The first time the Fool enters in Shakespeare's King Lear he immediately offers Kent his coxcomb, or jester's hat. Lear asks the Fool "My pretty knave, how dost thou?" (1.4.98) This initial action and inquiry of the Fool is representative of the...

From its beginnings, literature has been characterized to a remarkable degree by narratives and images of journeys. What gets many texts started and what keeps them going is very commonly a journey of some sort. However, these journeys are not...

King Lear and Don Quixote use madness to acknowledge the unpleasant truths of humanity. Don Quixote entertains a fundamentally comic madness; while, King Lear offers a more tragic interpretation of insanity. Both protagonists, King Lear and Don...

In Miguel de Cervantes’ Don Quixote, the titular character embarks on a journey to enact knight errantry, transfiguring the quotidian Spanish countryside into a world of his own making—one modeled after the many chivalric romances he has read and...

As proposed by Immanual Kant, the Enlightenment consisted of having “the courage to use your own understanding,” and John Milton’s Paradise Lost, Descartes’ Meditations, and Cervantes’ Don Quixote collectively provide instances that both affirm...

In her essay “Don Quijote’s Disappearing Act”, Anne J. Cruz argues that Don Quixote’s death can be predicted, and as early as Part 1. Her thesis is that the first and second parts of the novel can be understood thus: “ [...] Don Quijote’s final...

When Sancho Panza is first introduced, he seems to be a greedy, gluttonous simpleton only along for the ride to get away from his family and make a little money while he was at it (67). However, over the course of his sallies with Don Quixote, he...