Don Quixote 's The Modern World

A medieval romance is a kind of writing that has a mysterious, supernatural setting, idealizes chivalry and courtly love, and may involve masking a character's real identity. Usually the hero of a medieval romance is a knight who takes an unusual challenge and whose triumph brings glory to the king and the nation. This paper will be an analytical essay, I will examine the writing “Sir Gawain and the Green knight” and show how it fits into the medieval romance genre.

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.

In the Medieval Period, knights dedicated their lives to following the code of chivalry. In Sir Thomas Malory’s Le Morte d’Arthur, a number of characters performed chivalrous acts to achieve the status of an ideal knight. Their characteristics of respect for women and courtesy for all, helpfulness to the weak, honor, and skill in battle made the characters King Arthur, King Pellinore, and Sir Gryfflette examples of a what knights strove to be like in Medieval society. Because of the examples ofchivalry, Le Morte d’Arthur showed what a knight desired to be, so he could improve theworld in which he lived.

Archetypes are universal symbols used in literature to represent fundamental human motifs. In the medieval romance Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, the hero must undergo archetypal situations to succeed in his quest to redeem the honor of Camelot. Gawain embodies the transcendent hero as he further goes into “The Zone of Magnified Power” (Campbell 71) then faces conflict resulting from the threat placed on the society. Sir Gawain and the Green Knight dramatically demonstrates how a single character can play many archetypal roles.

Archetypes act as universal symbols in literature to represent fundamental human motifs. In the medieval romance Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, the hero must undergo archetypal situations to succeed in his quest to redeem the honor of Camelot. Gawain embodies the transcendent hero as he further goes into “The Zone of Magnified Power” (Campbell 71) then faces conflict resulting from the threat placed on the society. Sir Gawain and the Green Knight dramatically demonstrate how a single character can play many archetypal roles.

In this paper I will discuss the ideas, cultures, characteristics of the Middle Ages are referenced and how their presence interlocks in the work. Sir Gawain’s quest covers his obligation to have success on the test of becoming a Green Knight. This would help have return blow for the following Christmas. Because the Green Knight proposed a challenge, Gawain was required to follow the terms of the agreement. The journey to find the Green Knight is a sequence of temptations. He lodges at the Castle Bertilak, and completed bargains with his host. Gawain will exchange anything he gambles on with the Bertilak catches on the hunt.

The stories of Lancelot (The Knight of the Cart) and Perceval (The Story of the Grail) within Chrétien de Troyes’ Arthurian Romances depict a world of Medieval Romance that is somewhat different from one that was depicted in earlier epics. These romances are more focused on the battle between love and honor rather than on war and valor, which were depicted in earlier epics of de Troyes’ time. The tale of Lancelot follows a star-struck knight who undergoes an inner conflict between both the lover and hero inside him. His intense commitment to rescuing the queen causes him to make rash decisions which inevitably restrain him from controlling his own fate. Perceval’s story exhibits a different purpose for love in a knight’s life. Unlike Lancelot, he accepts love only when he believes it can further advance him in becoming the perfect knight. The two heroes’ actions showcase an inner conflict between maintaining their honor as knights and the love for another. Through these two tales, Chrétien de Troyes shows that that idealistic love and conscious chivalry cannot necessarily successfully coexist, yet it is the unachievable idealistic view that these two ideals do coexist.

Don Quixote is a character who read so many books on chivalry, he 'was so absorbed in these books that his nights were spent reading from dusk till dawn…until the lack of sleep and the excess of reading withered his brain, and he went mad'(Cervantes p.26). 'considering it desirable and necessary, both for the increase of his honour and for the common good [he becomes] a knight errant'

Over the past month, we read the Story of the Grail by Chretien de Troyes. This poem details the progression of the knight Perceval. In the beginning, Perceval is not called by his name, instead he is referred to as “the youth”. This is an important detail to stress, because the poem is a coming of age story. As the poem progresses, the reader is able to see definitive changes in Perceval’s character. For example, in the beginning of the poem Perceval uses the limited knowledge that was bestowed upon him by his mother in order to complete his “knightly” duties. To make it worse, Perceval feels the need to tell everyone he meets that his mother is the one that taught him everything he knows. Eventually, Perceval outgrows this behavior and becomes a suitable knight. Throughout the poem, Perceval goes through many trials and tribulations, but for the purpose of this essay I will unravel the allegorical meaning of Perceval’s fight with the Red Knight using all four levels of interpretation.

“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

A role of Don Quixote’s delusions is to provide a glimpse into a situation where the chivalric code is implemented. Don Quixote is mad at first glance:

     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

The novel Don Quixote, by Miguel Cervantes, is an exploration into the idea of created reality. Cervantes, through the character of Don Quixote, illustrates to readers how we as human beings often make reality to be whatever we want it to be.

[is] Dorotea” in disguise, it does not fit into Quixote’s frame of thinking and is therefore rejected, “Can you be in your right mind?” This irony is used by Cervantes to introduce the reader to the issue of perspective. In this world there are two paradigms which are followed: one is to see the world through the fantastical and idealistic madness of Quixote, and the other is to view it through the realism adopted by the other characters of the text. Quixote’s madness creates a world where everything is taken at face value, not allowing the idea of deception to exist. When the issue of deception arises, he formulates alternate explanations which are in keeping with his perspective, stating that “...everything that happens in this place is brought about by enchantment.” The alternate view which is held by most of the other players is that, “anyone could see when he said that those windmills were giants, and those friars’ mules were dromedaries and those flock of sheep were enemy armies”. The hyperbolic images in Sancho’s sarcasm give the reader an insight into the sheer vastness of Quixote’s generalisation of his belief. It is Quixote’s differing school of thought which Cervantes uses to establish his alienation from the sanity of the constructed world. Contrastingly, In Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, Alice is the voice of sanity in the phantasmagorical setting of Wonderland. However, this also