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Don Quixote
Don Quixote was published during the Spanish Golden Age (1492-1659), a period marked by flourishing progress in literature, music, and art.1 During the 1590s, Cervantes was imprisoned for the defalcation of a government agent and for failure to pay his debt. It is believed by most scholars that Cervantes wrote Don Quixote during this time in prison.2 Because of these circumstances and his poor childhood, his works are considered to be a satirical comedy of Spain's rigid chivalry or a criticism of the social hierarchy prevalent.1
In July of 1604, Miguel de Cervantes sold the rights of El ingenioso hidalgo don Quixote de la Mancha (Part I) to publisher and bookseller Francisco de Robles. After months of negotiations, Robles sent the original manuscript to Juan de la Cuesta who was in charge of a printing establishment in Madrid. The printing process was completed in December and by January 16, 1605 five or six editions of the book were available to the public.2
Even though during the time of this publication Spain undergoing a Golden Age, literacy rates still remained low. Overall the literacy rates in Spain in the early 1600s reached an all-time low of 5%.3 More specifically, in some rural areas about 80% of adults were illiterate.4 Despite Spain's extremely low literacy rates at the time, Don Quixote was an instantaneous success. By 1605 there were over 4,000 copies in circulation in Europe and the New World. Around 400 of these copies of the first edition were sent to the Americas, however, due to a shipwreck only 70 copies reached the Inca and Aztec empires. By the end of the 17th century in Europe, there were 27 editions available in Spanish and 10 editions available in English. These numbers soon escalated and by the 19th century, there were 152 editions available in Spanish and 78 in English.2 Evidently the book's effect was long-lasting and transcending in time.
After years of dropping hints to his readers and teasing them of a looming second part, Cervantes finally published Don Quixote, Part Two in 1615 through the same publisher as before, Francisco de Robles. This part was received with the same level of enthusiasm as the first by the general public. However, many critics claim that it is not of equal merit as the first part and some go even as far to call it "that unfortunate Second Part". Despite these sporadic critics, most common readers enjoyed and awaited this sequel, praising Sancho Panza's wittiness and the wild imagination of Cervantes himself. Many issues were published in Brussels, Valencia, and Lisbon to reach as many people as possible.2
As a result of the low literacy rates as well as the inability to copyright one’s work, there were very few professional writers in Spain at the time.5 Books were expensive and were typically only accessible to the upper class; thus, it was uncommon for books to reach a vast audience. Cervantes himself did not have a formal education, but his father was a surgeon and had a vast collection of books, an unusual and highly prized possession during this period.6
Due to Spain’s slow development of literacy, communication was dominated almost exclusively by oral and visual means. There is much historical and literary evidence for the prominence of public readings that took place not only in schools and family households, but also in various types of social gatherings.7 Spanish culture during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries was rich in songs, stories, proverbs, and tales. Furthermore, the teaching of Christian doctrine promoted the spread of oral culture, as it involved oral or visual tools (such as preaching, confession, images, and ornaments) more so than reading or writing.8 Knowledge was shared in the environment of confraternities, religious festivals, and the clerical atmosphere of daily life. However, despite this dominance of oral culture, the written culture of the literate minority was not insubstantial. In fact, there were “powerful intermediaries” between the two, such as popular theater, religious poetry, and mystery plays.9 Written culture preserved the oral, folkloric, and popular tradition; for example, popular versions of stories, songs, and histories were incorporated into printed compilations.
The plot of Cervantes’ novel is founded on the premise that a nobleman named Don Quixote reads so many chivalric romance novels that he decides to set out to bring justice to the world and revive chivalry. As a member of the upper class, Don Quixote is wealthy enough to own an extensive library filled with “more than a hundred large volumes, very nicely bound” (45), in contrast to the majority of the Spanish public at the time. In fact, the narrator describes that “this aforementioned gentleman spent his times of leisure – which meant most of the year – reading books of chivalry…that he forgot almost completely about the hunt and even about the administration of his estate” (20). Don Quixote is portrayed as a representation of the elite, particularly in that he was able to “sell acres of arable land in order to buy books of chivalry to read,” and he “brought as many of them as he could into his house” (20).
In Part I of Don Quixote, there are several instances that point towards the prominence of Spanish oral culture. For example, storytelling plays a significant role in Don Quixote’s adventures, and Sancho Panza decides the tell stories to pass the time: “I’ll make an effort to tell a story…The way I’m telling it is how tales are told in my village, and I don’t know any other way to tell it” (144-145). Storytelling also appears be a common form of entertainment for harvesters, as described by an innkeeper upon hearing about Don Quixote’s love of books. He states: "I think there is no better reading in the world. I have two or three of them here and some other writings. They've truly put life into me, and not only into me but into plenty of others. For at harvest time a lot of the reapers come in here in the mid-day heat. There's always one of them who can read, and he takes up one of those books. Then as many as thirty of us sit round him, and we enjoy listening so much that it saves us countless grey hairs" (267). From this quote we obtain a clear picture of a situation in which stories are transmitted orally rather than on paper, as well as the advantages of this method. One can infer from the innkeeper’s statement that the majority of the harvesters were illiterate. By reading stories out loud, those who _could _read were able to share and pass on the stories to “as many as thirty” other people at once. As such, the predominant practices of reading differed greatly between the lower and upper classes.
How many books / manuscripts were published in this period?
"The king's printer, Francisco de Robles, having secured a ten year's copyright in the work, the privilege of publication was granted on 26th September, 1604, and the book was issued from the press of Juan de la Cuesta, at Madrid, in January, 1605" (47). (Citation: Calvert, Albert Frederick. The Life of Cervantes: With Numerous Portraits and Reproductions from Early Editions of Don Quixote. Taunton, Massachusetts: Phoenix Printing Works. 1905. https://books.google.com/books?id=2AxfAAAAMAAJ&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_ViewAPI#v=onepage&q&f=false)
"In the summer of 1604 he [Miguel Cervantes] negotiated the sale of the rights with the publisher and bookseller Francisco de Robles, and it went to the press of Juan de la Cuesta in Madrid. Success was immediate. There were five or six editions (two of them unauthorized) by the end of the year." (Citation: de Cervantes Saavedra, Miguel, Charles Jarvis, and E. C. Riley. 1998. Don Quixote De La Mancha. Oxford: Oxford University Press. https://books.google.com/books?id=IZmVXKHD69MC&printsec=frontcover&dq=don+quixote+publication+methods&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiKqtvZ-ZHaAhXFs1kKHfgcCLwQ6AEIJzAA#v=onepage&q=don%20quixote%20publication%20methods&f=false)
"It is estimated that no fewer than 4,000 copies when into circulation in 1605. Copies of six editions, published in that year, at extant--Madrid, Lisbon, and Valencia each being responsible for two editions within a few months of its first appearance" (47). (Citation: Calvert, Albert Frederick. The Life of Cervantes: With Numerous Portraits and Reproductions from Early Editions of Don Quixote. Taunton, Massachusetts: Phoenix Printing Works. 1905. https://books.google.com/books?id=2AxfAAAAMAAJ&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_ViewAPI#v=onepage&q&f=false)
By the end of the 17th century, 27 editions in Spanish (10 in English) were circulating around Europe. By the end of the 19th century, these numbers increased to 152 editions in Spanish and 78 in English. (139). (Citation: Calvert, Albert Frederick. The Life of Cervantes: With Numerous Portraits and Reproductions from Early Editions of Don Quixote. Taunton, Massachusetts: Phoenix Printing Works. 1905. https://books.google.com/books?id=2AxfAAAAMAAJ&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_ViewAPI#v=onepage&q&f=false)
What were the literacy rates?
At the time (early 1600s), literacy rates in Spain were as low as 5%. (Taken from graph in article in: Buringh, E., & Van Zanden, J. (2009). Charting the “Rise of the West”: Manuscripts and Printed Books in Europe, A Long-Term Perspective from the Sixth through Eighteenth Centuries. The Journal of Economic History, 69(2), 409-445. doi:10.1017/S0022050709000837)
“It is hard to find reliable statistics about literacy in Spain during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Probably in some parts of rural Spain the percentage of illiterate adults could have been as high as 80 percent. ‘Nevertheless, at times it begins to look as though all mankind were composed of two overlapping classes: readers and writers’” (73). (Citation: Duran, Manuel, and Fay R. Rogg. Fighting Windmills: Encounters with Don Quixote. Yale University Press, 2006. https://books.google.com/books?id=m2M_uLNqkIUC&dq=statistics+of+don+quixote&lr=&source=gbs_navlinks_s)
Despite the low literacy rates the book was still widely read: "The success of 'the book of humanity'...was instantaneous and unprecedented, up to that date, in the world of letters. Spain rang with admiration and plaudits of this inspired story-teller and of the story, the like of which had never before been told. In an age when readers were few, the book was widely read, and in a country, where the buying of books was a limited indulgence, the book sold in its thousands" (47). (Citation: Calvert, Albert Frederick. The Life of Cervantes: With Numerous Portraits and Reproductions from Early Editions of Don Quixote. Taunton, Massachusetts: Phoenix Printing Works. 1905. https://books.google.com/books?id=2AxfAAAAMAAJ&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_ViewAPI#v=onepage&q&f=false)
Who reads? Where and how? What were the practices of reading?
Duran, Manuel, and Fay R. Rogg. Fighting Windmills: Encounters with Don Quixote. Yale University Press, 2006. https://books.google.com/books?id=m2M_uLNqkIUC&dq=statistics+of+don+quixote&lr=&source=gbs_navlinks_s
“Cervantes did not have a formal education, but he made up for it with an insatiable appetite for reading and travel. His father had a vast collection of books, which at the time was unusual and much prized” (21).
“There was no way of copyrighting one’s work, hence no defense against clandestine editions or sequels written by someone else…no royalties, and a small reading public. Books were expensive, which made it much harder to reach a vast audience…The number of professional writers in Spain and elsewhere was miniscule” (31).
“Throughout the second half of the sixteenth century and most, if not all, the seventeenth century, Western Europe was dominated by two sets of rules and rigid principles, both based on the written and printed words. Catholic countries were under the thrall of the articles approved by the Council of Trent as further defined and extended by papal bulls. Protestant countries were equally dependent on texts, in this instance the Bible in its different versions…The same phenomenon took place in Holland, Sweden, and other Protestant countries" (34).
Frago, Antonio Viñao. "The History of Literacy in Spain: Evolution, Traits, and Questions." History of Education Quarterly 30, no. 4 (1990): 573-99. doi:10.2307/368947. http://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/368947.pdf?refreqid=excelsior%3Aa13d35aa0d62bc836ff2bcd092df133b
"The teaching of the catechism or Christian doctrine could have provided a vehicle for the spread of literacy… Such teaching usually remained more within the limits of an oral culture (oral learning and expression) than a written one, more within the sphere of memorization than of reading…Rather than involving reading and writing, the tools of religious indoctrination, proselytism, and control were either oral (catechesis, preaching, confession, sporadic missionary activity, music, spiritual guidelines for individuals and families) or visual (images, processions, liturgical practices, rites, ornaments, the organization and use of space in places of worship and other sacred sites). Social means were also employed through confraternities, religious festivities, the clerical atmosphere of daily life, and the social presence of religious authorities, priests, and members of religious orders" (582-583).
Spain represents a case of comparatively late and slow developing literacy, and therefore, the country's social networks have been dominated, sometimes exclusively, by oral and visual means of communication. Thus, in contrast to regions that experienced an early and rapid rise in literacy rates, Spain offers a promising setting for research on the evolution and diffusion of styles of reading characteristic of an oral culture, on popular reading habits, and on the interaction between orality and writing. For example, it is not difficult to find historical and literary evidence for the persistence of intensive public readings, not only in enclosed environments like the cloister, school, or nuclear family, but also in very different types of social gatherings...In the thirty-second chapter of the first part of Don Quijote, after hearing the priest attribute Don Quijote's madness to the reading of the chivalric romances that were often among the best-sellers of the sixteenth century, the innkeeper responds: ‘I don't know how that can be, because really I think there is no better reading in the world. I have two or three of them here and some other writings. They've truly put life into me, and not only into me but into plenty of others. For at harvest time a lot of the reapers come in here in the mid-day heat. There's always one of them who can read, and he takes up one of those books. Then as many as thirty of us sit round him, and we enjoy listening so much that it saves us countless grey hairs.’” (590-91)
"Spanish culture in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries was predominantly oral and visual; it was rich in songs, tales, stories, proverbs, sayings, and ballads. However, the written culture of the literate minority must not be regarded on principle as something separate, different, or somehow opposed to that of the majority. As has been pointed out by B. Bennassar and M. Frenk, there existed "powerful intermediaries" between the two, such as autos sacramentales (mystery plays), popular theater, and worldly and religious poetry. Moreover, written culture preserved, even fossilized, the oral, folkloric, and popular tradition. The printing industry did so by absorbing aspects of oral culture into its publication of the petty broadside literature and editions of plays and by printing compilations of ballads, songs, stories, and histories taken directly from popular oral versions. Also, there were in circulation manuscript copies, which were especially suited for the diffusion of lyric poetry and popular theater works" (597).
Calvert, Albert Frederick. The Life of Cervantes: With Numerous Portraits and Reproductions from Early Editions of Don Quixote. Taunton, Massachusetts: Phoenix Printing Works. 1905. https://books.google.com/books?id=2AxfAAAAMAAJ&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_ViewAPI#v=onepage&q&f=false
"In the same forty-fourth Chapter of the Second Part, the rightly proud and complacent author speaks no more than the literal truth when he says of it: 'The author has made everything so plain that there is nothing in that book but what anyone may understand. Children handle it, youngsters read it, grown men understand it, and old people applaud it. In short, it is universally so thumbed, so gleaned, so studied, and so known, that if the people do but see a lean horse, they presently cry, 'There goes Rozinante.' But no descriptions of persons is so devoted to it as your pages; there is not a nobleman's ante-chamber in which you will not find a Don Quixote. If one lays it down, another takes it up; while one is asking for it, another snatches it; in short, this history affords the most pleasing and least prejudicial entertainment that ever was published, for there is not so much as the appearance of an immodest word in it, nor a thought that is not entirely catholic" (48-49).
de Cervantes, Miguel, Edith Grossman, and Harold Bloom. 2005. Don Quixote. 5th ed. New York: Ecco, HarperCollins.
“And so, let it be said that this aforementioned gentleman spent his times of leisure – which meant most of the year – reading books of chivalry with so much devotion and enthusiasm that he forgot almost completely about the hunt and even about the administration of his estate…he went so far as to sell acres of arable land in order to buy books of chivalry to read, and he brought as many of them as he could into his house” (20).
“In short, our gentleman became so caught up in reading that he spent his nights reading from dusk till dawn and his days reading from sunrise to sunset…His fantasy filled with everything he had read in his books, enchantments as well as combats, battles, challenges, wounds, courtings, loves, torments, and other impossible foolishness” (21).
“The priest asked the niece for the keys to the room that contained the books responsible for the harm that had been done…they found more than a hundred large volumes, very nicely bound, and many other smaller ones…” (45).
“…and here we would pardon the captain if he had not brought it to Spain and translated it into Castilian, for he took away a good deal of its original value, which is what all who attempt to translate books of poetry into another language will do as well: no matter the care they use and the skill they show, they will never achieve the quality the verses had in their first birth” (48).
Books in Don Quixote’s library: The Four Books of Amadís of Gaul, The Exploits of Esplandián, Amadís of Greece, Don Olivante of Laura, Felixmarte of Hyrcania, The Knight Platir, The Knight of the Cross, Th Mirror of Chivalry, Bernardo del Carpio, Roncesvalles, Palmerín of the Olive, Palmerín of England, Don Belianís, History of the Famous Knight Tirant lo Blanc, Diana, The Ten Books of Fortune in Love, The Shepherd of Iberia, Nymphs of Henares, Deceptions of Jealousy, The Shepherd of Fílida, Treasury of Various Poems, The Songbook, La Galatea, La Araucana, La Austríada, El Monserrate, The Tears of Angelica, La Carolea, The Lion of Spain, The Deeds of the Emperor (46-53)
“He depicted her in his imagination as having the form and appearance of another princess he had read about in his books, who overcome by love and endowed with all the charms stated here, came to see the badly wounded knight” (113).
“I’ll make an effort to tell a story…it’s the best of all stories; and your grace should pay careful attention, because here I go…The way I’m telling it is how tales are told in my village, and I don’t know any other way to tell it” (144-145).
“When the priest said that the books of chivalry that Don Quixote had read had made him lose his wits, the innkeeper said: ’I don't know how that can be, because really I think there is no better reading in the world. I have two or three of them here and some other writings. They've truly put life into me, and not only into me but into plenty of others. For at harvest time a lot of the reapers come in here in the mid-day heat. There's always one of them who can read, and he takes up one of those books. Then as many as thirty of us sit round him, and we enjoy listening so much that it saves us countless grey hairs.’” (267)
“I never have any peace in my house except when you’re listening to somebody read; you get so caught up that you forget about arguing” (267).
1. Cascardi, Anthony. Ideologies of History in the Spanish Golden Age. Penn Sate Press, 2010. https://books.google.com/books?id=dzFyGkROgv4C&vq=cervantes&source=gbs_navlinks_s
2. Calvert, Albert Frederick. The Life of Cervantes: With Numerous Portraits and Reproductions from Early Editions of Don Quixote. Taunton, Massachusetts: Phoenix Printing Works. 1905. https://books.google.com/books?id=2AxfAAAAMAAJ&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_ViewAPI#v=onepage&q&f=false
3. Buringh, E., & Van Zanden, J. (2009). Charting the "Rise of the West": Manuscripts and Printed Books in Europe, A Long-Term Perspective from the Sixth through Eighteenth Centuries. The Journal of Economic History, 69(2), 409-445. doi:10.1017/S0022050709000837
4. Duran, Manuel, and Fay R. Rogg. Fighting Windmills: Encounters with Don Quixote. Yale University Press, 2006. https://books.google.com/booksid=m2M_uLNqkIUC&dq=statistics+of+don+quixote&lr=&source=gbs_navlinks_s
5. Duran, Manuel, and Fay R. Rogg. Fighting Windmills: Encounters with Don Quixote. Yale University Press, 2006. https://books.google.com/booksid=m2M_uLNqkIUC&dq=statistics+of+don+quixote&lr=&source=gbs_navlinks_s
6. Duran, Manuel, and Fay R. Rogg. Fighting Windmills: Encounters with Don Quixote. Yale University Press, 2006. https://books.google.com/booksid=m2M_uLNqkIUC&dq=statistics+of+don+quixote&lr=&source=gbs_navlinks_s
7. Frago, Antonio Viñao. "The History of Literacy in Spain: Evolution, Traits, and Questions." History of Education Quarterly 30, no. 4 (1990): 590. doi:10.2307/368947. http://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/368947.pdf?refreqid=excelsior%3Aa13d35aa0d62bc836ff2bcd092df133b
8. Frago, Antonio Viñao. "The History of Literacy in Spain: Evolution, Traits, and Questions." History of Education Quarterly 30, no. 4 (1990): 583. doi:10.2307/368947. http://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/368947.pdf?refreqid=excelsior%3Aa13d35aa0d62bc836ff2bcd092df133b
9. Frago, Antonio Viñao. "The History of Literacy in Spain: Evolution, Traits, and Questions." History of Education Quarterly 30, no. 4 (1990): 597. doi:10.2307/368947. http://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/368947.pdf?refreqid=excelsior%3Aa13d35aa0d62bc836ff2bcd092df133b