Don Quixote can be dubbed as modern if the characteristics of modernism are taken into account. For example, alienation is a distinctive feature of modernism. The hero of this picturesque work feels alienated and cut off from the self and his social surroundings. I would highly recommend:

Rachel Schmidt .Forms of Modernity: Don Quixote and Modern Theories of the Novel.Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2011.

The outdated realm and concepts of chivalry and gentle-manliness in

Don Quixote relates to today's disintegrated orthodox morality. I still open the car's door to the lady that accompanies me, so I do relate to Don Quixote as a modern individual!

I see a link between the abduction by videogames and the sadness of Don Quixote, because his readings of knighthood novels.

HMS, I like the Rachel Schmidt book, and also William Egginton's book: The Man Who Invented Fiction: How Cervantes Ushered in The Modern World. The evolution of oral publication to written publication to print as a form of publication is another powerful avenue defining modernity. The book after Gutenberg, and poetics into print into the book all transpired while the actors or minstrels on a stage remained a continuation of a culture of oral publication.

In my essay (in Spanish) at http://dlmcn.com/dq.html#beg I drew attention to the fact that certain metaphors - in particular the adjective quixotic - are interpreted negatively (i.e., as criticisms) in the English language - but not in Spanish.... In addition, I was quite struck by Dostoyevski's assessment and comment - [not exactly 'modern', it is true, but more recent than Cervantes's Siglo de Oro; i.e., still relevant in today's world].

While it is true that the term "modernism" has negative denotative overtones derived from such masterpieces as T.S. Eliot's _The Waste Land_ and F. Scott Fitzgerald's _Tender Is the Night_, _The Great Gatsby_, and other Jazz Age works, you might want to consider taking a comparative approach by widening your scope and looking into more upbeat adaptations of the Don Quixote character and themes, such as, for example, the musical "Man of La Mancha," which may lead to other possibilities. This is just a suggestion; I hope it helps.

David McNaughton: Your essay has some interesting reflexions on the novel, and perhaps the incredible influence over other moderns should be included in the second question, "How did Don Quixote affect Modernity?", but to the first question, "What makes Don Quixote Modern?", your mention of the intercalated stories may prove instructive. I can't help but see their abundance in Book One, leaving our protagonists out of the narrative for long periods, as evidence of certain insecurities in the author concerning his thesis that the novel was indeed a valuable poetic delivery system. However, by the time we reach Book Two those stories never leave don Quixote or Sancho Panza out of the action. Cervantes seems to be completely convinced by the time he wrote the second part, and therein can be found a huge part of the definition of the novel.

Following

I think taht the modernity and innovation of "Quijote" is more evident from a Iberic point of view than French or Italian, where we can found a vaste production of medieval novels: heroics, sentimentals, etc. in the medieval and renaissance times. In Iberic countrys , the narrative was not very rich and, often, with intention moralitzing more than leisure, as in "Caballero Zifar", etc.

Vincent Serverat: Your observation is going to require a good deal more development in order for me to understand it. What do you mean "Iberian ... narrative was not very rich"? Are you saying that more French and Italian works from the oral tradition of the Middle Ages have been preserved in manuscripts? Are you saying that the narrative traditions of the Picaresque, the Chivalric, the Byzantine, the Sentimental, and the Pastoral were dwarfed by poetry and theater? How do the medieval novel's innovations in France and Italy anticipate Cervantes? Please explain; I am looking forward to your response. C

Don quixote by itself is inspired on the same source than Hypnerotomachia poliphili: on Euhumerus'works (6th c bc) and more (Apuleo, "Chorographia" de Gaspar de Barreiros, Tommas Fazello for the Sicilian references, Pero Mexia aka Pierre Messie "Silve de diverses leçons", one of the first european best-sellers gave him Dulcinea). But the most flagrant modernity of "Las aventuras de Don Quixote" is so massive we couldn't catch it in 4 centuries: it is Sancho Panza, the slave being a novel main character in a land until now reserved to Gods and heroes, the slave that literally moves the story, until the point Don Quixote doesn't go on journey and is still Alonso Quijano until Sancho Panza comes to his house. And finally, Sancho Panza is the first slave in the History of Humanity claiming for a salary. For all those reasons, and more, I think Sancho Panza is an ironic selfie of Miguel de Cervantes, that was slave for 5 years in Algiers of a king, himself former slave of the prince of persian poetry, Muhabbi, himself slave of Sheherazade. Don Quixote may have to a lot to do with 1001 nights. Maybe that's why he never drinks wine but spread it around, as in Numidian Apuleo "Golden donkey".

My book on anti-communist resistance and dissent in Romania is titled "From Robin Hood to Don Quixote" because it refers to the armed groups in the Carpathian Mountains in the 1950s and the loneliness of radical dissent in the 1980s. Don Quixote is more actual than ever in our globalized world.

In 1605 with Don Quixote Book I, and in 1615, Book II, Miguel de Cervantes gave us the novel as we know it today. 152 years before, in 1453, the printing press fell right into the European oral culture. Prior to Gutenberg’s gismo, writing primarily served one of three purposes: to archive data; to provide a snapshot of a given performance; or to offer performers material for enacting a performance. Publishing, making words public, was done orally, by criers and lectors and troubadours on a stage or in some other performance space. The first generations to follow print found themselves transitioning from an oral tradition into literacy and, by the time Cervantes arrived on the scene, he could see that the book was becoming a space for poetic performance that might rival the stage, and he set out to make that happen.

Above is a fragment from a talk I am to deliver today for World Book Day. I would like to thank all of you for your help here. I do hope you keep the discussion going, because it is an important question for the very curious who wish to understand Modernity.

I dont agree entierely with the question "modernity of Don Quixote" that invites to follow the ways of anachronism in the fields of letters, ideology, etc. I prefer anothers points of view, as creation or creativity, narrativity, etc. It seems even that critics prove to extract, from Cervantes books, socials ethics or secular ideology, at the manner of one Spanish Voltaire before the Enlightement. Personnally, i love "Novelas Ejemplares" perhaps more than "Don Quijote".

I don't know, Vincent, it seems to me that the most Modern thing about Don Quixote is the poetic delivery system: The book.

So you totally exclude, by jumping from Gutemberg to Cervantes, many good authors and even best-sellers that inspired Cervantes: Pere Mexia, and the Venetian author that was copied all over Europe (Cervantes, Rabelais, Thomas More): Aldus Manutius the Elder and his Hipnoteromacchia Polifili (1494). Really the book, by the time Don Quixote was published, wasn't any novelty.

Fred Romano: I do not recall having said so.

Also, your opinion that "the book, by the time Don Quixote was published, wasn't any novelty" does not speak to the issue. The book was no novelty. The book as a system for supplying material to record keepers and performers was no novelty either. However, the book as a poetic delivery system to an audience, to the public was a phenomenon that was primed by pre-Gutenberg literacy, and print generated the book's evolution toward the poetic delivery system that Cervantes exploited. He saw that the picaresque novel and the books of chivalry, et cetera, were now able to generate as much commotion in the streets, the cafés, the bars, ... , as a Lope de Vega play, and he advocated for that usage of the book. The works that you point out as having inspired Cervantes seem to provide evidence of that very point. Cervantes' use of the book is a Modern use, not a Medieval one, and it is the Modernity of/in the work that we are exploring here.

If you think there are other elements that are equally Modern, or more so, you are welcome, even encouraged, to share them, but do not attempt again to speak for me. If I ever wish to "totally exclude" anybody, I will say so. If you wish to know what my thoughts are, all you have to do is ask.

Sorry I didn't mean to upset you. But the authors I mentioned weren't Medieval literature, either, especially Aldus Manutius the Elder.

I did not say that those authors were Medieval; I said that Cervantes' use of the book is not a Medieval use, but, rather, a Modern use. Are you registering disagreement with that statement?