NASHVILLE, Tenn. ñ Miguel de Cervantes’ story of a deluded Spanish gentleman stubbornly living as an honorable knight in a world where chivalry is dead has resonated with readers for four centuries.
Don Quixote was a rite of passage for many high school English students and inadvertently launched thousands of performances of "The Impossible Dream," the hit song from the musical Man of La Mancha, based on Don Quixote.
But the impact of Don Quixote goes deeper than that.
On Nov. 12 and 13, Vanderbilt University will mark early the 400th anniversary of the publication of the first part of Don Quixote in 1605 with a two-day conference featuring three prominent Cervantes scholars.
The conference is sponsored by The Robert Penn Warren Center for the Humanities at Vanderbilt. It was organized by Vanderbilt’s Edward H. Friedman, professor of Spanish and comparative literature and former president of the Cervantes Society of America.
Friedman says the plot of Don Quixote is justifiably celebrated, but no less important is the other part of the book, the story of the composition of the Don Quixote tale.
"Cervantes does not simply write a novel to entertain the reader with an intriguing plot, but he uses the occasion to make the reader think seriously about the act of writing, the act of reading, and the place and construction of history," Friedman said.
The first day of the "Celebrating 400 Years of Don Quixote" conference will run from 1:15 p.m. to 5 p.m. on Friday, Nov. 12, and feature presentations from Marina S. Brownlee of Princeton University (Cervantes’ Doubtful History), Yvonne Jehenson of the University of Hartford (Nostalgia Revisited: Don Quixote’s Golden Age Speech in Historical Context) and Howard Mancing of Purdue University (Dulcinea del Toboso: On the Eve of Her 400th Birthday). A reception will follow.
On Saturday, Nov. 13, there will be a roundtable discussion from 9:30 a.m. to noon.
All events will be held in Room 189 of Sarratt Student Center and are free and open to the public. For more information, telephone the Warren Center at
615-343-6060.
Media contact: Jim Patterson, (615) 322-NEWS
Jim.patterson@vanderbilt.edu