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Loading... Lectures on Don Quixote (1983)by Vladimir Nabokov
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Sign up for LibraryThing to find out whether you'll like this book. No current Talk conversations about this book. A good accompaniment to Don Quixote, marred only by Nabokov's less-than-complete love for the novel. It is six lectures he gave at Harvard that ranges from more conventional discussion to more novel presentations, like a scorecard that goes through the 40 "battles" in the book, classifies them into different types, and calls each one a win or a loss. Turns out the final score was 20-20. Nabokov might be right that the novel would have been even better if Don Quixote's final combat was with the false Don Quixote from the false Part Two that wasn't written by Cervantes. Oh well. I hate to say this, but I recommend reading this over actually reading Cervantes' Don Quixote (which admittedly I could not finish). Don Quixote is probably one of those books that should be talked about but not read. Nabokov's account and criticisms are enjoyable enough, and it saves you the pain of plodding through Cervantes' original work.
Without his habit of thorough preparation, his dash, his delight in mischief, prejudice, and the cheerfully perverse, Vladimir Nabokov’s lectures would have been no more than pepper and salt. He was an extraordinary preparer. When he came to deliver his course on Don Quixote at Harvard in 1951 —2 he had, for example, gone to the length of writing a summary of the events in this enormous novel, chapter by chapter, so making an invaluable crib... What is Nabokov’s final judgment? That the book is more important in its eccentric diffusion than in its own intrinsic value. Sancho is a bore, his proverbs lose their piquancy in English, but he is most interesting when he himself catches the infection of enchantment. The Don, on the other hand, undergoes a multiplication. He is enlarged by the ingenuity and subtlety of his madness. He embodies the mystery of reality and illusion. He is courageous to a degree. Is a study of
A fastidiously shaped series of lectures based on a chapter-by-chapter synopsis of the Spanish classic. Rejecting the common interpretation of Don Quixote as a warm satire, Nabokov perceives the work as a catalog of cruelty through which the gaunt knight passes. Edited and with a Preface by Fredson Bowers; photographs. No library descriptions found. |
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Google Books — Loading... GenresMelvil Decimal System (DDC)863.3Literature Spanish and Portuguese Spanish fiction Spanish Golden Age (1499-1681)LC ClassificationRatingAverage:
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Nabokov might be right that the novel would have been even better if Don Quixote's final combat was with the false Don Quixote from the false Part Two that wasn't written by Cervantes. Oh well. ( )