Understanding Don Quixote as a parody of Chivalric Romances by analyzing the historical significance, transference, intertextualities, and the emergence of newer sensibilities in Renaissance.

Abstract

Quixotic desires mean a displaced desire which never attains what it thrives for. However, this paper would show how this very displacement showed the inadequacies in the genre of chivalric romances and hint at the birth of newer sensibilities. The paper wishes to critically analyze ‘Don Quixote’ as a parody of chivalric romances and the first step towards anticipating the gradual procurement of novel as a critical literary tradition. It would also locate the renaissance as an important period in literary history and understand its sensibilities, gradual shift, and transferences from the theocentric chivalric romances in the medieval period to the anthropocentric and individualistic worldviews. This would be done by using the literary tools of narrative mode in Comparative Literature. The paper would situate ‘Don Quixote’ on a specific historical background to understand it as a bearer of newer sensibilities in extending the cultural lines with multiple narratorial discourses and inter-textualities. The multiple paradoxes, ambiguities will be looked at by understanding the act of ‘reading’ as a critical but complicated discourse. The paper also wishes to look at the rising role of translation as an important mediator within the text which bifurcated the concept of ‘truth claiming' of the original text.

Keywords: genre, transference, literary tools, renaissance, newer sensibilities, truth-claiming