PhD Program in Historical studies
A Baroque work that has marked the history of Spain
The itinerary that we present in these pages allows us to understand the importance of literature for Baroque culture, the landscape, art and traditions of a historical region such as La Mancha. Through the reading of several episodes of this main work of Spanish literature, the Ingenioso Hidalgo Don Quijote de la Mancha, we can get to know the Baroque and quijotesque traces which remained in the towns and cities of La Mancha and which are mentioned in Cervantes‘s work.
Don Quijote de la Mancha, published for the first time in 1605, can be considered the first novel in the history of Spanish literature. It differed from other genres known up to that time, such as the Greco-Roman epic or the medieval chronicle, because the protagonists of the novel were ordinary people and, as such, subject to changes in the course of the story, in contrast, for example, with heroes. In addition, the novel developed, in parallel to the main story that served as the main theme, a series of “other stories”, which were more or less focused on the lives of the characters, which was also markedly different from the static and the formalism of chronicles. Finally, the realism of the context and the circumstances narrated in the novel, allow the reader to identify with the characters or to recognize the places described in it. In this sense, the Quijote was a real revolution for its time and became a model even outside the borders of the Iberian Peninsula.
In addition to a being literary work, the Quijote is also a reflection of Spanish Baroque society. The protagonist is in fact a man of aristocratic origins (an hidalgo) who aspires to be and act like a medieval knight at a time, the seventeenth century, in which the values associated with the world of war and cavalry had disappeared. Don Quijote is therefore a stranger to his time, in which high society instead moved according to the criteria imposed by courtly etiquetteCustoms, manners and ceremonies that should be followed in Royal Houses and during the solemn public acts., purity of bloodThe Spain of the Early Modern period had been imposed the so-called limpieza de sangre, an interrogation which aimed to investigate the origins of a person and to verify that among his ancestors there were Moors, Jews or heretics. To demonstrate their limpieza de sangre was mandatory for those who aspired to enter religious Orders and the military or public institutions. or literary debate. A novel which is therefore unparalleled, it is an integral part of Spanish society and the cultural imagination of the Baroque period.