Cervantes and Don Quijote at Home and Abroad

Abstract

Do resonances of Cervantes's frustrated attempts to be granted a royal appointment in the Spanish Indies filter into the “Quijote”? Can the author be glimpsed in the novel of which he is also a reader? What holds Don Quijote and Sancho Panza together and gives this episodic novel its coherence? Attuned to the rich conversational exchanges between the two protagonists, I argue that Don Quijote's escalating promises and Sancho's dogged pursuit of an island to govern, together with the triangulated relationship of Don Quijote, Sancho, and the imagined Dulcinea, result in what can rightly be called Cervantes's anti-anthem to America.