anniversary of 'Don Quixote'
Scholars from Yale and beyond will gather on Friday and Saturday, Sept. 23 and 24, to celebrate the 400th anniversary of the publication of Miguel de Cervantes' "Don Quixote."
The two-day conference will address how and why "Don Quixote," widely credited as the first modern novel, has had such a profound and lasting influence on popular and literary culture throughout the West and around the world.
"Don Quixote" tells the story of a middle-aged, sedentary man of modest means belonging to the rural nobility, who suddenly decides to become a knight-errant and sets out in search of adventure. Always at the side of this romantic dreamer, who mistakes windmills for giants, is his trusted servant Sancho Panza trying to ground him in reality.
Shortly after its publication in Madrid in 1605, the book went through various printings and was translated into multiple languages. Today, "Don Quixote" is second only to the Bible in the number of editions and translations it has spawned. There are many adaptations of the book, and the story is the basis of the musical "The Man of La Mancha." "Don Quixote" has also become part of the modern idiom, as the source of the adjective "quixotic," meaning idealistic and impractical, and of the expression " tilting at windmills," meaning confronting an imaginary threat.
At the conference, scholars will assess "Don Quixote" from a variety of perspectives. Some will probe the effect of the masterpiece on colonial and modern Latin American literature, some will examine the significance of a specific episode or character and others will explore the relationship of the novel to Spain's multicultural society.
The event, which is free and open to the public, will take place at the Whitney Humanities Center (WHC), 53 Wall St. It will begin at 9:45 a.m. on Friday with welcoming remarks by Maria Rosa Menocal, the R. Selden Rose Professor of Spanish and Portuguese and director of the WHC, and an introduction by Georgina Dopico Black of New York University, who organized the conference with Roberto González Echevarría, Sterling Professor of Hispanic and Comparative Literature at Yale.
Friday's panels will be "Cervantes' Classical and Renaissance Worlds" at 10 a.m. and "Don Quixote on Stage and Screen" at 2 p.m. Saturday's sessions are "Cervantes: Other Worlds and Exiles" at 10 a.m. and "Don Quixote: Readings and Translations" at 2 p.m.
The conference will also include a public reception on Friday at 5 p.m. in Rm. 108. In conjunction with the event, the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library will present an exhibit of Cervantes' first editions, and The Cinema at the Whitney film society will show two related films at 6:30 p.m. on Friday in the WHC's auditorium: "Don Quixote" (1953), an acclaimed film version of Cervantes' story directed by Grigori Kozintsev, and "Lost in La Mancha" (2002), a documentary directed by Keith Fulton and Louis Pepe about Terry Gilliam's failed attempt to make his own film, "The Man Who Killed 'Don Quixote.'"
The conference is sponsored by the Department of Spanish and Portuguese, the Whitney Humanities Center and the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, with the support from the Edward J. and Dorothy Clarke Kempf Memorial Fund.
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