Humor In Don Quixote By Miguel De Cervantes

This figure of speech is seen in the fourth paragraph when Rodriguez says “I use the word ‘comedy’ here as the Greeks used it, with upmost seriousness, to suggest a world where youth is not a fruitless metaphor; where it is possible to start anew; where it is possible to escape the rivalries of the Capulets and the McCoys; where young women can disprove the adages of grandmothers.” The uses of these schemes are important in the passage because they stress emphasis on certain things that help him in explaining and conveying his feelings.

Lazarillo de Tormes is a famous work of Spanish literature published anonymously. The novel is written in the first person. Lazarillo de Tormes is known as a picaresque novel in that the novel is written about a character of the lower-class instead of a hero or upper-class character. The novel has several themes, but the theme that is constant throughout the novel is appearance versus reality. A rhetorical device is a use of language that is intended to have an effect on its audience. The author utilizes several rhetorical devices in the novel which add emphasis to the story. For the purposes of this paper, the following rhetorical devices are analyzed: satire, simile, hyperbole, double entendre and parody. The novel, which was banned by the Spanish Crown during the time of the Spanish inquisition, is the story of the birth and life Lazarillo as he serves various masters and his struggle for survival. His struggle is real. Many of the rhetorical devices serve to add humor to the novel as well.

The protagonist, Don Quixote's obsessive reading of books of chivalry plays a major role in defining his character; his inspiration for his travels as a knight errant comes from the literature about chivalry that he reads, the literature that causes him to lose his mind and go mad. Everything that he usually experiences in his journey, first happened in the books that inspired his travels. The character, Dulcinea’s role as Quixote’s lady-love becomes equivalent with the position a king might hold in a true and honorable knight’s life.

Yet, even in evaluating how anger is emotionally imposed on the audience due to the absurdity of the proposal, it’s impossible to disregard the role of humor. There are obvious elements of humor throughout the proposal and amusement in the very nature of the proposal is expected. However, any sense of humor abruptly disappears at the heart of the critism. When the proposer begins stating “I can think of no one objection that will possibly be raised against this proposal” the humor stops and the voice of Swift, as well as sharp criticism, begins. Although humor may be an integral part of the proposal and certainly a partial indication of the use of Horatian satire, the fact that humor isn’t present throughout the whole proposal suggests that the use of hilarity is secondary. Rather, this contrast of humor and emotionally imposed irritation only helps to emphasize the role of anger. This is especially evident when one considers the irony that litters the humorous proposal.

Alexandre Dumas was a master of literature; the sheer artistry in The Count of Monte Cristo makes this abundantly clear. His command of parallelism, his employ of subtle yet vivid characterization, and, most markedly, his frequent use of irony are the evidence. The latter in particular is common and used for a purpose. At times, irony is applied to insert a sliver of humor into otherwise heavy scenes; this is especially true with Dumas’s application of verbal irony. At other times, irony is exercised in order to act as a plot point. Overall, the author’s use of irony is crucial to the story’s progression.

George Meredith, an English novelist and poet, once said, “The true test of comedy is that it shall awaken thoughtful laughter.” Many comedic works have a combination of funny scenarios and serious life lessons. The author’s ability to perfectly balance the two and to encourage contemplative laughter gives a deeper understanding of the work as a whole. Voltaire’s famous novella, Candide, provides an example of this balance. Candide is a story that tracks the adventures of the protagonist, Candide, and the great hardships that happen in each stage of his life. Voltaire’s novella captures the abrupt changes in lifestyle, while providing the reader with comic relief. In the novella, Candide, Voltaire uses satire and impractical occasions to invoke thoughtful laughter while expressing the absurdity of the natural world.

Lazarillo de Tormes is a famous work of Spanish literature published anonymously. The novel is written in the first person. Lazarillo de Tormes is known as a picaresque novel in that the novel is written about a character of the lower-class instead of a hero or upper-class character. The novel has several themes, but the theme that is constant throughout the novel is appearance versus reality. The author utilizes several rhetorical devices in the novel which add emphasis to the story. The novel, which was banned by the Spanish Crown during the time of the Spanish inquisition, is the story of the birth and life Lazarillo de Tormes as he serves various masters and his struggle for survival. His struggles are real. Many of the rhetorical devices serve to add humor to the novel as well.

Without doubt, Edgar Allan Poe’s story is one of the author’s masterpiece. The story is an exhibit of artistic genius with various literary features well incorporated. Among them, irony, defined as, “A figure of speech which is a contradiction or incongruity between what is expected and what actually occurs”, is the most evident. Allan Poe demonstrates the use of various types of irony throughout the play, which he uses to pass the intended message to the audience.

Mock epic is a narrative poem which aims at mockery and laughter by using almost all the characteristic features of an epic but for a trivial subject. In the “The Rape of the Lock” there is an invocation to Muses, proposition of subject, battles, supernatural machinery, and journey on water, underworld journey, long speeches, feasts (coffee house), Homeric similes and grand style but all for a simple family dispute instead of a national struggle. The grand action of a low subject produces comical laughter and makes the story more absurd.

The story Don Quixote is a burlesque, mock epic of the romances of chivalry, in which Cervantes teaches the reader the truth by creating laughter that ridicules. Through the protagonist, he succeeds in satirizing Spain’s obsession with the noble knights as being absurdly old fashioned. The dynamics of the comedy in this story are simple, Don Quixote believes the romances he has read and strives to live them out, and it is his actions and the situations that he finds himself in during his adventures that make the reader laugh. We can define comedy as something that entertains the reader and that makes us want to laugh out loud and Cervantes succeeds in doing this through his use of

“At the heart of Don Quixote is the discrepancy between external appearance and internal perception.” says Wirfs-Brock (2). In that respect, Don Quixote is depicted as a character who is guided merely by his internal perceptions, disregarding external appearances. Most of the time, he is deluded, depended on his faculty of imagination, stuck in his make-believe world through the guidance of chivalric books he is obsessed with and “everything he read in his books took possession of his imagination” (1/1 p.27). He takes everything he reads in those books for real as if they were parts of history and decides to join this glorious history by making a knight errant of him. In order to put all he has read into practice, he puts on a rusty armor, devises a heroic name for himself which is ‘Don Quixote de la Mancha’ and for his horse which is ‘Rocinante’. Additionally, since “a knight errant without a lady-love is a tree without leaves or fruit, a body without a soul” (1/1 p.29) he finds “a good-looking peasant girl” called Aldonza Lorenzo and decides to call her ‘Dulcinea del Toboso’. So this peasant girl becomes a princess, the most beautiful lady in the world for him to whom he may serve “as if he really were in love” (1/1 p.31).

enemies would be left to rot, but in his own reality, he is doing the only

Miguel Cervantes’ Don Quixote is a masterpiece in many senses of the word: at the time of its conception, it was hailed as a revolutionary work of literature that defined a genre, in later centuries regarded as an acerbic social commentary, a slightly misshapen romantic tragedy, and even as a synthesis of existentialist and post-modernist features. At the centre of this Spanish satirical chronicle is the perplexing character Don Quixote. Don Quixote’s personality and perspective is rapidly established fromsince the beginning of the novel, revealing unabashedly to readers that he is mad. The source of his madness lies in the extent to which Don Quixote acts on his delusions and projections unto reality as he saunters through Cervantes’ Andalusia. Don Quixote’s delusions have two primary functions in the novel: demonstrating the reality and tragedy of Cervantes’ manifestation of idyllic themes of love and chivalry, and revealing certain characteristics about narration.

Don Quixote presents the character of Alonso Quixano also known as Don Quixote de la Mancha, a middle aged hidalgo whose adventure is explored throughout the novel. Don Quixote’s character in of itself conflicts with reality as he embraces fiction created from his love of chivalric romances and constantly loses grasp of reality. Don Quixote takes on the form of the heroes and knights he had read in his books and wreck havoc wherever his adventures take him. It is uncertain if Don Quixote is insane or is merely created an illusion of himself as being a mad man. In his adventures Don Quixote mistakes common everyday places, objects, and even people as something else. This often results in disaster as proven by his battle against the giant which in fact was only a windmill and his deed to save the escaping princess cutting the enemies who were mere puppets in half. However, before his death and after his retirement a major change occurs in Don Quixote’s personality. On his death bed the knight-errant accepts reality and discards the illusion conjured by his playful mind. How did Don Quixote overcome his insanity? Or was he insane to begin with?

     Don Quijote was a tall, skinny “wanna-be” who found himself morally obligated to involve himself in other people’s business for the sole purpose of acting as a proper knight errant would. Although he believes that his “battles” help solve situations (though the results is usually the opposite), what it comes down to is that he wants to be famous, to be in love with his woman, to be accomplished, recognized, and adored. Therefore, Don Quijote’s motives are self-serving, and not “by-the-book” as a knight errant should be. “As much for the sake of his own greater honor as for his duty to the nation, he decided to turn himself into a knight errant...” (p. 15) The thing was, this was how knights generally were - a