Don Quixote: Structure, Themes, and Style Analysis
Don Quixote: Structure, Themes, and Style
Structure
External Structure
Don Quixote is a play in two parts:
- Part One
- Part Two
Internal Structure: Characters
- Don Quixote
- Sancho Panza
- Dulcinea
- The Bachelor Samson Carrasco
- The Niece and the Housekeeper
Themes
Don Quixote explores timeless and universal themes. Some of the key themes include:
Literary Criticism
Don Quixote can be considered a treatise on literary criticism. Don Quixote’s library, unusual for the time, contains literary works rather than the typical historical and religious texts. The novel is filled with discussions about literary creation, sometimes serious (e.g., the Knight of the Green Coat episode) and sometimes ironic and burlesque (e.g., the Cousin adventure).
Social Criticism
Cervantes uses the characters and their encounters to offer a glimpse into the complex political, social, and economic realities of his era. All social levels are represented and satirized, except for the Church and the monarchy, reflecting Cervantes’s values.
The Baroque Paradox
The Baroque period questioned absolute values. Spain appeared rich but was impoverished, joyful yet disappointed. This fusion of opposites is central to Don Quixote. Key paradoxes include:
- Insanity vs. Sanity: Don Quixote’s madness, caused by reading, leads to a disconnect with reality, yet his opinions are often wise. Cervantes uses madness to critique his time.
- Real vs. Ideal: Don Quixote’s ideals are constantly challenged by reality. The novel portrays the struggle between dreams and life’s limitations.
- Utopia: The clash between reality and dreams.
Style
Don Quixote marks the birth of the modern novel, harmonizing fiction and reality. Characters in the second part have even read the first.
Narrative Technique
The novel’s complexity stems from its narrators:
- Cervantes: Initially presents the story based on archival data from La Mancha.
- Cide Hamete Benengeli: An Arabic author whose manuscript continues the story.
- The Translator: Translates Benengeli’s manuscript.
The narrative technique differs between parts:
- Part One: Episodic structure with interspersed short stories, and overlapping narrative voices.
- Part Two: Linear plot construction without interspersed stories.
Language and Style
For naturally, linguistic features that Cervantes uses are:
• Dialogue. Stylistically the novel is based on dialogue of characters who show like that way of being and thinking. Cervantes makes the characters speak in accordance with their status, and Don Quixote uses the language of chivalry, Sancho, who can not read or write, use the language of the people, full of proverbs and numerous inaccuracies. The novelty of Cervantes is to have created autonomous characters, human, which is constructing the language, speech, dialogue.
• neologisms. Cervantes is aware that language is alive, and who are the speakers and use those who really have power over language. This leads him to accept new words, believing that their adoption will depend only on usage.
• Irony. Cervantes’s humor is gentle, sympathetic human flaws and failures. Not a biting humor, but appears as a response to despair. The humor in Don Quixote is interpreted in the light of Cervantes’s own life and the reality of the moment. The novel is an exercise in style that demonstrates his artistic ability Cervantes, combining features of the narrative genres of the time.
• Gender chivalry. Shown in the main plot of the novel.
• The pastoral. Is reflected in many references throughout the novel, but more so in episodes such as Chrysostom and Marcela.
• The Italian-style short stories. There are many stories embedded in the first part of the novel, for example, “Curioso.”
• The picaresque. Cervantes is the genre in the episode in which Don Quixote talks with rowing in the galleys.
-The sentimental novel.
-The story Moorish.
-Gender doctrine.