Don Quixote

Don Quixote
Don Quixote is a novel written by the legendary Spanish author Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra. Don Quixote is an abbreviation of the entire title of the book which is El ingenioso hidalgo don Quijote de la Mancha which means the The Ingenious Hidalgo Don Quixote of La Mancha. The book is based upon narrations from the famous Moorish historian Cide Hamete Benengeli.

The book holds a significant value in the Spanish literary world and is deciphered to be one of the best written works in the entire Spanish Golden Age. The book is a must read for all Spanish language fans and historians who want to enjoy the true values associated with the norms of the Golden Age.

Some critics also analyze the book as the foundation work of modern Western literature. And the book still holds strong ratings as one of the best Spanish literatures that have surfaced and is compared with the works of Shakespeare and Tolstroy.

Story of the Book
The book revolves around an interesting character by the name of Alonso Quixano. The person is a retired country gentleman in his mid fifties and lives in an unnamed and unmarked territory of La Mancha. He has his lovely niece and dedicated housekeeper living under his roof. As a retired person, Quixano starts using books as a skillful past time and starts delving into passive reading.

He eventually becomes possessed with books especially books regarding chivalry. His fascination regarding chivalry increases to such an extent that he starts deciphering chivalry stories as gospel and revolves his life around the zeal and splendor associated with chivalry. He is on the verge of insanity and becomes completely mesmerized by the concepts and intriguing elements of chivalry.

The impact of chivalry books has taken a toll on the perception of people about Don.Quixano eventually appears to other people to have lost his mind from little sleep and food and because of so much reading. Like his story book heroes, Quixano finally decided to meet the world as a knight in search of adventure and excitement.

In order to facilitate his dream, he dons an old suit of armor, improvises a makeshift helmet, and names his skinny horse Rocinante. He designates a neighboring farm girl, Aldonza Lorenzo, as his ladylove, renaming her Dulcinea del Toboso, while she knows nothing about this. With these ingredients in place, Quixano is ready to take on the world as Don Quixote de la Mancha.

His adventure begins in the wee hours of morning as he rides into town in search of a local inn. His perspective is that the inn is the castle and Quixano has no remorse or feeling of surprise is asking the inn keeper about the lord of the castle.

The lord of the castle will be knighting him and is an honor for the romantic and adventurous Quixano. Playing along, the inn keeper dubs him knight after Quixano indefinitely held his armor throughout the night and musters all the faith and courage to fight against the muleteers who try to remove his armor from his horse trough to water their mules.

The sole adventure seeker then meets up with the infamous traders of Toledo which have insulted greatly the great and imaginary Dulcinea. During his stay in Toledo, he ends up saving the life of a boy who was captured and tortured by his master for asking for his wages. After saving the life of the boy, Don Quixote returns back.

The entire story changes and reaches a different crescendo as Don reaches his native village. His housekeeper along with his niece and the local barber gear up to secretly destroy all of the books of chivalry and permanently lock up the library.

The reason that they have given Don is that all of this has occurred due to a magicians' spell. Completely perplexed by the change of events, Don decides to escape.

Don Quixote approaches his neighbor, Sancho Panza, and requests him to be his squire with the commitment and luring promise of bestowing him governorship of an island in the mere future. Sancho is not one of the most promising people in town and buys into the deal. Finally, with his accomplice, the two ride off in the night.

The intriguing element in the book is not the perceptions and imaginations that is being rendered but the vital difference between viral illusions and reality. Predominantly, the book revolves around the creativity of mankind and how his creativity invades his reality and instills in him illusions that are contradictory to the realities of life. the story reveals that Don Quixote's imaginings are made the butt of outrageously cruel practical jokes.

Even his loyal comrade, Sancho finally realizes that Don is living in a world that is mere chaos and hallucinations. Sancho is deceived by Don and takes on different meanings from his misconstrued notions of Don's imagination and its impact on reality. One of the primal jobs of Sancho was to find Dulcinea. Since the lady never existed, Sancho ended up trapping three peasant girls and introducing them to Don as Dulcinea and her ladies in waiting.

The book takes the reader on many interesting turns and eventually ends up with Don coming back to sanity and eventually to a state of renunciation of chivalry, and finally, his death.

Awards and Achievements
The book has become a common bed time story for millions of people in the European peninsula and critics have labeled this book as the best work of fiction ever written. One of the greatest achievements is that the book was written in the 17th century and still has the claim of one of the top 5 revered and loved fictional books of all times. the author and his work is put on the stage with the works of Shakespeare, Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky.

The book has made the author Cervantes eternal in the annals of history and fiction writing. He has become a house hold name and his book read in different languages and in different eras. Fuentes, a Mexican, has described Cervantes as the founding father of Latin American literature.

Another great attribute given to Don is that he laid the foundation of fictional literature and prescribed to the world an entertaining and romantic ingredient to create and hone a specific fictional literary style. Some senior critics even call Cervantes as the first great novel of world literature.

A recent poll was also carried by Norwegian Book Clubs to promote classical literature over TV, films and computer games. The poll was to conclude the top 100 books of all times. Shakespeare, Kafka and Tolstoy each had three works on the list, while Faulkner, Flaubert and Garcia Marquez, Homer, Thomas Mann and Virginia Woolf had two.

Books by Dostoyevsky cropped up most often on the shortlist of the top 100 works, with four entries. This book was highly acclaimed and voted for.

There are few ballet classics that have stood the test of time quite like Don Quixote. Delighting audiences for over 150 years, this vibrant cultural phenomenon is based on one of Western literature's most revered stories, Don Quixote de la Mancha, written by Miguel de Cervantes in his 1605 and 1615 volumes.

Don Quixote centers on the deluded nobleman who delights in fantastical tales of knights and giants that he reads in books. He is smitten by his love for Dulcinea, an imaginary girl whose stunning beauty is ethereal. In the ballet, Don Quixote sets out with his portly wisecracking aide Sancho Panza on another adventure intertwined with the love story of Barcelona inn-keeper Lorenzo's daughter Kitri, and her barber lover Basilio. The unimpressed Lorenzo promises his daughter's hand to Gamache, a shallow merchant. Repulsed, Kitri plans on eloping with Basilio, only to find that Don Quixote has been deceived by her beauty and thinks she is Dulcinea, thereby initiating a mad chase.

The Ballet of the Imperial Bolshoi Theatre in Moscow hosted Don Quixote's first premier in 1869. It was choreographed by The Nutcracker and Sleeping Beauty veteran Marius Petipa, with music by Ludwig Minkus.

Alexander Gorsky's 1900 version, interpolated with dance sequences, soon became the Russian standard. George Balanchine brought it to America's New York City Ballet in 1965, where it won worldwide acclaim.

The purchase of Don Quixote tickets will help immerse fans into the convivial atmosphere as they revel in the celebration of color and imagery.