The purpose of this book is to help the English-speaking reader, with an interest in Spanish literature but without specialised knowledge of Cervantes, to understand his long and complex masterpiece: its major themes, its structure, and the inter-connections between its component parts. Beginning from a review of Don Quixote's relation to Cervantes's life, literary career, and its social and cultural context, Anthony Close goes on to examine the structure and distinctive nature of Part I (1605) and Part II (1615), the conception of the characters of Don Quixote and Sancho, Cervantes's word-play and narrative manner, and the historical evolution of posterity's interpretation of the novel, with particular attention to its influence on the theory of the genre. One of the principal questions tackled is the paradoxical incongruity between Cervantes's conception of his novel as a light work of entertainment, without any explicitly acknowledged profundity, and posterity's view of it as a universally symbolic masterpiece, revolutionary in the context of its own time, and capable of meaning something new and different to each succeeding age. ANTHONY CLOSE, now retired, was Reader in Spanish at the University of Cambridge.

Don Quixote de la Mancha (1605) is one of the classic texts of Western literature and the foundation of European fiction. Yet Cervantes himself remains an enigmatic figure. The Cambridge Companion to Cervantes offers a comprehensive treatment of Cervantes life and work, including his lesser known writing. The essays, by some of the most outstanding scholars in the field, cover the historical and political context of Cervantes writing, his place in Renaissance culture, and the role of his masterpiece, Don Quixote, in the formation of the modern novel. They draw on contemporary critical perspectives to shed new light on Cervantes work, including the Exemplary Novels , the plays and dramatic interludes, and the long romances, Galatea and Persiles. The volume provides useful supporting material for students; suggestions for further reading, a detailed chronology, a complete list of his published writings, an overview of translations and editions, and a guide to electronic resources.

What should your child learn in the fifth grade? How can you help him or her at home? This book answers these important questions and more, offering the specific shared knowledge that thousands of parents and teachers across the nation have agreed upon for American fifth graders. Featuring sixteen pages of illustrations, a bolder, easier-to-follow format, and a thoroughly updated curriculum, What Your Fifth Grader Needs to Know is designed for parents and teachers to enjoy with children. Hundreds of thousands of children have benefited from the Core Knowledge Series, and this edition gives a new generation of fifth graders the advantage they need to make progress in school today and to establish an approach to learning that will last a lifetime. Discover: • Favorite Poems—old and new, from Langston Hughes’s “I, Too” to Lewis Carroll’s famous nonsense poem “Jabberwocky” • Literature—from around the world, including Native American stories, Japanese tales, and condensed versions of classics, from Don Quixote to Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass • Learning About Literature—the rules of written English, pats of speech, literal and figurative language, common sayings and phrases, and a brief introduction to researching and writing a report • World and American History and Geography—explore latitude and longitude; Aztec, Inca, and Maya civilizations; European history during the Age of Exploration, the Renaissance, and the Reformation; and American history topics, including the Civil War, westward expansion, and the struggle of Native Americans • Visual Arts—art from around the world, from Renaissance paintings to American landscapes to Japanese gardens, with discussions of Leonardo da Vinci, Michaelangelo, and Botticelli—along with more than twenty reproductions. • Music—the basics of understanding, appreciating, and reading music, plus great composers from Beethoven to Mendelssohn and an introduction to African-American spirituals • Math—stimulating lessons, including percentages, number sense, long division, decimals, graphs, and geometry—as well as a quick introduction to pre-algebra • Science—fascinating discussions of taxonomy, atoms, the periodic table, human growth stages, plants, life cycles and reproduction—plus short biographies of famous scientists such as Galileo

Driven away from his parish by a censorious bishop, Monsignor Quixote sets off across Spain accompanied by a deposed renegade mayor as his own Sancho Panza, and his noble steed Rocinante – a faithful but antiquated SEAT 600. Like Cervantes’s classic, this comic, picaresque fable offers enduring insights into our life and times.

Easy-to-read retelling of the hilarious misadventures of Don Quixote, the idealistic knight, and his squire, Sancho Panza, who set out to right the wrongs of the world. Abridged version with six charming illustrations.

A groundbreaking cultural history of the most influential, most frequently translated, and most imitated novel in the world. The year 2015 marks the four hundredth anniversary of the publication of the complete Don Quixote of La Mancha—an ageless masterpiece that has proven unusually fertile and endlessly adaptable. Flaubert was inspired to turn Emma Bovary into “a knight in skirts.” Freud studied Quixote’s psyche. Mark Twain was fascinated by it, as were Kafka, Picasso, Nabokov, Borges, and Orson Welles. The novel has spawned ballets and operas, poems and plays, movies and video games, and even shapes the identities of entire nations. Spain uses it as a sort of constitution and travel guide; and the Americas were conquered, then sought their independence, with the knight as a role model. In Quixote, Ilan Stavans, one of today’s preeminent cultural commentators, explores these many manifestations. Training his eye on the tumultuous struggle between logic and dreams, he reveals the ways in which a work of literature is a living thing that influences and is influenced by the world around it.