Don Quixote Rides Again--in California
If you happen to be in Los Angeles you can still catch a few of the events planned as part of the Cervantes celebration at UCLA. Read this and this for details.
From the UCLA public relations folks:
During the first weeks of April in 1605, an impoverished and addled Spanish nobleman set out on horseback in pursuit of the kinds of adventures he had read about in chivalric romances. In the intervening 400 years, generations of readers have encountered the poor fellow and his faithful companion, Sancho Panza, be it in the pages of "Don Quixote" or on the stage or screen.
In honor of Quixote's enduring appeal, in April UCLA is hosting a monthlong celebration of Miguel de Cervantes' self-styled knight who teaches each new generation to dream the impossible dream.
... UCLA is a natural place to hold such a celebration, given that its Department of Spanish and Portuguese has for more than 50 years required Spanish majors to read the novel, which is an unusually rigorous requirement for undergraduates, department officials said.
But the enduring appeal of "Don Quixote," said to be the second most popular book ever published (behind the Bible), remains something of a mystery. After all, the two-part, 126-chapter behemoth is written in the Spanish equivalent of Elizabethan English.
Of course, it helps to have been first, points out John Dagenais, department chair. "'Don Quixote is the beginning of the modern novel,'" Dagenais said. "The great European writers of the 18th, 19th and 20th centuries, major U.S. authors like Hawthorne, Melville, as well as Latin American novelists like García Márquez all learned to write by reading 'Don Quixote.'"
To this day, such contemporary writers as Philip Roth, John Irving, Kurt Vonnegut, and Larry McMurtry profess a debt to "Quixote," said Carroll Johnson, a Spanish professor and leading Cervantes expert.
Technorati Tags:
Cervantes, Spanish, Spain, Quixote, Don Quixote, literature, books, anniversaries, UCLA, Los Angeles, California, universities, lectures, exhibits, museums, events, campus life, celebrations, news, Europe, Spanish literature, language, education
From the UCLA public relations folks:
During the first weeks of April in 1605, an impoverished and addled Spanish nobleman set out on horseback in pursuit of the kinds of adventures he had read about in chivalric romances. In the intervening 400 years, generations of readers have encountered the poor fellow and his faithful companion, Sancho Panza, be it in the pages of "Don Quixote" or on the stage or screen.
In honor of Quixote's enduring appeal, in April UCLA is hosting a monthlong celebration of Miguel de Cervantes' self-styled knight who teaches each new generation to dream the impossible dream.
... UCLA is a natural place to hold such a celebration, given that its Department of Spanish and Portuguese has for more than 50 years required Spanish majors to read the novel, which is an unusually rigorous requirement for undergraduates, department officials said.
But the enduring appeal of "Don Quixote," said to be the second most popular book ever published (behind the Bible), remains something of a mystery. After all, the two-part, 126-chapter behemoth is written in the Spanish equivalent of Elizabethan English.
Of course, it helps to have been first, points out John Dagenais, department chair. "'Don Quixote is the beginning of the modern novel,'" Dagenais said. "The great European writers of the 18th, 19th and 20th centuries, major U.S. authors like Hawthorne, Melville, as well as Latin American novelists like García Márquez all learned to write by reading 'Don Quixote.'"
To this day, such contemporary writers as Philip Roth, John Irving, Kurt Vonnegut, and Larry McMurtry profess a debt to "Quixote," said Carroll Johnson, a Spanish professor and leading Cervantes expert.
Technorati Tags:
Cervantes, Spanish, Spain, Quixote, Don Quixote, literature, books, anniversaries, UCLA, Los Angeles, California, universities, lectures, exhibits, museums, events, campus life, celebrations, news, Europe, Spanish literature, language, education
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