4. Futurities, Empire, and Censorship: Cervantes in Conversation with Ovid and Orwell

At age 57 Cervantes was still a largely unknown writer. His plays were hardly performed, and his pastoral romance seemed forgotten. However, in 1605 he published Don Quixote, a work that became immediately popular, not necessarily as a serious work of fiction, but as a humorous book. Its main characters, knight and squire, would appear in parades and carnivals. Only much later would other aspects of his invention amaze the world. This essay, then, studies certain elements of futurity in Don Quixote, focusing on notions such as time, empire, and censorship. Before turning to Cervantes, the initial section of this essay seeks to delineate the study of futurities, particularly those that emerged from the Renaissance.