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The Utopian Nexus in Don Quixote
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.
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.
This book is a penetrating analysis of Don Quixote and Sancho Panza's respective utopian fantasies, which provide the primary motivation for knight and squire's pursuit of fame and fortune. Professors Dunn and Jehenson richly contextualize those fantasies, examining them in the light of both the oral folk tradition and numerous biblical, classical, medieval and Renaissance versions of utopia.
--Michael McGaha (Yale B. and Lucille D. Griffith Professorship in Modern Languages), Pomona College
The authors present insightful commentary on Cervantes' concern for the major intellectual topics of his day: arms and letters, social justice, the modern state, reality and fantasy, city and countryside. --Choice