Lectures on Don Quixote

By Vladimir Nabokov

Book Overview

A fastidiously shaped series of lectures based on a chapter-by-chapter synopsis of the Spanish classic. Rejecting the common interpretation of Don Quixote as a warm satire, Nabokov perceives the work as a catalog of cruelty through which the gaunt knight passes. Edited and with a Preface by Fredson Bowers; photographs.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0156495406
• ISBN13: 9780156495400
• Release Date: August 2016
• Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
• Length: 240 Pages
• Weight: 0.62 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 5.8" x 8.0"

Customer Reviews

Cruel and unusual

"... one of the most bitter and barbarous books ever penned" said Nabokov about "Don Quixote". Exposing the flood of physical and emotional abuse inflicted on the half insane knight and his largely average squire is at the heart of these lectures. In the early 50's, when Nabokov delivered his lectures on "Don Quixote" at Harvard, this was a radically new take on the classic novel which most critics considered good-natured...

brilliant

Great analysis. One only wonders whether, assuming Nabokov did not read this in the original Spanish, some of the criticism should be leveled at the translation.

An Excellent Analysis and a Comprehensive Introduction

I bought and read Nabokov's "Lectures on Literature" which is based on his European literature course that he taught at Cornell in the 1950s. That is an excellent guide to seven well known novels: "Mansfield Park, Bleak House, Madame Bovary, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, The Walk by Swann's Place, The Metamorphosis, and Ulysses." In that set of course notes he dissects each book and spends about 40 pages or so on each novel discussing...

Backhanded homage, Bloom's agon

Nabokov claims to dislike Don Quixote and considers the novel 'crewl' yet spent a significant portion of time analyzing the novel and teaching it. I am reminded of Tolstoy's dismissal of Shakespeare and his dissection of King Lear. Orwell correctly pointed out that, among these giants, bothering to grapple with another's legend so completely is a nod to greatness, one doesn't bother to kill a knat w/ a sledgehammer.

A Breath of Fresh Air, by fermed

What Nabokov does to that venerable Don Q. is to rip it apart, disembowel it, resect the viscera, muscle and bones, and demonstrate how it has all been fitted together, how its various part work and (more importantly) how and why some parts don't work at all.I admit to having had a life-long aversion to Don Q., an aversion that is rooted in early efforts to make me read "children's versions" of the book by guise of educating...