The Utopian Nexus in Don Quixote

by Myriam Yvonne Jehenson, Peter N. Dunn

Overview

Jehenson and Dunn explore the mythic utopian desires that drive Don Quixote and Sancho Panza in Don Quixote. By tracing the discourses surrounding what they identify as a myth of abundance and a myth of "simple wants" throughout Spain and the rest of Europe at the time, Jehenson and Dunn are able to contextualize some of the stranger incidents in Don Quixote, including Camacho's wedding. They bring to the forefront three aspects of the novel: the cultural and juridical background of Don Quixote's utopian program for reviving the original property-less condition of the Age of Gold; the importance for Sancho Panza of the myths of Cockaigne and Jauja; and the author's progressive skepticism about utopian programs.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780826515186
Publisher:	Vanderbilt University Press
Publication date:	07/10/2006
Pages:	216
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.70(d)

About the Author

Peter N. Dunn is the Hollis Professor of Romance Languages and Literatures, Emeritus, at Connecticut's Wesleyan University and the author of Castillo Solórzano and the Decline of the Spanish Novel, Fernando de Rojas, The Spanish Picaresque Novel, and Spanish Picaresque Fiction: A New Literary History.

Myriam Yvonne Jehenson is Professor Emerita of Comparative Literature and Literary and Cultural Studies at the University of Hartford, Connecticut and the author of The Golden World of Pastoral: A Comparative Study of Sidney's Arcadias and d'Urfé's L'Astrée and Latin-American Women Writers: Class, Race, and Gender.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments     vii
Preface     ix
Discursive Hybridity: Don Quixote's and Sancho Panza's Utopias     1
Utopia as Cultural Construct     21
Parallel Worlds: Myth into History and Performance     39
The Pan European Land of Cockaigne     49
Sancho Panza and the Material World     77
Discursive Formations in Sixteenth-Century Spain     89
The ius naturale and "The Indian Question"     113
Sancho Panza's Utopia     131
Don Quixote's Utopia     147
Works Cited and Consulted     167
Index     185