``Cervantes lived his age: the decadent Spain of the last Hapsburgs, Philip III and the devaluation of money, the fall of the economy due to the successive expulsion of the industrious Jewish and Arab populations, the compulsion to disguise Hebrew or Moorish origins leading to a society of brittle masks, the lack of efficient administrators for a far-flung empire, the flight of the gold and silver of the Indies to the mercantile powerhouses of Northern Europe. A Spain of urchins and beggars, hollow gestures, cruel aristocrats, ruined roads, shabby inns and broken-down gentlemen who, in another, more vigorous age, might have conquered Mexico and sailed the Caribbean and brought the first universities and the first printing presses to the New World: the fabulous energy of Spain in the invention of America.''
http://www.signandsight.com/features/361.html
It's been a long time since I read such a fabulous book review. Thanks for posting it.
I read Don Quiote in a major authors survey class. The professor matched works in a dualistic way. He started with the Homer's Illiad, followed by Ovid's Metamorphosis, then Dante's Inferno followed by Boccaccio's Decameron. Next came Cervantes Don Quiote to a play by Shakespeare, As You Like It(?) I think the next match after that started with Moliere's Tartuffe and I've forgotten the other half...and too many comparsions-contrasts that went through my brain to remember them. The first was the most evident, of the epic to the pastoral, war, men, killing, to women, life and love.
All through these readings flowed the history around them: Greece and Rome, the Gothic to early Renaissance, late Renaissance, Elizabeth v. Phillip, turn into the counter-reformation wars soon to again turn to the age of empire, reason, science and the enlightenment.
It's hard to express how much I got from this professor and the way his mind worked and works he assigned. Wish I could remember his name. It struck me as a huge amount of hard reading for one semester. Yet I really loved the class.
CG