Review by Booklist Review
*Starred Review* Few readers now even notice the moment in Don Quixote when the narrator digresses to assess the fears of Saavedra, a former hostage of Algerian pirates and a stand-in for Cervantes himself. Yet in this brief digression, Egginton recognizes a transformational pivot toward the complex subjectivity that defines modern fiction. As he chronicles the life that prepares Cervantes to make this creative breakthrough, Egginton limns a trajectory carrying a young soldier, adventurer, and duelist through his costly early idealism, through his mature career as an innovative playwright, and finally to his stunning triumph as the world's first novelist. In creating Don Quixote, Cervantes transcends Aristotle's distinctions between history and poetry, creating a new imaginative space for weighing alternative perspectives on characters and events. Readers see how this interplay of interpretive perspectives revolutionizes literature as they enter the complex give-and-take relationship between Cervantes' deluded protagonist, Don Quixote, and his humble but clear-eyed squire, Sancho. Though Egginton recognizes the early seventeenth-century cultural trends that influence Cervantes as he forges his masterpiece, the novel he shows his readers ultimately helps create a new era, propelling readers such as Hume, Hegel, and Jefferson into new regions of the mind and spirit. A revered classic here becomes strikingly new again. This belongs in public libraries where literary criticism and biography find eager readers.--Christensen, Bryce Copyright 2015 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Egginton (The Philosopher's Desire) weaves together Cervantes's life story with his development as a writer. Cervantes's life was a saga unto itself: he served in the Spanish army, was kidnapped and enslaved in Algiers, became a playwright, wrote a pastoral romance, spent time in debtors' prison, fathered an illegitimate daughter, and, while working as a tax collector, was twice excommunicated by the Catholic Church for raising revenues from them rather than from impoverished peasants. Finally, he drew from a deep wellspring of disillusion to write his ironic masterpiece, Don Quixote, late in life. Egginton shines in his literary analysis, teasing out Cervantes's genius in accessible prose and showing how Don Quixote paved the way for modern fiction by exploring its characters' inner lives. Compared to most literary biographers, Eggington faces a hard task: so much of Cervantes's life story is conjectural that the biographical readings often feel tenuous. Nonetheless, this book provides an entertaining and thought-provoking reading of Cervantes's masterpiece, and of the lesser-known rest of his oeuvre. Agent: Michael V. Carlisle and Lauren Smythe, InkWell Management. (Feb.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review
The year 2016 marks the 400th anniversary of the death of Miguel de Cervantes, author of the timeless novel Don Quixote. Egginton (Andrew W. Mellon Professor in the Humanities, Johns Hopkins; How the World Became a Stage) has produced an appealing study of the novelist that is equal parts biography and literary analysis. -Cervantes, he argues, "invented fiction," revolutionizing the way we look at the world and our place in it. Gallantry, braveness, honor-the old don's madness undercut the very values he espoused, creating "sentences that are simultaneously true and false," and creating a gap between what we think we perceive and what is actually out there. This, -Egginton argues, is the essence of the fictional stance. Different actors-in particular, the bewitched knight and his simple page, Sancho Panza-take in the same scenes in radically different ways, an insight that has been exploited ever since in generations of novels. -Egginton discusses contrasting scholarly interpretations of Cervantes in the text and footnotes, weaving his scholarly discussion into a reprise of Cervantes's life. VERDICT Egginton writes well, but this book will probably appeal most to fellow scholars.-David Keymer, Modesto, CA © Copyright 2015. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
A celebration of a beloved novel and its innovative author. Commemorating the 400th anniversary of Cervantes' death, Egginton (German and Romance Languages and Literature/Johns Hopkins Univ.; In Defense of Religious Moderation, 2011, etc.) makes a bold argument for the Spanish author's importance: that in Don Quixote, he invented fiction, a genre distinct from history or poetry that creates the experience of "different worlds and perspectives" and generates emotions about characters "that feel real." This novel, writes Egginton, was so new and influential that it changed the way readers viewed themselves and the world. Like Ilan Stavans' recent Quixote (2015), Egginton asserts that the book was hugely popular in its own time and after, heralded by scores of major writers throughout the past four centuriese.g., Goethe, Schiller, Flaubert, Faulkner, and Kundera. Thomas Jefferson used it to teach himself Spanish. Nevertheless, evidence that it has been read and praised does not prove how it transformed those readers and served as "the first sign of a truly modern consciousness." Here, Egginton resorts to speculation, as he does in piecing together biographical details of Cervantes' life. The book is filled with what the Spaniard "must have" felt or "could have" experienced. Troublesome also is the slippery term "modern." Modern fiction, the author asserts, "allows for the reader's identification and sympathies to shift between opposing viewpoints" and to get "a privileged view" into the consciousness and emotions of a character. According to Egginton, Cervantes taught readers "that we can play roles without believing in them" and demonstrated the difference "between what a person seems to be on the outside and what he or she feels or thinks on the inside." Despite a lack of evidence proving cause and effect, Egginton's well-informed history of 16th-century Spanish life, politics, and culture makes for an engrossing read. He need not have insisted on sweeping claims for Cervantes' mind-changing influence. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
