Don Quixote has alethic and aesthetic poles but does it not have more than that?
Do great novels, plays, paintings, sculptures need other qualities to impress?
I think any great piece of art is a superposition, a club sandwich for hungry readers and that all those secret influences and recipes makes them fascinating. Art is the way of melting it into unseen evidence. For example, about Don Quixote, do you know it's the first book in the world where a slave claims for a salary? This is only one of its revolutionary aspects, the other one being the slave (Sancho Panza) the real hero, the one that moves the action. With Sancho Panza, we have the best Cervantes contribution to Italian Humanism and Humanity: letting the normal men enter the world of heroes and gods, fiction. And it had been unperceived for 4 centuries, European turning him into what he is: a ridiculous slave, producing cut-off versions for kids, learning them to laugh at the poor. When he is the king of Action and the life reference for Don Quixote. Could have don Quixote been going on alone? My point is Alonso Quijano don't leave home until his slave comes to him, Sancho Panza. Then he can begin his quest as Don Quixote.
Brilliant, Fred. Worth the question alone. I can also see you are right. Is there a Shakespeare innovation of the same kind? He didn't I think concentrate at all on ordinary people.
No but Shakespeare had to face censorship (2 versions of Othello) and in a certain way the Merchant of Venise is related to the same fascinating character English kings didn't want to hear about: Antonio Manutius aka Hassan Pacha Veneziano, king of Algiers, master of the slave Miguel de Cervantes. Normally, Shakespeare does not concentrate on ordinary people (even if not in my favorite play, As you like it). Cervantes is a clear precursor and his work is so subtle.
Fred, they were writing at the same time. But Othello is clearly the presentation of another culture, but one even then that was an equal, a foe to be feared. We assume of course he is Moslem, but nothing if I recall underlines that fact. Although Othello's insecurity may demonstrate that. Shylock is accused as being evidence of anti-semitic portrayal, but not with his celebrated speech and as often with Shakespeare the audience has niggling doubts about the heroic Christians. I can see Quixote as a subversion of heroic themes-which it was, but Shakespeare perhaps not.
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