Cervantes' Don Quixote
Published: Fall 2009
Description
The course facilitates a close reading of Don Quixote in the artistic and historical context of renaissance and baroque Spain. Students are also expected to read four of Cervantes’ Exemplary Stories, Cervantes’ Don Quixote: A Casebook, and J.H. Elliott’s Imperial Spain. Cervantes’ work will be discussed in relation to paintings by Velázquez. The question of why Don Quixote is read today will be addressed throughout the course. Students are expected to know the book, the background readings and the materials covered in the lectures and class discussions.
Course Takeaways
- The question of why Don Quixote is read today will be addressed throughout the course.
Meet the Instructors
A native of Cuba, Roberto González Echevarría is Sterling Professor of Hispanic and Comparative Literature at Yale. He has a Ph.D. from Yale, and honorary doctorates from Colgate, the University of South Florida, and Columbia. In 1999 he was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and in 2011, President Barack Obama awarded him the National Medal for the Humanities. A speaker of Spanish, English, French and Italian, González Echevarría covers Spanish, Latin American, French, and Italian literatures. The author of many books in English and Spanish, his Myth and Archive: A Theory of Latin American Narrative won awards from the Modern Language Association of America and the Latin American Studies Association. The Pride of Havana: A History of Cuban Baseball won the first Dave Moore Award (Most Important Book on Baseball). In 2005 Yale published his Love and the Law in Cervantes. He has written for The New York Times Review of Books, The Wall Street Journal, The Village Voice, The Nation, and USA Today. His work has appeared in Spanish, English, French, German, Portuguese, Polish, Italian and Persian.
Full biography
