Essays on Quixote

We live in a world where toys are color-coded blue for boys and pink for girls. TV commercials for certain products food included are focused on men on one hand and others target women. Women have been cultured to be fond of “chick flicks” which are predominantly romantic comedies whereas men are meant to watch action movies and soccer. Roles and plays have been highly gendered. These cultural assumptions have been in existence since time immemorial. Therefore, the thesis by which this paper is guided is two-fold: there is a direct causative relationship between the cultural assumptions on gender ...

Human beings as fans of outside work is nothing new: although modern society has the technology that allows large groups of these fans to gather, there is no doubt that fandom has been around a very long time. In fact, in Don Quixote—a novel written in two separately-published parts—the author had to write in a character who was initially created by a fan of the first part of the novel (Harris and Alexander 1998). This fan-made character then denounced his claim to being the true Don Quixote, and the novel meanders on—however, this is just one ...

In Don Quixote, verisimilitude is used in an intriguing way, as the truth is presented through the eyes of aging, senile dreamer Don Diego de Miranda as a fantastical adventure. Don Quixote himself takes on the responsibility of providing verisimilitude to the audience, as he asks them to suspend disbelief and go along with the transparently futile ride. Verisimilitude is also conveyed by the narrator of the piece (arguably Cervantes, the author, himself), as he never lets the audience take Quixote’s fantasies as truth – the events and people he encounters are always presented through the lens of truth. ...