijote, published in the early part of the 17th century. We will try to understand the reasons for the novel’s immense and ongoing influence. We will study Cervantes’ handling of issues that continue to have relevance to our lives today: relationships, the role of fiction in life, the shapes of mental illness, how we show people who we think we are, how our governments, families and friends decide who we are, the fun and annoyance of going on a road trip with someone, the meaning of justice, and the meaning of storytelling, to name a few. In the process, we will set things in context to understand what was going on in Cervantes’ world. Finally, we will find that even an entire semester was not enough to engage fully with this extraordinary work. Conducted in English using a contemporary translation.