Lectures on Don Quixote

«Lectures on „Don Quixote“» — a literary-critical course on Cervantes' novel, its heroes, and the clash of the chivalric ideal with reality. Vladimir Nabokov analyzes the composition of the work, the embedded stories, chivalric motifs, and the play with fictional chroniclers. He compares Don Quixote and Sancho Panza, refers to the image of Dulcinea del Toboso, and explores the boundary between illusion and reality. A special place is occupied by the dispute with the notion of the work as a harmless satire: behind the comic situations, the critic notices mockery, humiliation, and violence. From the analysis of individual techniques, he moves to the question of how a literary character becomes an independent cultural symbol.