Hacettepe University Graduate School of Social Sciences Department of English Language and Literature English Language and Literature Programme TILTING AT THE WINDMILLS OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY: REPRESENTATIONS OF BRITISH QUIXOTISM IN JOSEPH ANDREWS, THE FEMALE QUIXOTE AND THE LIFE AND OPINIONS OF TRISTRAM SHANDY, GENTLEMAN Cemre Mimoza BARTU Ph.D. Dissertation Ankara, 2022 TILTING AT THE WINDMILLS OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY: REPRESENTATIONS OF BRITISH QUIXOTISM IN JOSEPH ANDREWS, THE FEMALE QUIXOTE AND THE LIFE AND OPINIONS OF TRISTRAM SHANDY, GENTLEMAN Cemre Mimoza BARTU Hacettepe University Graduate School of Social Sciences Department of English Language and Literature Ph.D. Dissertation Ankara, 2022 i KABUL VE ONAY Cemre Mimoza BARTU tarafından hazırlanan “Tilting at The Windmills of the Eighteenth Century: Representations of British Quixotism in Joseph Andrews, The Female Quixote and The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman” başlıklı bu çalışma, 04.07.2022 tarihinde yapılan savunma sınavı sonucunda başarılı bulunarak jürimiz tarafından Doktora Tezi olarak kabul edilmiştir. Prof. Dr. Belgin ELBİR (Başkan) Prof. Dr. Aytül ÖZÜM (Danışman) Doç.Dr. Elif ÖZTABAK AVCI (Üye) Doç.Dr. Alev KARADUMAN (Üye) Dr. Öğrt. Üyesi Aslı DEĞİRMENCİ ALTIN (Üye) Yukarıdaki imzaların adı geçen öğretim üyelerine ait olduğunu onaylarım. Prof.Dr. Uğur ÖMÜRGÖNÜLŞEN Enstitü Müdürü ii YAYIMLAMA VE FİKRİ MÜLKİYET HAKLARI BEYANI Enstitü tarafından onaylanan lisansüstü tezimin/raporumun tamamını veya herhangi bir kısmını, basılı (kağıt) ve elektronik formatta arşivleme ve aşağıda verilen koşullarla kullanıma açma iznini Hacettepe Üniversitesine verdiğimi bildiririm. Bu izinle Üniversiteye verilen kullanım hakları dışındaki tüm fikri mülkiyet haklarım bende kalacak, tezimin tamamının ya da bir bölümünün gelecekteki çalışmalarda (makale, kitap, lisans ve patent vb.) kullanım hakları bana ait olacaktır. Tezin kendi orijinal çalışmam olduğunu, başkalarının haklarını ihlal etmediğimi ve tezimin tek yetkili sahibi olduğumu beyan ve taahhüt ederim. Tezimde yer alan telif hakkı bulunan ve sahiplerinden yazılı izin alınarak kullanılması zorunlu metinlerin yazılı izin alınarak kullandığımı ve istenildiğinde suretlerini Üniversiteye teslim etmeyi taahhüt ederim. Yükseköğretim Kurulu tarafından yayınlanan “Lisansüstü Tezlerin Elektronik Ortamda Toplanması, Düzenlenmesi ve Erişime Açılmasına İlişkin Yönerge” kapsamında tezim aşağıda belirtilen koşullar haricince YÖK Ulusal Tez Merkezi / H.Ü. Kütüphaneleri Açık Erişim Sisteminde erişime açılır. o Enstitü / Fakülte yönetim kurulu kararı ile tezimin erişime açılması mezuniyet tarihimden itibaren 2 yıl ertelenmiştir. (1) o Enstitü / Fakülte yönetim kurulunun gerekçeli kararı ile tezimin erişime açılması mezuniyet tarihimden itibaren ... ay ertelenmiştir. (2) o Tezimle ilgili gizlilik kararı verilmiştir. (3) 10/07/2022 Cemre Mimoza Bartu 1“Lisansüstü Tezlerin Elektronik Ortamda Toplanması, Düzenlenmesi ve Erişime Açılmasına İlişkin Yönerge” (1) Madde 6. 1. Lisansüstü tezle ilgili patent başvurusu yapılması veya patent alma sürecinin devam etmesi durumunda, tez danışmanının önerisi ve enstitü anabilim dalının uygun görüşü üzerine enstitü veya fakülte yönetim kurulu iki yıl süre ile tezin erişime açılmasının ertelenmesine karar verebilir. (2) Madde 6. 2. Yeni teknik, materyal ve metotların kullanıldığı, henüz makaleye dönüşmemiş veya patent gibi yöntemlerle korunmamış ve internetten paylaşılması durumunda 3. şahıslara veya kurumlara haksız kazanç imkanı oluşturabilecek bilgi ve bulguları içeren tezler hakkında tez danışmanının önerisi ve enstitü anabilim dalının uygun görüşü üzerine enstitü veya fakülte yönetim kurulunun gerekçeli kararı ile altı ayı aşmamak üzere tezin erişime açılması engellenebilir. (3) Madde 7. 1. Ulusal çıkarları veya güvenliği ilgilendiren, emniyet, istihbarat, savunma ve güvenlik, sağlık vb. konulara ilişkin lisansüstü tezlerle ilgili gizlilik kararı, tezin yapıldığı kurum tarafından verilir *. Kurum ve kuruluşlarla yapılan işbirliği protokolü çerçevesinde hazırlanan lisansüstü tezlere ilişkin gizlilik kararı ise, ilgili kurum ve kuruluşun önerisi ile enstitü veya fakültenin uygun görüşü üzerine üniversite yönetim kurulu tarafından verilir. Gizlilik kararı verilen tezler Yükseköğretim Kuruluna bildirilir. Madde 7.2. Gizlilik kararı verilen tezler gizlilik süresince enstitü veya fakülte tarafından gizlilik kuralları çerçevesinde muhafaza edilir, gizlilik kararının kaldırılması halinde Tez Otomasyon Sistemine yüklenir * Tez danışmanının önerisi ve enstitü anabilim dalının uygun görüşü üzerine enstitü veya fakülte yönetim kurulu tarafından karar verilir iii ETİK BEYAN Bu çalışmadaki bütün bilgi ve belgeleri akademik kurallar çerçevesinde elde ettiğimi, görsel, işitsel ve yazılı tüm bilgi ve sonuçları bilimsel ahlak kurallarına uygun olarak sunduğumu, kullandığım verilerde herhangi bir tahrifat yapmadığımı, yararlandığım kaynaklara bilimsel normlara uygun olarak atıfta bulunduğumu, tezimin kaynak gösterilen durumlar dışında özgün olduğunu, Prof. Dr. Aytül Özüm danışmanlığında tarafımdan üretildiğini ve Hacettepe Üniversitesi Sosyal Bilimler Enstitüsü Tez Yazım Yönergesine göre yazıldığını beyan ederim. Cemre Mimoza Bartu cemremimoza Typewritten Text cemremimoza Typewritten Text cemremimoza Typewritten Text iv To my father, It is still beautiful even to imagine how proud and happy you would be. v ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS During the PhD years and dissertation writing period, I felt that it was a constant adventure and hard work to find my own voice and support my own ideas, while trying to be a part of the academic world. Like a quixotic character in her quixotic quest, I encountered many mishaps and tragedies along the way and many times asked myself why I still bearing with it. Yet again, looking back from where I stand now, I feel complete but a little sad now that my adventure is over. However, unlike many quixotic heroes/heroines who had to continue their quixotic journey alone, I was not on my own; therefore, I would like to express my most profound appreciation to those people. At the top of the list, I would like to thank my advisor Prof. Dr. Aytül Özüm, for her unfaltering support, her genuine sincerity and limitless patience with all my heart. She is one of the dearest people Hacettepe has ever given me. More than a professor, she has been a great friend with whom I speak the same language and explore many things besides the academy. I feel fortunate and blessed to be her student and to have shared many beautiful memories with her in and out of the department. Moreover, I am also grateful to the committee members, Prof. Dr. Belgin Elbir, Assoc. Prof. Dr. Elif Öztabak Avcı, Assoc. Prof. Dr. Alev Karaduman and Assist. Prof. Dr. Aslı Değirmenci Altın for their constructive criticism and valuable comments that made my study a better dissertation. I would like to express my gratitude to Prof. Dr. Burçin Erol and Prof. Dr. Huriye Reis, as the former and current chairs of the department, for their support, sincerity and motivation since the beginning of my studies and employment at Hacettepe University. I would like to express my gratitude to the Turkish Fulbright Commission for funding a research grant for my doctoral thesis. My dissertation and academic identity would be significantly less complete without this opportunity. Also, I owe my greatest thanks to my advisor Prof. Dr. Jenny Davidson at Columbia University, who has always spared her time and interest for me to conduct my research and introduce me to the eighteenth-century studies community. She is an excellent professor and an amazing person to whom I will look up as a role model. In addition, I am thankful to The Scientific and Technological Research Council of Turkey (TÜBİTAK) for providing me with a scholarship both during my master and doctoral studies. vi I’d like to extend my heartfelt thanks to my colleagues and friends who have supported and motivated me through thick and thin. I appreciate the friendship and encouragement of my comrade Adem Balcı, Hakan Yılmaz, Şafak Horzum, Ulaş Özgün, Seda Öz, Pınar Taşdelen, İmren Yelmiş, Emrah Atasoy, Onur Çiffiliz, Azime Pekşen Yakar and Seçil Erkoç. Besides, I would like to thank Merve Polat Sabuncuoğlu, Merve Bahar, Mürüvvet Mira Pınar Dolaykaya, Şeyma Araz, Şeyma Damyan and Naz Köroğlu for their precious friendship and constant rooting for me under any circumstance. Last but not least, I cannot express my appreciation for my once colleagues and now dear friends, Özlem Özmen Akdoğan, Gülşah Göçmen, Kübra Vural Özbey and Emine Akkülah Doğan, for supporting me unreservedly and helping me stay motivated and optimistic along this journey. Our days together at Hacettepe will be sorely missed and always reminisced with a smile. I am at a loss of words on how to thank my family for their unwavering trust in me. Even though they always complained about my endless studies and dissertation, they always believed in me and reminded me of who I am. I am indebted to my mother Zuhal Betül Bartu, for her incredible resilience, positive energy and endless support. And I would like to thank my sister Cerensu Bartu, for always being there, not allowing me to feel all alone and simply being my sister. Lastly, I would like to send my love and gratitude to my dear father İsmail Bartu, who passed away during my studies. I am sure he would be overjoyed and proud of me if he were still with us physically. This dissertation has begun in his presence and ended in his absence, yet I will carry him in my heart wherever I go and whatever I achieve, just to make sure that he is still happy. Finally, I offer my greatest thanks to my significant other Engin Esen, for being my best friend and best supporting actor in my life. Words cannot adequately define his perfect companionship in our small family, with our cats, Sushi and Jiro. If I am Don Quixote, he is my Sancho Panza for believing in me and allowing me to enjoy the scenery on our journey. vii ÖZET BARTU, Cemre Mimoza. On Sekizinci Yüzyıl Yeldeğirmenleriyle Savaşmak: Joseph Andrews, The Female Quixote ve The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman Romanlarında İngiliz Kişotizminin Temsili, Doktora Tezi, Ankara, 2022. İlk modern roman örneği olarak kabul edilen Miguel de Cervantes’in Don Kişot (1605) eseri dünya kültürleri ve edebiyatları için hem biçim hem içerik etkisi açısından her zaman zengin bir kaynak olmuştur. Kişotizmin, Britanya’ya 17. yüzyıldaki geç gelişine rağmen, terim Don Kişot ve Cervantes’in karakter yaratma, üslup, hicivci ton ve maceraların üzerindeki etkisini kullanan bir metot olarak tanımlanabilir. Roman türünün ortaya çıkmasıyla birlikte bu etki, dönemin edebi eserlerinde çeşitli amaçlara hizmet eden yaygın kullanımıyla on sekizinci yüzyılda bir topos’a dönüşür. Dönemin kişotik romanlarında yazarlar kendi yarattıkları İngiliz kişotlarına ve İspanyol şövalyesinden yola çıkılmış sorunlarıyla ses verirler. Dönem bağlamında bu karakterler, hayatlarını kendi kişotik ilkelerine göre yaşamaya çalışırlar, ancak zamanın sosyal ve kültürel kodlarına uyum sağlayamazlar; bu sebeple de öncelleri gibi kendilerini sürekli bir mücadele içinde bulurlar. Bu doktora tezinde, yazarların bu kavramı kendi amaçları doğrultusunda nasıl geliştirip benimsediklerini anlamak için Henry Fielding' in Joseph Andrews, Charlotte Lennox' ın The Female Quixote ve Laurence Sterne' ın The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentelman romanlarında kişotik karakterler ve bağlamsal unsurları incelenir. Ayrıca bu romanların bir diğer ortak noktası da, dönemin yerleşik edebi, toplumsal cinsiyet, görgü kuralları ve mantık normlarına saldıran karakterleri kullanarak çağın kodlarını eleştirmeleridir. Bu amaçla, bu tez, seçilen romanlarda İngiliz kişotizminin gelişimini ve benimsenmesini tartışmayı önermekte ve romanlarda sunulan çağın sosyal ve kültürel eleştirisine bu metot kullanımı üzerinden ışık tutmayı amaçlamaktadır. Anahtar Sözcükler: Don Kişot, Kişotizm, İngiliz Kişotizmi, Joseph Andrews, The Female Quixote, Tristram Shandy, 18. Yüzyıl İngiliz romanı. viii ABSTRACT BARTU, Cemre Mimoza. Tilting at the Windmills of the Eighteenth Century: Representations of British Quixotism in Joseph Andrews, The Female Quixote and The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman, Ph.D. Dissertation, Ankara, 2022. Don Quixote (1605) by Miguel de Cervantes, widely regarded as the first example of the modern novel, has always been a rich source of both formal and contextual impact on the world cultures and literatures. Despite its late arrival to Britain in the seventeenth century, quixotism can be defined as a method that utilizes the influence of Don Quixote and Cervantes in character formation, style, satiric tone and adventures of works. With the advent of the novel genre, the influence transforms into a topos in the eighteenth- century literary works of the age through its prevalent use with diverse ends. In the quixotic novels of the period, writers give voice to their own British quixotes and the problems they have derived from Spanish knight. Within the context of the period, these characters attempt to live according to their quixotic principles, but they fail to conform to the social and cultural codes of the time, thus like their predecessor, they find themselves in a constant struggle with those codes. In this dissertation, Joseph Andrews by Henry Fielding, The Female Quixote by Charlotte Lennox, and The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman by Laurence Sterne are three of the novels whose quixotic characters and contextual elements can be studied to discern how the British authors developed and appropriated the concept with regard to their distinct aims. Moreover, another common point of these novels is their criticism of the codes of the age by utilizing quixotic characters who attack the century’s entrenched norms of literature, gender, propriety and reason. To this end, this dissertation proposes to argue the development and appropriation of British quixotism in the selected novels and it aims to shed light on the social and cultural criticism of the age presented in the novels through the method borrowed from Cervantes. Keywords: Don Quixote, Quixotism, British Quixotism, Joseph Andrews, The Female Quixote, Tristram Shandy, 18th Century British Novel. ix TABLE OF CONTENTS KABUL VE ONAY……...………………………………………………….……….….i YAYIMLAMA VE FİKRİ MÜLKİYET HAKLARI BEYANI……………………..ii ETİK BEYAN………………………………………………………………………….iii DEDICATION…………………………………………………………………………iv ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS……………………………………………………….…...v ÖZET……...…………………………………………………………………………...vii ABSTRACT…….………………………………………………………………….....viii TABLE OF CONTENTS……………………………………………………………...ix INTRODUCTION………………………………………………………………...……1 CHAPTER I: “A BROTHER IN THE PARISH”: AMIABLE AND BENEVOLENT QUIXOTISM OF PARSON ADAMS IN JOSEPH ANDREWS ………………………......……………………………………………...………………63 CHAPTER II: “HAD I NOT THE EVIDENCE OF MY SENSES”: DELUSIONAL AND TYRANNICAL QUIXOTISM OF ARABELLA IN THE FEMALE QUIXOTE……………………………………………………………………….........115 CHAPTER III: “LET PEOPLE TELL THEIR STORIES THEIR OWN WAY”: HOBBY-HORSICAL INDIVIDUALS AND THE QUIXOTIC ATTEMPT OF NOVEL WRITING IN TRISTRAM SHANDY…..…………………………………154 CONCLUSION………………………………………………………………………184 WORKS CITED …………………………………………………………………….192 APPENDIX I: ORGININALITY REPORT……………………………………….207 APPENDIX II: ETHICS BOARD WAIVER FORM……………………………..209 1 INTRODUCTION El ingenioso hidalgo Don Quijote de la Mancha —The Ingenious Gentleman Don Quixote of La Mancha (1605) by Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra (1547-1616) has long been considered one of the seminal works of the world literature due to both retrospective and prospective impact it made on the legacy of European culture and art. Long before the advent of prose fiction, namely the novel genre, the first volume of Don Quixote was published in 1605, while the arrival of the second volume took a decade. By the time the second volume was issued in 1615, Don Quixote had already gained fame at home and abroad “around Europe and into Spain’s colonies in the Americas” (Rees n.p.) by means of its translation into several languages. In its own time and geography, Don Quixote “was regarded as primarily a comic, and in some sense a satirical, attack on chivalric romances; but that in itself is not enough to create a myth” (Watt 61). In contrast to the cursory knowledge about Don Quixote, it is not only a romance parody that emphasises the artificiality of the genre and the drawbacks of romance reading, yet it also inspires a myriad of innovations regarding the newly emerging genre. First of all, as a general fact known and accepted, Don Quixote is the first example of modern novel and along with its being the prototype of the genre. It introduced new perceptions and concepts to the arena of prose writing. Although Don Quixote is of Spanish origin, for some scholars, Spain’s reception of the novel and its value appears “depressingly simplistic and limited” (Close 227) in the early seventeenth century. However, with its emergence in other nations, the actual value of the novel is eventually cherished by other writers and scholars. With regards to this fact, Spanish writer Miguel Unamuno in 1905 contended that “England and Russia had understood Cervantes better than Spain had” (qtd. in Welsh 8) in terms of appreciating and investigating the depth and richness of the novel for possible interpretations. British novel in the eighteenth century was rich with experiments in form and content; therefore, it is one of the most suitable periods in which the effects of Don Quixote can be observed. The abiding interest for Don Quixote from the seventeenth century onwards eventually transformed itself into a comprehensive influence that propelled British novelists to pen their own novels by following both the formal and contextual footsteps of Cervantes. The great interest and 2 influence that Don Quixote created in the literary arena turned into, as Ivana suggests, in a sense, a “method of writing novels in the age” (“Eighteenth-Century”1). Used extensively during the period, the method was, in fact, the appropriation of the quixotic characters and their features in the English novels (Ivana, “Eighteenth-Century” 1). In addition, while the very form of the newly bourgeoning genre started designating the border between romance and novel in formalistic terms, it also introduced fresh contextual concepts generated by the characters and the dynamics between the characters. Derived from the name of the novel’s protagonist, quixotism lent itself to be one of the new concepts that had been born out of the manners and the characteristics of Don Quixote. Its entry in The Oxford English Dictionary defines the term as such: “[o]f persons: Resembling Don Quixote; hence, striving with lofty enthusiasm and visionary ideals.” Additionally, the name of Don Quixote also found itself a place in English to reflect his characteristics and set an example for the specific type of people resembling Don Quixote in the dictionary. Quixote, in noun form, means “an enthusiastic visionary person like Don Quixote, inspired by lofty and chivalrous but false or unrealisable ideas.” Quixotism in modern English denotes idealism without practicality. In other words, it is embarking on an enterprise without considering the results or necessities it requires. The term refers to Don Quixote’s behaviours or quests against the injustice throughout his adventure. Don Quixote’s tilting at windmills, regarding them as giants to fight against, can be the quintessential example of his quixotism since it emphasises his deluded mind and fruitless adventure. Likewise, eighteenth-century British novels, which were composed with this quixotic method of writing, also made use of quixotism following their own objectives. Both employing satire on their own period’s social and cultural condition, Don Quixote and the British novels tried to draw the attention of their readers to the problematised issues they touched upon. Therefore, eighteenth-century works written in a quixotic fashion or using quixotism and quixotic characters ought to be contextualised within their own period. In doing so, one can observe that appropriation of quixotism in British novels is not a simple practice; rather, it encapsulates multifarious sides of socio-cultural, political, moral and religious backgrounds. 3 Based on this fact, in this dissertation, Anglicised/appropriated quixotic characters of Charlotte Lennox’ Female Quixote, Henry Fielding’s Joseph Andrews and Laurence Sterne’s The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman will be analysed within the eighteenth-century socio-cultural background to argue their quixotic problems that their authors designate. The quixotic characters are mainly formed by the surrounding social, cultural, political, religious and moral determinant agents of the period. To this end, the social and cultural background of the eighteenth century will be unfolded to explain the reasons why those characters can be acknowledged as quixotic. Despite carrying the legacy of Spanish knight, these quixotic characters do not only wander around to establish justice or venture a series of travels for the sake of complying with the rules of chivalric codes of romances; rather, their behaviours and motivations are determined by a set of principles that designate the scope of their quixotism. These principles are also the critical points where quixotic characters differ from one another and from ‘ordinary and proper’ people of the age due to their unfavourable and dated codes of conduct. Though these characters are the champions of the values that the majority approves of, they look nevertheless ridiculous for their strict adherence to them (Welsh 10). These values are neither valid in the society nor serve one’s best interest anymore; the practitioners of those are pointed at and made a laughing stock due to their failure in attuning to society. On the other hand, the attitude towards the quixotic characters had undergone a change in a manner “from ridicule to veneration” due to the fact that eighteenth-century novels “deploy quixotes less to satirise more to indict the society that mistreats them” (Gordon 12). Since the vantage point of this dissertation towards the quixotic characters is closely knit with literary innovations, social background, and morals of the age, three canonical novels of the eighteenth century will be analysed with respect to the protagonists’ disparate quixotic stances. Each of these three novels, Joseph Andrews (1742) by Henry Fielding, The Female Quixote (1752) by Charlotte Lennox and The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman (1759) by Laurence Sterne, is structured upon the quixotic method of novel writing in terms of their protagonists and their quixotic problems which can be related to that of Don Quixote’s. In order to better appreciate the nascent genre of the novel and assess the value of Don Quixote, it is beneficial to re-visit the period in which Don Quixote was written and 4 examine the historical and literary background which set up the context of the novel and the author. The publication of Don Quixote Part I and II coincided with the heydays of Spanish literature, namely the Golden Age (Siglo de Oro), spanning between the fifteenth and the seventeenth centuries. Although there is little agreement on the events which specifically mark the beginning and the ending of the Spanish Golden Age among scholars (Weber 226), the era is commonly considered to have begun in the second half of the fifteenth century, for it covered the marriage of Isabella of Castile and Ferdinand of Aragon in 1469. This marriage united all the dominions of Spain and escalated its position as a world power, and “Columbus’s voyage to the New World and the subsequent founding of the first transatlantic European colonial empire” in 1492 (Shire). The term golden age in its meaning denotes “an idyllic time of peace, prosperity, and happiness;” and “the time when a specified art or activity is at its finest, most advanced, or most popular” (“Golden Age”). In the case of Spain’s period of success and development, the term emphasises the initial phases of its transition to the modern state. Golden Age is named after the prosperous period in many various fields of Spain where the “consolidation of monarchical power” in political, “demographic growth” in social, “introduction of the printing press” in technology (Weber 227) and colonial activities in imperial competition arena aided the country to gain momentum. On the other hand, for Henry Kamen, the term golden age applies to the literary and artistic creativity that flourished during that period (1). Given the scope of this dissertation, using the term Spanish Golden Age will be more appropriate since Don Quixote yields a good harvest of the same age in which literature was not only developing in terms of the rate and quality of the productions but also it was generating a new genre. As a prolific phase in Spain’s literary development, Golden Age was not solely dependent on the outcomes of the cultural and national expansion of the country at that time. The sweeping influence of the Italian Renaissance, which occurred not much earlier than the Golden Age, was also felt in the literature of the period in which poetry and drama were deeply intertwined with Italian predecessors. Greer contends that this mythical Golden Age, where human innocence was the inheritance passing from “Hesiod, Ovid, Vergil, Seneca, and Boethius to the European Renaissance, was a nostalgic ideal imagined to have existed in some other, better time and place” (217). Thus, drawing on the Italian 5 literary models in the production of its own literature, the place where the nostalgic ideal was realised, in fact, was Spain. In other words, Spain can be accepted as the heir of the mythical era since it was highly inspired by Italian Literature and the Renaissance, which were the previous continuations of the same mythical age. Moreover, these two nations maintained a close relationship whose influences can be observed in “their close commercial, financial, artistic and intellectual links” (Kamen 56). Specifically, in artistic and intellectual aspects, Spanish Golden Age cannot be deemed “exclusively Hispanic” (56), for it owed a “deep debt to Italy of Spanish art, poetry and music is too well known to need comment” (56). Therefore, the Spanish Renaissance is the most crucial period that the lasting Italian artistic influence was clearly seen since the Italian modes both in poetry and drama were adopted. In poetry, Garcilaso de la Vega and San Juan de la Cruz were the two influential figures who adopted the Italian sonnet pattern in their poems, merging the Italian form with Spanish content to execute a new composition (“The Spanish Golden Age” para. 6). In addition, Juan Boscán and Garcilaso de la Vega, Velázquez named Diego de Mendoza, Gutierre de Cetina, Fray Luis de León, Fernando de Herrera read, imitated and translated the great Roman and Greek poets to create a new generation of “Italianate style of poetry” that can be traced back to Petrarch and Dante (Greer 221). In the case of drama, Italian plays served as models to imitate the Spanish playwrights of the age. Particularly in the 1570-80s, due to the troupes of players visiting the country, the popularity of commedia dell’arte peaked in Spain, thus developing new trends in the drama of the nation (Thacker 4). Correspondingly, the new literature of Spain can be described as a combination of the prominent models of the Italian Renaissance literature with the more national and native subject matters. This attitude aimed “to assimilate a pre-existing cultural model whose literary style was largely alien to its native traditions and practices” (Robbins 138) and more importantly to establish a more polished national drama with Spanish material. Other than poetry and drama, prose writing in the Golden Age was another outstanding part of developing new literature. Prose writing, during this period, was a turning point not only for Spanish culture and literature but also for the long-lasting reverberations of the newly prospering genre, 6 namely the novel, permeating throughout Europe, its colonies and the western culture. The emergence of this new and yet unnamed writing style was a corollary of the socio- cultural and political consequences of the period. Although the literature was generally regarded as one of the inextricable parts of the period, which had ensured the literary halcyon days of Spain, prose fiction reminded the reader that everything was not as perfect as it seemed. However, this unpleasant reminder of the facts of social life was not only articulated by the prose writers of the age. Poets and playwrights informed by humanist and classical principles were engaged in Horace’s classical idea of dulce and utile, which combines two distinct fractions of instruction and entertainment, to give voice to their criticism of the age through their works (Robbins 147). In contrast to the name of the period, Spanish Golden Age was a period of transition from an idealistic to a more materialistic society in which many paradigm shifts caused suffering among the public. Therefore, if the downfall of the values of the previous age is accepted as the genesis of another set of principles belonging to the incipient phase, picaresque tradition, picaros and picaras can be accepted as the offsprings of this crisis. According to Gutierrez, the crisis that entailed a gradual but decisive shift is characterised by a gradual infiltration of innovative ideas into a traditional socio- cultural and political base. Spain in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries was an emerging world power in which various structures of change were slowly superimposing themselves upon traditional mindsets. In all realms-the economic sector, religious and spiritual doctrines, statehood and political consciousness, attitudes towards class, concepts of work, the role of money, receptiveness to new intellectual concepts, etc. -there was a tension between the ideal and the material. The crisis was felt--and markedly expressed in the picaresque novel-as the age became characterised by a bankruptcy of traditional values and a desertion of the medieval universalist ethical system which was replaced with a materialistic system. (5) In correspondence with what Gutierrez states, the expiration of the romances’ old, ideal and chivalric values coincides with the dawn of the realist reflections of the actual social life in picaresque tradition. The picaresque tradition, which flourished at the beginning of the sixteenth century, was a critical milestone in Spain’s socio-cultural and literary background. Apart from poetry and drama, the writers of the age invented another writing method to voice their discontent with society, reflecting their own observations with the help of fictionalisation of the facts of their age. As a result, as well as the division between 7 the so-called prestige of the Golden Age and the plight of the lower classes, a combination of the social problems with the wish for literary representation contributed to the birth of picaresque tradition. The stark contrast between the picaresque tradition’s low-life context and the period’s glory is also linked to the bankruptcy of the ethical system, social idealism and the turn of the material/capitalistic and more individualistic structure. Covering these socio-cultural, ethical and economic circumstances in the literary arena, the picaresque mode in prose fiction can be seen as the disregarded or avoided representation of the other side of the coin that eventually surfaced in the Spanish context. This avoided social scenery could be found in the low-life style of the poor, delinquents, criminals, prostitutes, rogues and all the marginalised folk who tried to survive in their “morally and spiritually depleted world[s]” (Gutierrez 7) while the upper-class members of the Spanish society were savouring their exclusive lives. Inspected closely by Kamen, with the advent of the Renaissance, the newly affluent merchant families of the time entered the noble class whose former members of the aristocracy were persistent in blood descent as the prerequisite of their class. However, the newcomers, lacking blood descent, validated their position by the limits of their wealth through service to the country in university education, war times and political issues (53). Therefore, with the help of their economic power, “the bureaucratic families of an earlier epoch evolved into great dynasties” (55). Although there seemed to have been a sense of betterment in the society with the flow of money, the other flow which consisted of “peasants driven from their lands, labourers without work, ruined artisans. . . coming to try [their] luck in big cities” (Defourneaux 216) aggravated the decline. With reference to the poverty in Spain, Kamen indicates that “between about 1530 and 1560 the proportion of registered poor in the cities of Castile increased from about 10 per cent of the population to an average of 23 per cent [and] the figures do not include unregistered poor such as vagabonds” (55). In addition, Eggington points out that “[a]s Spain’s population migrated toward the urban centres throughout the sixteenth century, and criminality was indeed on the rise. Cities such as Madrid and Seville were crawling with gangs of thieves and swindlers and awash in illicit gambling houses and bordellos” (144). Although the task of reaching out to the statistics or data of criminality in Golden Age Spain requires hard work, in literary representation, picaresque novels stand out as examples with a strong sense of social 8 verisimilitude. Thus, the dark delineation of the reality of the social structure dovetailed with the rise of the picaresque mode in prose fiction with a crucial point to show the readers how the society voiced the reaction from within. In terms of its definition, Claudio Guillen, in his influential essay “Toward a Definition of Picaresque”, states that “[n]o work embodies completely the picaresque genre. The genre is not, of course, a novel any more than the equine species is a horse. A genre is a model- and a convenient model to boot: an invitation to the actual writing of a work, on the basis of certain principles of composition” (72). Based on Guillen’s statement, defining picaresque will always be a crude task, and defining it as a genre will be no more than a reduction. As a matter of fact, while studying picaresque, the most common features of the tradition will often be the right ways of categorisation; thus naming it as a tradition rather than a genre or novel is more appropriate. In support of this idea, Ogorek argues that [P]icaresque adapts to new circumstances, it can only be theorised historically. The features of a genre do not constitute an absolute norm but always fluctuate around an imagined one. They change over time, accommodating new cultural and social developments […] The picaresque genre is neither so broad that it can appear anywhere at any time, retaining only very few formal elements of the first picaresque novels, nor is it so limited in time and space that it exists in only a few Golden-Age Spanish novels. (10-11) Given the tradition’s dynamic, temporal and spatial aspects, picaresque can still be found in contemporary novels, which follow several principles to be counted as picaresque one. Even though there is not a set of generic premises of the tradition, Guillen’s designation is nevertheless cited as the fairly comprehensive set to define the recurrent patterns. His first feature is “a dynamic psycho-sociological situation” that concentrates on the picaro, who is typically an orphan, an isolated outcast who can “neither join nor actually reject his fellow men” (80). The first-person narration of picaro’s own story renders it a “pseudo autobiography” ( 81), and he has a “partial and prejudiced” viewpoint (82). Moreover, a picaro is a “constant discoverer and rediscoverer, experimenter and doubter” who constantly learns and weighs his “religious and moral” experiences (82). On the other hand, he mostly suffers from the stress “on the material level of existence” and is troubled by “sordid facts, hunger and money” (83). What picaro observes, such as “social classes, professions, caractéres, cities and nations” in the course of the events, create a panoramic 9 “roguery gallery” which are the mere tools of satire and comic effect (83). Furthermore, the picaro “moves horizontally through space”, which enables his physical mobilisation and also moves “vertically through society”, which sometimes results in his upward social mobilisation (84). Lastly, Guillen states that picaresque has an episodic structure that is loosely connected through the presence of the hero of the novel or the text (84). In addition to the generic premises, the word picaro also requires explanation because the word’s derivation carries the character’s cultural background. Sieber explains that in 1525, when the word “picaro the cozina” meaning scullion, appeared in Spainsh, it was irrelevant to the notion ofa roguery, immoral deeds and delinquency. It referred to the menial jobs or running errands in the household (5), which could possibly be why most of the picaro characters start their career as servants in the beginning of the works. Sieber continues that in the military context of the sixteenth century, the Habsburg armies’ Spanish “pike-men” (picas secas or piquaros secos) were transported to the remote territories of Spain for defensive purposes where they were away from the control of their superiors. The increasing demand for the soldiers caused the recourse to enlist the criminals as pike-men who soon after “came to exhibit the same picaresque values which invaded Spanish society in the late sixteenth century: idleness, brutality, and bravado, the thirst for gambling, the urge for falsification” (qtd.in Parker 180). Besides the socio-cultural and historical perspectives, picaresque tradition also finds its organic place in the development of literary history with the standard rules given above. In other words, as a natural consequence of the trials and tribulations of the Golden Age and a reaction to the idealism and chivalric values of the literature of the age, picaro emerged as a counter-attack and as an anti-hero “who has no choice but to deceive and trick in order to win partial acceptance” (Gutierrez 7) in the new world order. This new order was no more like the medieval romance’s world of idealism, justice and chivalry; it neither emphasised the possible goodness nor the sense of peerage. For A.A. Parker, “for nearly a hundred years . . . picaresque novel mirror[ed] a country in decline, poverty- stricken, morally corrupt, and therefore the breeding-ground of beggars and delinquents” (10). Thus picaresque novel illustrated the realities of the age on the fictional platform and held these adversities under a social microscope to diagnose the ills of society and 10 make them public. This social diagnosis process of picaresque does not seek to find a suitable treatment for the problem; rather it discloses the present condition by holding a literary mirror up against the sick body, the society. Hence literature of the period should have reflected a new type of character who was consonant with the new order. As Ortega y Gasset remarks, “each epoch brings with it a basic interpretation of man. Or rather, the epoch does not bring interpretation with it but actually is such an interpretation. For this reason, each epoch prefers a particular genre” (113). Unlike the valiant knights, noble ladies and lords who were polishing the already established rules of the romances, this new interpretation of man, namely picaro or picara, had to be an integral part of the new system so that s/he could reflect and exemplify the set of values by means of her/his adventures or experiences. By extension, in accordance with what Ortega y Gasset points out, if the picaro/picara is reflective of their society, the genre that the epoch prefers should definitely be picaresque. Another perspective on the subject endorses the idea that the picaresque novel “does not arise as an anti-romance in the sense of an implicit parody of idealistic fiction” such as pastoral novels or the novels of chivalry, it is rather “alternative, not the satire” (Parker 19). In other words, for Parker the development of literary diversity did not depend on the contestation of the preceding genres. On the contrary, creating an alternative to the former was a way that provided progression in literary production between the ages. Furthermore, the transition between the two epochs did not happen suddenly and dramatically; it eventually lent itself to the norms of the upcoming social system. Nevertheless, the remnants of the previous period, though obsolete, had been employed as an ethos echoed in the literary works. As opposed to Parker’s point, Ardila contends that “[t]he picaro was conceived as a parody of the heroes in the romances and also as a social outsider who rebels against the establishment” (“Origins” 17). That is, romance tradition or elements were inserted in the picaresque works of the age to mock the previous literature and highlight the paradigm shift between the periods. Despite the two contrasting approaches to the context of picaresque novels, whether parody or an alternative, the most significant point was that the picaresque illustrated the condition of the society from moral, political, economic, and cultural perspectives. 11 Examples of the picaresque novel arose in the age of transition, where the social turbulence of class and status quo took precedence over social idealism. Although plenty of picaresque fiction was composed in the age, the first models were the significant works that set examples for other European countries’ picaresque works. Since the focus of this study is not the genesis and development of the picaresque genre, two seminal works will be illustrated to show the tradition’s progression. The earliest work associated with picaresque fiction was anonymous Lazarillo de Tormes, published in 1554 “in Burgos, Anvers and Alcala de Henares” (Önalp and Aydonat 10). As the forerunner of picaresque tradition, Lazarillo de Tormes is recounted in first-person and it revolves around the protagonist Lazaro’s life as he is waiting on his seven different masters, three of whom “the blind man, the priest, and the squire represent the medieval social structure respectively commoners, the clergy, and the nobility” (Wicks 230-231). Despite the lack of literary maturity and sophistication, Lazarillo established the “most studied and scrutinised theme of the Western novel” (Don Kişot 72, translation mine)as Parla indicates and adds that one of the two factors that determine Lazaro’s life is poverty and the other is corruption (72). Therefore, basing his work on the destitution theme, the author of Lazarillo not only depicted the downtrodden life of Lazaro, but also attracted attention to the loss and lack of values in society, religion, morals and common sense. Moreover, Lazarillo was rendered as the herald of the modern realist novel for it covered the presentation of the daily life of the sixteenth century, anticlerical criticism and first- person narration (Önalp and Aydonat 10), almost sixty years before Don Quixote. Thus, in the final analysis, many scholars are in agreement concerning Lazarillo de Tormes’ position in literary history, in that Wicks calls it a “generic prototype. . . suggesting a generic impulse in readers” (12). For Parker it is “thus a precursor of a genre that still had a long time to wait before being born” (24) and lastly for Sieber, reading Lazarillo as “a ‘precursor,’ [and] ‘prototype’. . . is a reading demanded by literary history, which seeks to link through a cluster of ‘picaresque conventions’ to a larger tradition” (11) also giving birth to the second seminal work. After forty-five years, in 1599, the second most significant picaresque work Guzman de Alfarache, Part I by Mateo Aleman was published in Madrid. According to the Hispanists, after Lazaillo’s rudimentary introduction into the literature, Guzman, as a 12 more mature work, began to be accepted as the “first fully developed picaresque novel” (Parker 22) due to its “self-conscious and unreliable narrator, psychological complexity, episodic plot structure, interpolated stories, literary verisimilitude, character types and realism” (Gasta 100). More importantly, Guzman de Alfarache in the beginning of the seventeenth century in Spain and abroad “was one of the first authentic best-sellers in the history of printing” (Guillen 143) in that, not long after its publication it was translated into French and Italian, provided “Grimmelhausen with the prototype for Simplicius Simplicissimus” in 1669 (Wicks 185). In addition, English readers also took the opportunity to read James Mabbe’s translation entitled The Rogue, or The Life of Guzman de Alfarache, in 1622. Similar to its predecessor, Guzman was the “first-person account of a rogue, gambler, and a thief” (Eggington 142) however, different from Lazaro, Guzman’s quest was to “attain spiritual union with God” (Wicks 192), which resonated the demands of Catholic faith’s salvation and search for the truth. The decadent condition of the Spanish society was depicted in the background as Lazaro was pursuing material and social success, whereas in Guzman, the religious effects of the Counter-Reformation1 of Spain and the Inquisition were in the forefront. Thus the first-person narration of Guzman carried the influence of the basis of “inquisitional procedure”: the confessional voice (Labanyi 48), through which the reader is situated as an authority in work. Correspondingly, the reader/judge did not only probe the religious propriety of the confessor, but rather the reality and the authenticity of what he recounted. Another innovation it brought, a vital one indeed, was Aleman’s application of the word picaro, meaning “shabby man without honour” (Wicks 8), to a literary character that will ever be called by that name. From that point on, the word gained currency as the term of the stereotypical character in many languages and literatures and Aleman’s work simply went by the name of El Picaro (Wicks 185). Although, after five years, Don Quixote was published in a different literary manner, out of the literary categorisation of picaresque fiction, the common denominator of both Guzman and Don Quixote was their “disillusion and renunciation, a kind of weariness with the heroics” (Defourneaux 228) which occupied the literature and culture of Spain. 1 A religious policy aiming to resurge the catholic faith in response to the protestant reformation 13 Even though Spanish Golden Age promulgated the superiority of Catholicism and the prestige of Spain along with the perfect morals, the public was, as Defourneaux puts it, disillusioned with the contrast between actual social conditions and what had been preached and dictated by the state’s political presence (216). In other words, the discrepancy between the illustrated ideal condition and widely existing misery propelled the prose writers of the age to display it in their own works. However, the oppressive mindset of the Golden Age held low regard for the novel genre, for it prioritised “enjoyment over advice and morality”2 or real stories over the made-up ones (Neumahr 257). Through these preferences, the state obtained an opportunity to manipulate the publications of the time, which entails a strict procedure of editing, censoring or prohibiting novels like Lazarillo de Tormes (257-58). Due to its rebellious nature, Lazarillo was on the list of censored works between 1559 and 1573 and according to Neumahr, Mateo Aleman, the author of Guzman de Alfarache, was well aware of Lazarillo’s situation in that he shaped his novel with moral guidance of Catholicism (258). Miguel de Cervantes, who was also trying to get his Don Quixote published, learned a lesson from his predecessors and pursued to get “the king’s permission to print” his work through Juan de Amezqueta, who worked as a proxy to the king, confirming the publication (Mancing 198). Despite the prevalence of reading and publishing culture at the onset of seventeenth- century Spain, publishing technology does not date back to a distant past due to the invention of the printing press. The advent of the printing press between 1440 and 1450 by Johannes Gutenberg was a turning point for the perception of books, industrialisation and literacy in Europe. Compared to the other European nations, the literacy rate was relatively higher in Spain owing to the universities established in the thirteenth century, increasing the number of well-educated (Wilkinson 81). No matter how many readers were present in the country, Spaniards were still amateur in printing technology “mainly due to the lack of expertise of native printers” (Restrepo 46). Thus, according to Restrepo, they were either obliged to import books from Europe or depend on the German printing experts who would soon take control of the industry in Spain and other countries (46). 2 The translation of all the references from Miguel de Cervantes: Delidolu Bir Hayat by Uwe Neumahr belongs to me. 14 The earliest use of printing in Spain dates back to 1472, when the first known book in Spain was printed (Wilkinson 82). Until the publication of Don Quixote Part I in 1605, throughout 133 years, there had been many developments and improvements in Spain which rendered the publishing culture industry and the printed book a mercantile product. Even though the Golden Age in Spain was a period in which the number of published books and the variety of published material boomed, for this study, Don Quixote is an exemplary work of following the literary and cultural evolution throughout the ages of different geographies. In January 1605, in Valladolid, Cervantes’s book El ingenioso hidalgo Don Quijote de la Mancha (The Ingenious Gentleman Don Quixote of La Mancha) was published by Francisco de Robles, who was “the most successful and powerful bookseller in Madrid, probably in all of Spain” (Clement 115). Even though Robles was the king’s bookseller, his position would not have guaranteed his future success without Don Quixote’s fame and sales. McCrory explains that in the first edition of the book 1750 copies were published and later, the second edition sold 1800 copies (193). As a result of the success and widespread popularity of the book, in 1607 there were not any copies to be sold in Robles’ bookshop which would require a reissue of Don Quixote. Besides the booming sales, the rising fame of Don Quixote and Sancho escalated the book’s accomplishment from local publishing licences in Spanish cities to the circulation of the book in European countries and even in the New World. To illustrate the sales and circulation of the book, Neumahr points out that “[i]n 1607 two batches were published in Valencia and Lisbon, the new batches were also published in Brussels in 1611, in Madrid in 1608 and in Milano, 1610. In a very short time, the novel made its way abroad. In 1621, it was translated into German partially” (262). The success of Don Quixote was not a coincidence; instead, it rested on the solid evidence that Cervantes was not a novice in his writing career and secondly, the printing industry, along with the literacy rate, were on the rise. As the public demanded more books to read, publishers launched new materials to the market; in the meantime, writers penned their works to supply the demand. Malfatti indicates that Don Quixote as a novel has enabled the reader “to gain a sense of this new cultural world, including the acts of writing and 15 publishing the book, and of the way in which literature is considered a mercantile product” (90). Because the novel, with its “metaliterary nature,” in other words, being a book about books, featured references to the “cultural network of the printed book” and “serve[d] as a portrait, representing the material and intellectual conditions of contemporary cultural life and literary debate” (Malfatti 87). In particular, the novel carried and represented its own materiality as a physically printed work and commercial product. Moreover, the fact that the triggering force of Alonso Quijano’s madness and the beginning of his adventures was his excessive reading of chivalric romances ended up being a novel itself. Relating to the matter, Eggington summarises the tripartite relation between Cervantes, the printing industry and readers as follows: For this was the heyday of a burgeoning modern print industry and Cervantes was hoping desperately to reap a share of its growing profits. Literacy rates had exploded during the previous century and for the first time in history large chunks of the population could read, including, astoundingly, a growing number of people outside the clergy and nobility: commoners, townspeople, merchants and farmers. We see the presence and influence of books in the very first pages of Cervantes’s great novel, where he describes the aging gentleman who will become Don Quixote as being so consumed with books. . . (4) As Eggington points out, Cervantes did reap his share of the flourishing book printing industry through Don Quixote’s being one of the best-selling books of the Golden Age period. Yet, his harvest did not carry an impressing quality compared to the present acclaim and prevalence of the novel. When the book was first published in the very first days of 1605, the publisher Francisco de Robles did not believe the possibility that Cervantes’ work would make a hit in the country (Clement 120) however, having realised that he “had a best-seller of some magnitude on [his] hands” (120) Robles purchased all the rights of Don Quixote in order to dispatch the copies to Europe. Even though this point seemed like a favourable financial position for Cervantes, he would later change his publisher because Robles made money, not Cervantes himself (121). On the other hand, his attraction to the populace’s interest ensured the first five editions of Don Quixote were in the market for only after eight months. Due to the hardships of providing accurate statistical data on book-selling numbers in the Golden Age of Spain, Keith Whinnom, in his article “The Problem of the ‘Best-Seller’ in Spanish Golden-Age Literature” speculates that 16 [A]ny modern best-seller defines itself by the number of copies sold. If indeed, we insist that we cannot speak of best-sellers without knowing the sales-figures, then we cannot talk of Golden-Age best-sellers at all. So for as the fifteenth, sixteenth, and seventeenth centuries are concerned, we cannot use as a criterion the size of the editions and this crucial factor we have simply to ignore3. In only a few cases does a chance document tell us how many copies were printed. . . In spite of all this, the only realistic criterion which we can usefully employ in defining our best-sellers is the number of editions through which they passed. (190-1) Therefore, employing the number of editions as an outlet to discover the best-sellers of the era, Whinnom comes to a conclusion by means of the list he formed. The list reads that Celestina was the best-seller given its highest number of editions, later comes Guzman de Alfarache, Montemayor’s Diana, Amadis and Corcel de Amor share the fourth place, and in the fifth place, it is Cervantes’ Don Quixote with twenty-four editions (193). Despite the fact that there have been nine hundred editions of Don Quixote in different languages since 1605, Cervantes’ financial success could not keep up with his rapid rise to fame. In 1492, being a Jew was illegal and the ones who converted to Christianity to avoid mistreatment were called converso, the class of people who were “to some extent, outsiders in society, who were barred from lucrative jobs, from prestige” (Eisenberg 149). Concerning this, the occupational history of Cervantes and his family is highly suggestive of their former Jewish origin due to their specific jobs. Cervantes was a tax collector, his father was a barber-surgeon and his great-grandfather was a cloth merchant and these businesses were typically “associated with Jews or descendants from Jews” (Eisenberg 149). Hence, Cervantes’ precarious economic situation can be claimed to stem from his converso background, which caused him difficulties in advancing his career. In line with his former predicament, Cervantes was unable to alleviate his financial status despite the acclaim of his book and the number of copies it sold. Although the characters of the novel had already become mainstream icons of popular culture of the day, Stavans emphasises Cervantes’ penniless situation as such: “Cervantes’s contract, in retrospect at least, appears to have been rather lousy. When he died, not long after the publication of the Second Part, his assets and those of his family were almost non-existent” (Stavans 10). 3 Whinnom here refers to the “size of the edition” is the number of copies each edition covers. Thus, he deduces that the number of books sold can be calculated once the size of the edition is known. 17 Therefore, contrary to popular belief, the publication of his book did not help his financial status as much as it did his fame and his publisher since he was the one who reaped the large profit from work. Through its best-selling status in Spain and its success in Europe and the New World, Don Quixote gained a two-faceted recognition in literature and popular culture of its period. This recognition was provided by the rapid dissemination and editions of the novel between 1605 and 1615 in “different kingdoms and territories of the Catholic Monarchy, Castile, Aragon, Portugal, and the Low Countries: three in Madrid (two in 1605, one in 1608), two in Lisbon (both during 1605), one in Valencia (in 1605), one in Milan (1610), and two in Brussels . . . (in 1607 and 1611)” (Chartier and Elton 45). Moreover, the work also acquired fame “especially in France, England and the Americas” (Britton 2). In its home country, the influence of Don Quixote on the popular culture was pretty immediate that right after its publication in 1605, Don Quixote and Sancho Panza made their debut as festival figures in the carnival held in Valladolid, “from henceforth, [they] would pass into Spanish, then universal folklore” (Close 11). In addition to that, in two of the Spanish-speaking South American countries, Peru and Mexico, figures of Don Quixote and Sancho Panza took part in festivals respectively in 1607 and 1621 (Mancing 197). Particularly, its arrival in England was earlier than its translation, as Eggington points out, when Lord Howard of Effingham visited the capital Valladolid in February 1605 to celebrate the birth of the future King Philip IV, he was given a whole range of gifts, including the second edition of Don Quixote in Spanish (165). More importantly, Lord Howard’s gift is claimed to be one of the very first two copies of Don Quixote that ever reached England taking its place in Bodleian Library, Oxford University. The other dimension of Don Quixote’s recognition was the appreciation of its literary value in its own period. Although both dimensions of the novel’s recognition have been in an ongoing and ever-changing process depending on the period and cultural phase it is read, it is vital to pinpoint how the novel was initially received by the readers and the critics of the age to track how long it has come along so far. Over the years, this process has drawn a rising graphic in terms of the depth of the interpretation and criticism of the work. In other words, as time passed, Don Quixote was delved into profoundly and 18 studied thoroughly by the scholars of many different disciplines to discover many facets of its composition as a timeless work of literature. However, during the period in which it was published, Don Quixote was neither recognised as one of the serious works of its time nor its literary value particularly appreciated. In sixteenth-century Spain, Don Quixote was well-known merely for its entertaining aspect, which pigeonholed the book into a simplistic and limited standpoint. Despite its being a ubiquitous part of the popular culture, according to Close, in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, it was a seldom occasion to find Spanish literary criticism unless the criticism discussed educational and linguistic subjects; hence the predominant perception of Don Quixote was more than an underestimation of its value (228). One of the reasons for this underestimation was that Don Quixote had been assumed to be a work of “recreational literature” (McCrory 194), a term that was used for the fictional prose narratives that did not fit into Aristotle’s binary categorisation of poetry and history. Cruz contends that in Spain, these narratives also went by the name “libros de entretenimiento” (entertainment books) that, had less literary dignity compared to “historical writings and religious treatises,” and she adds that Of these, the novels of chivalry were one of the most popular exemplars – literary diversions that, albeit unsuccessfully, were banned from the New World so as not to corrupt the spirit of the new readers. Yet, the differences between poetry and history tended to blur over time. The confusion between the categories permitted the emergence of another fictional form, one that became the genre par excellence of our modern and postmodern literary worlds. (15) Hence, Don Quixote took its place between the categories, certainly it was neither poetry nor history however, contrary to popular belief, it was neither a chivalric romance nor a picaresque. The work, all by itself, was a literary exception for its own age with its innovative and unconventional style and plot. More specifically, the novel’s inverted use of technique and contextual sophistication posited Don Quixote beyond its own contemporaries; therefore, the misunderstood book went unnoticed, causing its reduction into a book of entertainment. Accordingly, one day “from a balcony of his palace in Madrid Philip III s[ees] a student reading as he walk[s] laughing as if he would split his sides. ‘That man’ sa[ys] the King, ‘is crazy, or he is reading Don Quixote’” (Ayscough 400). Ostensibly, the historical anecdote confirms the perception of the work in its own period as a very hilarious book to read, but the more significant point of the anecdote is 19 that the king is being informed about the work for its most celebrated, yet superficial, value. The concept of funny in the time of Cervantes differed in many respects from its contemporary definition. According to the concept, laughter and ridiculousness are given rise by ugliness. Hence, the ridiculous, which is laughed at, should be a deviation from the natural and incapable of serious harm. Based on this, insanity, which is a palpable deviation from normalcy and as long as it is not violent, is funny. (Russell 320-1). As a matter of fact, because of Don Quixote’s madness and the ridiculous events both the knight and Sancho Panza encountered, the book was accepted to be a funny work in its own time. In this context, the commentaries of some Spanish scholars of the seventeenth century show direct parallelisms with the claim in that the Portuguese writer Tome Pinero da Veiga made; “the knight is a figure of fun because of his extraordinary appearance, his ridiculous performance as a lover, and his unawareness of how nonsensical a figure he cuts” (qtd in. Russell 318). As for Nicolas Antonio, literary historian, the book is “a most amusing creation whose hero is a new Amadis of Gaule4 fashioned out of ridicule” (Russell 318). Given the novelty of the bourgeoning genre, “the evolution of the extended prose fiction” rested on translations and cultural and literary interactions among the countries that actively took part in novelistic production (Hayes 66). As a part of this interaction and the rapid success, Don Quixote was disseminated in the European countries by means of its translations in various languages, nonetheless, the same perception of its being a merely entertaining and light-hearted work was retained in other countries, as well. Importantly, it can be argued that while the literary product was transferred between languages for the first time, the initial critique of its value and literary position were also carried along Europe. The first country that published the translation of Don Quixote, only seven years after its original publication, was England in 1612. Beginning with England, many European countries, such as France, Germany, Italy and the Netherlands, 4 One of the most iconic and significant example of the Spanish chivalric romances on which Cervantes based his Don Quixote as its burlesque. 20 also began publishing their first translations of this seventeenth-century literary phenomenon. Although the first complete translation of Don Quixote Part I belongs to England, Cesar Oudin rendered a part featured in the novel, “The Ill-Conceived Curiosity” into French in 1608, as the earliest translation (Stavans 175). It took the French Hispanist six years to translate the first part of Don Quixote into a faithful and “word-by-word rendering” which would be reprinted seven times between 1614 and 1665 (Crooks 294). By the time the first quarter of the seventeenth century was over, Don Quixote Part II had been published in French, translated by François de Rosset in 1618. The success brought by the collaboration of Oudin and Rosset retained its influence over the years, even becoming a model for the later translations in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Another important translator of the work in the seventeenth century was Filleau de Saint-Martin, who took the liberty of adapting the novel in a French taste yet in a complete version of both parts in 1677-78. In the beginning of the same century, Germany was familiar with the novel in a way that was more like a cultural entertainment than a literary work since the work had not yet been translated into German. However, the spectacle of Don Quixote and Sancho Panza figures in the marriage masquerade of Friedrich V of the Palatinate and Elizabeth Stuart of England in 1613 (Beutell Gardner 19) was proof that the amusing perception of the novel was the primary impression throughout European countries. Like in France, the earliest translation of Cervantes introduced to the German readers was the same novella that Oudin translated, “The Impertinent Curious Man.” Being a part of Don Quixote’s episodic structure, the novella was translated in 1613 and until the translation of twenty-two and a half chapters of part I in 1648 by Bastel von der Sohle, there had been no other translation of the novel (19). In 1683, another German translation appeared under the title of Don Qvixote von Mancha abenteuerliche Geschichte by an anonymous translator whose initials were noted as J.R.B and in the first half of the eighteenth century, two different translations of Don Quixote appeared in Germany (21). Despite the distinction among themselves, the common point of these three translations was that all of them were based on French translations of the novel from the previous century, in other words, none of these German renderings was of first-hand interpretation between two languages but an indirect rendition of the source text. 21 Being one of the countries that took great interest in the novel, England, in terms of Don Quixote’s circulation and translation, has played a significant role since its publication. As a powerful impression of its prolificacy in Cervantean studies in the coming centuries, England achieved the first complete translation of Don Quixote Part I into English and the first translation in any language. The translator, Thomas Shelton, an Irish Catholic who studied at the Irish College of Salamanca, Spain (Randall and Boswell xx), rendered the work’s English version under The History of the Valerous and Wittie Knight-Errant, Don Quixote of the Mancha in 1612. As Mayo and Ardila point out, Shelton translated the work “to make the work available to a friend who could not read Spanish. . . in the unlikely span of forty days” (54). In the light of this information, the same critics consider that this short period is the reason for Shelton’s translation being an incompetent and careless one to accurately represent the “command of Cervantes’s language” and fail to involve with the chivalric references that endow the work its parodic style (54-55). Nonetheless, regardless of this fact, with its lively and colloquial tone, the first translation of Don Quixote was claimed successfully in sales and created the seventeenth-century perception of Don Quixote, which focuses on its mere funny and entertaining aspects. Through the end of the seventeenth century, the second translator John Phillips, who was one of the nephews of John Milton, worked on Shelton’s translation entitled The History of the Most Renowned Don Quixote by intertwining it with the additional changes provided by the French translation of Filleau de Saint-Martin in 1687. It is possible to argue that his basis for this imitative composition was to change Shelton’s Tudor English version into a more “a-la-mode style” which rendered the former text more “English according to the humour of our Modern Language” (Knowles, “Cervantes” 275). In 1700, similar to Phillips, the third translator Hispanist Captain John Stevens was unable to move forward in terms of a developed translation where he merely refurbished Shelton’s translation without offering any remarkable change (Knowles, “Cervantes” 278). In the same vein, in terms of their visions for Don Quixote, Shelton, Phillips and Stevens presented similar overtones of simplistic characters, farcical stories and light-hearted composition of the work in their renditions. Although the viewpoints of the translators were not inaccurate yet, deficient given the early perception of the characters and the 22 insights about the work, a more mature and encompassing appreciation of the work took the critics and translators some time to do the work justice. Therefore, in time, the quality and competence of the translations changed for the better in line with the perception of the work in its own period. In this context, another example with the title History of to the Renown’d Don Quixote de La Mancha was translated by Peter Anthony Motteaux in four-parts between 1700-1703. In Motteux’ work, the subtitle “Translated from the Original by Several Hands” raised the questions of whether there were other translator/s other than Motteux himself whom he collaborated with. Though this question remains without an answer, Motteux’s translation was discrepant from the former translations in that he could grasp what Cervantes aimed in his novel by highlighting his attack on the Spanish aristocracy. Thus, explaining this approach in the preliminary of his translation, “the parodic character of Cervantes’s work finally began to emerge” (Mayo and Ardila 55) making the eighteenth-century perception of Don Quixote as a satiric work evident. Almost forty years after Motteaux’ translation, the most famous rendition of eighteenth- century Britain was achieved by Charles Jervas, whose translation went by the name ‘Jarvis translation,’ due to the misspelling in his name on the title page of the (Stavans 181). Jarvis’ translation The Life and Exploits of the Ingenious Gentleman Don Quixote de la Mancha was published in 1742 and reprinted over a hundred editions in England and America (Knowles, “Cervantes” 278). What made Jarvis’ version so significant was its literal translation which delivered the Spanish text in its most accurate form. However, contemporary Hispanists -Knowles, Stavans, Ardila and Mayo- assert that his attempt to render his translation as exact as possible deprived the text of its humour and liveliness. Hence as Knowles puts it, it was “a faithful but uninspired performance” (“Cervantes” 278). In the mid-century 1755, another translator, a renowned novelist of the age, Tobias Smollet, also undertook the task and his translation was published under the title of The History and Adventures of the Renowned Don Quixote. As Mayo and Ardila argue, Smollett’s translation was “the most widespread edition of the work in the eighteenth century”, perhaps, given Smollett’s fame as a novelist and the Cervantine influence he represented in his novels such as in The Adventures of Roderick Random (1748) allowed 23 his translation to be a popular and wide circulating one. However, despite the reputation, Smollet’s translation has been much argued and studied due to the accusation of plagiarism. The controversy broke out in the same year of the publication when William Wyndham’s “Remarks on the Proposals lately published for a New Translation of Don Quixote” was published. In his criticism, Wyndham takes the first chapter of Smollett’s translation and reveals “Smolett’s ignorance of the Spanish language and Spanish customs, as well as his . . . negligence in ignoring the two principal ‘helps’ available to him: namely, the Royal ‘Madrid’ Dictionary and Charles Jarvis’s more exact translation” (Battestin 295). Supported by some literary scholars, Smollett’s translation was not able to evade the harsh criticism of the significant literary woman figure of the period, Lady Mary Wortley Montague, who wrote in a letter as follows; I am sorry my friend Smollett loses his time in translations: he has certainly a talent for invention; though I think it flags a little in his last work. Don Quixote [sic] is a difficult undertaking: I shall never desire to read any attempt to new-dress him. Though I am a mere piddler in the Spanish language, I had rather take pains to understand him the original than sleep over a stupid translation (283). Even though it is still challenging to be assertive about the accusation that judges Smollett’s both literary competence and ethics, scholar Carmine Rocco Linsalata from Stanford University conducted research by comparing the translations of Smollett, Jarvis, Motteux, Phillips, Stevens and Shelton in order to disclose the long-lasting literary controversy. In 1956 he published his study Smollett’s Hoax, in which he came to a conclusion that Smollett’s “technique consisted principally of plagiarising, paraphrasing, rewriting, and inverting Jarvis’ translation” (13). In one of his letters Linsalata presented, Smollett wrote to his friend that he had contracted with two booksellers to translate Don Quixote from Spanish, which he had studied sometimes (Smollett 8); hence, this statement was used as a fact to confirm the accusations directed toward him. Because it was claimed and believed that Smollett’s inadequate Spanish was a reference to the dubious case of his translation. Nonetheless, Smollett’s translation insisted on being the most renowned and printed one in the eighteenth century going through nineteen editions before the nineteenth century. The last eighteenth-century translations of Don Quixote following that of Tobias Smollett was George Kelly’s in 1769 and Charles Henry Wilmot’s in 1774 whose renditions “rel[ied] so heavily on their predecessors” (Skinner 50). Kelly’s was deemed a superficial alteration of Mottoeux and was of no specific 24 contribution to the translational development (Mayo and Ardila 56). Whereas, Wilmot projected the knight as an insipid hero of sentimental novels through a translation deeply indebted to Smollett’s. After the eighteenth century, the flow of English translations still persisted in the nineteenth, twentieth and twenty-first centuries, as well. The nineteenth century encompassed the translations of T.T. Shore (1864), Alexander J. Duffield (1881), John Ormsby (1885), Henry Edward Watts (1888), while the twentieth century introduced five translators’ versions which are of Robinson Smith (1910), Samuel Putnam (1949), J.M. Cohen (1950), Walter Starkie (1954) and Burton Raffel (1995). Lastly, the first two decades of the twenty-first century also greeted five translations so far, three of which are American translators: John Rutherford (2000), Edith Grossman (2003, Ame), Tom Lathrop (2005, Ame), James H. Montgomery (2009) and Gerald J. Davis (2012, Ame). Having mentioned the names, nationalities and qualities of myriad translators and translations in English, one cannot help asking the question why Don Quixote was and has still been translated in English many times. Evidently, there is not a definite and single answer to the question, however many scholars endorse various views that would complement each other in terms of the reasons for the question. Beginning from a wider European scope, the evolution of the long prose fiction is tightly woven with translation and cultural interactions amongst the countries, which Franco Moretti quantitatively analyses it as the translation waves in his “The three Europes.” According to Moretti, the success of Don Quixote, the “first international best-seller” (171), can resemble a stone thrown from the Spanish peninsula to Europe, where it creates widening ripples, which he calls translation waves. The first set of countries which were immediately influenced by Don Quixote and translated the work constitute the first wave diagonally “running from London to Venice (through Holland, France, and the German territories) . . . in the early seventeenth century” (171). After, two consecutive arcs create the second wave– covering Denmark, Russia, Poland, Portugal and Sweden between 1769-1802- and the third wave spanning from the Ottoman Empire to Japan between 1813 and 1935 (171- 73). Basing the idea of ‘rises of the novel’ on his wave theory, Moretti calls France and England “the core” of the novelistic production (173) due to their immediate influence 25 by Don Quixote and their simultaneous reinforcements of the notion of Western classics, as countries which are gradually evolving into nation-states. Thus, along with their deep- rooted rivalry that goes back a long way, France and England, the cores of novelistic production, are pitted against each other in another arena. As a matter of fact, in the seventeenth century, the French interest for Don Quixote or Cervantes’s other works was so strong that by 1665 there had been some French editions of Cervantes’ work around the number of fifteen while England had seen four (Randall and Boswell xxxvii). Being Moretti’s “the core” countries, England and France pioneered the emanation of the work by means of their interest, translational and adaptation productions. Even though Frazier states that “the undisputed center of Don Quixote interest in the early seventeenth Century was France” (110) with the advent of English Restoration in 1660 and Charles II’s ascension to the English throne, France functioned as a catalyst to stimulate the interest in England. When the French influence on Restoration literature is considered- specifically the drama of the period-, it is inevitable not to take the French literary sensations into account. Since Charles II truly enjoyed French culture and literature, he and the Cavaliers were already preoccupied with the reputation of Don Quixote in France and their arrival in England initiated the enthusiasm during the Restoration (Frazier 111). Regarding this point, it is worth emphasising the increasing frequency of the English translations after the Restoration and the use of Don Quixote’s French translations as the source text for the English versions. Correspondingly, as it can palpably be observed in the period, the enthusiasm for Don Quixote was passed into English hands from the French. For further answers to the question, in his book Quixote, Hispanist Ilan Stavans devotes a whole chapter to translations of Don Quixote where he underscores the number and variety of the English translation beginning from the sixteenth century up until today. He also asserts that there are more translations of Don Quixote in English than in any other language and also, Don Quixote was the second most translated text into English after The Bible (176-77). Being informed about these important details surely sheds light on the question that was posed earlier. According to Stavans, from the seventeenth to the second half of the twentieth century, the position of English language has been evolved 26 progressively into the lingua franca of the world (200). Beginning with the imperial expansion of Britain, many colonies of the Empire were obliged to absorb the culture and language as parts of their lives. The United States, as the most outstanding of the former colonies, also established its own idiosyncratic culture, which most of the other countries of the world were exposed to. The wider the language spread, the further and more profound the sphere of its influence facilitated myriad interpretations and views about Don Quixote. Hence, being a global language and heightening the accessibility to the knowledge for those who cannot participate in their own languages, the English language allowed the United States and England to reap the profit out of the demand by exporting more translations (Stavans 200). In the same line with this information, Stavans also adds that Cervantes’s is the novel most translated into English because English speakers have identified it as a cornerstone of the Western civilisation; because they are drawn to it as a source of nourishment for the idealism ingrained in human nature; and because it is an open-ended classic that allows- nay, invites- for multiple interpretation. (200) In regard to Stavan’s statement about the work’s multiple interpretation, it is possible to argue that the miscellaneous interpretations of the work throughout the years promoted its gradual evolution into a Western classic. Specifically, in England the phases of temporal/perceptive influences of the work in literature between the seventeenth and the nineteenth centuries designated a route that was constantly being altered and advanced by the artists and writers of the ages. In other words, Don Quixote in England was not only surviving but also thriving by means of the various imitations and adaptations within the three-hundred-year span which underscore the notion that the imitations did sustain the original. However, the significance and endurance of the work did not only depend on its sole existence as a great work; rather its ramifications enabled and are still enabling the work’s continuity. To this end, the engagement process with Don Quixote eventually entitled the work to acquire meta-narrative status in Western literature, providing many structures and patterns for different interpretations or studies. Supporting this notion, in James Fitzmaurice-Kelly’s talk in 1905 at the British Academy for tercentenary of Don Quixote, he praised England’s interest in Cervantine studies as follows: England was the first foreign country to mention Don Quixote, the first to translate the book, the first country in Europe to present it decently garbed in its native tongue, 27 the first to indicate the birthplace of the author, and the first to provide a biography of him, the first to publish a commentary on Don Quixote, and the first to issue a critical edition of the text. I have shown that during three centuries, English literature teems with significant allusions to the creations of Cervantes’s genius, that the greatest English novelists are among his disciples, and that English poets, dramatists, scholars, critics, agreed upon nothing else, are unanimous and fervent in their admiration of him. (19) Although many scholars have long recognised the achievement Britain gained in Cervantine studies, it, nevertheless, required a methodology to discern the distinct approaches to Don Quixote and how the writers of the specific periods interpreted and utilised the work for specific ends in their creative endeavours. Kelly palpably put forward the success of England’s enthusiasm in Cervantes and his works in 1905 by throwing a retrospective glance to the start of the studies in the seventeenth century and extending it to his time. In the same year, Spanish writer Miguel Unamuno also agreed that Don Quixote “has travelled all over the world and been acclaimed and comprehended in many countries- in England and Russia most especially- but when he returns his own country, he finds it to be the place where it is least understood and most maligned” supporting the idea that “no prophet is accepted in his own country” (461). Edwin B. Knowles in his influential essay “Cervantes and English Literature” demonstrates that there have been four different interpretative phases of the novel and the hero in each century in England and explains that The 17th century, . . . emphasised only the surface farce; . . . the 18th century, which, while enjoying the comic values, chiefly esteemed the serious satire; . . . the 19th century romantic period, . . . deprecated both the comedy and satire in order to exalt the deep spiritual implications; . . . late 19th and 20th centuries, which- most eclectic of all-embraces the earlier views in a more just proportion and sees in the book an eternal human classic of a richly complex nature. (267) While there are no clear-cut distinctions between the periods, the earlier modes gradually faded out as the later modes began to stand out as the writers of the age adopted and utilised similar methods frequently. The source of these modes was evidently contingent on the time and the specific approaches to the work; hence it would not be wrong to state that this very timelessness and versatility has made Don Quixote one of the most prominent works of the Western literature classics. Yet, despite the many different methodologies that have been put forward to fathom the depth and meaning, the work 28 still invites many more various individual interpretations regardless of the established ideas or notions. Nevertheless, in the English scope, the seventeenth century is the beginning period of the work’s reception in the country and the primary approach the literary milieu adopted for their own use. The imitations and borrowings from Don Quixote in the seventeenth century by the British writers were made possible by the first translations of Shelton and Phillips. More importantly, the initial perception of both the novel and the character was constructed via Shelton’s way of representing it in his translation. To this end, parallel to how the Spanish understood it, Don Quixote was first received as a light-hearted book with the aim of burlesque and caricaturing of the chivalric romances of the previous age. Moreover, in total contrast to its parodic tone and multifaceted context, the work was “often judged like one of the romances parodied by Cervantes” (Müllenbrock 198). Scholars and writers of the period fell short in appreciating the actual value of the work or stating it more accurately; they were unable to grasp the gist of it. Hence, the lack of a sophisticated and advanced approach to the novel caused it to be inadvertently depreciated in its literary value. Instead, it was taken at its face value, emphasising farcical elements and absurdity of the adventures and attitudes of Don Quixote and Sancho Panza. Far from being a literary fad of the period, Don Quixote, on the contrary, “gradually entered the popular culture” and the “references to Don Quixote and Sancho, as well as a number of abridgements appeared more and more” (Colahan 61). Though it was an undervalued work, it achieved such wide popularity that even before its earliest translation by Shelton in 1612, more than a thousand allusions and references were found in the seventeenth century literature between the years 1607 and 1657 (Ardila, “Influence” 3)5. Regarding the earliest appearances of the book in England, before the book itself was acquainted with the English readers, Ardila supports the view that the political affairs and diplomatic formalities were the first occasions that carried the initial influences of Don Quixote to England. As it was previously mentioned, Lord Howard’s 5 In the article titled “The Influence and Reception of Cervantes in Britain, 1607-2005,” author J.A.G Ardila thoroughly explains and meticulously exemplifies the allusions, adaptations and emulations of Don Quixote between the mentioned years. 29 visit to Spain for the baptism of the baby king of Spain in 1605, in fact, happened to be a critical moment for literary history for Lord and his retinue found the chance to attend the short farcical performance of the adventures of the hidalgo and his squire. Thus, the English courtiers who watched the performance, in most likely, “passed the adventures of Don Quixote by word of mouth in the English court” (Ardila, “Influence” 4). When Ardila’s argument is scrutinised, the earliest of these allusions can be found in George Wilkins’ play The Miseries of Inforst Marrige dating circa 1606-07, where the character named William Scarborow asserts that “Boy, bear the torch fair: now I am armed to fight with a windmill, and to take the wall of an emperor” (Act III). Alluding to the best known sally of Don Quixote, Wilkins not only unknowingly foretold the imminent fame of the Spanish work, but also underscored significant information that right after its publication in Spain and five years before its English rendition, Don Quixote had already entered England. Yet, these scattered and short allusions were not the only fragments of Don Quixote, as the popularity of the work rose in England, playwrights of the period inclined to borrow from Cervantes. This acclaim was not in favour of the work since it was still considered a merely humorous work whose literary merit could not keep up with the standards of the era. Nonetheless, the early and late seventeenth century playwrights still borrowed from the work to appeal to a more crowded audience on the stages. The first two examples of these borrowings were in John Fletcher’s Coxcomb (1609) and Nathaniel Field’s Amends for Ladies (1611), which were based on the story “The Curious Impertinent” interpolated in Don Quixote (Ardila 4). Basing the whole play on the story ostensibly points out that both Fletcher and Field had the chance to read the whole book either in English or in Spanish, or they only read “The Curious Impertinent” from Cesar Oudin’s French translation. The story is about an incredulous husband Anselmo who wants to test his wife’s faithfulness by asking his best friend Lothario to woo her. The fact that the story was suitably intricate for the Restoration comedy; therefore, the late seventeenth-century playwrights such as Aphra Behn in her Amorous Prince; or, The Curious Husband (1684), Thomas Sotherne in The Disappointment (1694) also employed the story as sub-plots and found the story positively intricate to be staged. 30 The first fully developed imitation of Don Quixote initially appeared on the British stage in 1607. Performed at Blackfriars Theater, The Knight of the Burning Pestle by the collaboration of Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher was published in 1611 shortly after the borrowing and alluding plays. For many of scholars, The Knight is the first “conscious and direct imitation/adaptation” of Cervantes’ novel (Mancing 69) in which the focus was again on the absurdity and amusement of Don Quixote. The protagonist of the play, an apprentice of a grocer, is a British reminiscent of the old hidalgo who unwisely carries a pestle for a gun, is blindly in love with Susan and acts by the chivalric fashion. Classified as a comedy, whose sole aim was to entertain the audience, the play was a burlesque of chivalric romances. Therefore, critics of time, who scorned Don Quixote for its mock- heroism and lack of heroic elevation, protested The Knight in the same way as follows: And last of all (which in my judgement is worst of all) others with the phantasticke writings of some supposed Knights, (Don Quixotte transformed into a Knight with the Golden Pestle) with many other fruitlesse inventions, moulded onely for delight without profite. These Histories I altogether exclude from my Oeconomy, or private family. (Brathwaite 99) Richard Brathwaite, the seventeenth century essayist, in his Scholler’s Medley, harshly criticises Don Quixote and all of the texts imitating it. Referring to these texts as “fruitlesse invention” can be regarded as a subtle but strong metaphor indicating their transience within the literary environment of the time. While demonstrating the literary tendency which gives the upper hand to profit or education over joy, the short paragraph sheds light upon Brathwraite’s very likely hostile opinion about the new upcoming waves in literature. The same hostile attitude toward Don Quixote and its adaptations did not change much until the beginning of the eighteenth century. After eighty-seven years of The Knight of the Burning Pestle’s publication, Thomas D’Urfey debuted his three-part play titled The Comical History of Don Quixote in 1694. The play was accepted to be “the first theatrical adaptation of Cervantes’ novel in Britain” yet it was condemned for being too comical and representing a shallow picture of Don Quixote (Ardila 8). For Knowles, the literary value or the general atmosphere of the work was not more outstanding compared to the popular comedy of manners of the age such as Wycherly’s The Country Wife and 31 Congreve’s Love for Love (“Cervantes” 276). Therefore, like its fellow plays, D’Urfey’s work was also condemned by the biting criticism of Jeremy Collier’s Short View of the Immorality and Profaneness of the English Stage for being profane with respect to religion and the Holy Scriptures, abusing the clergy and its lack of modesty and regard to the audience (Collier 197). Another widely researched point about Don Quixote’s influence in seventeenth-century England’s literary medium is the long-discussed possible scenario of the meeting of Shakespeare and Cervantes. Although the actual meeting is highly speculative, most of Shakespeare scholars and Hispanists still endeavour to pursue the idea by retrospectively second-guessing the hows, whens and wheres of the meeting. Rather than the possible meeting of the two pillars of Western literature, it will be helpful to pay attention to the lost play Cardenio which supposedly has been attributed to the influence of Cervantes on Shakespeare. Performed by Shakespeare’s company, the King’s Men in 1612 or 13, Cardenio (or Cardenno) was conceivably written by Shakespeare or by Shakespeare and Fletcher, however according to the critics, the play had either never got printed or got lost (Randall and Boswell xxxix). The play, as the name also suggests, was considered to have borrowed from Cervantes’ character in Don Quixote Part I, Cardenio who is a mad lover doing his penance in the Sierra Morena. The point where the speculations and hypotheses lead to is that Shakespeare had a significant number of friends who had a direct relationship with Don Quixote’s emergence in England, therefore “it is . . . certain that Shakespeare knew about Cervantes, Don Quixote and very possibly the Exemplary Novels, which reinforces belief in the Cervantine nature of Cardenio” (Ardila 6). Even though the actual meeting of Shakespeare and Cervantes has still been an unsolved question, it is highly probable that Shakespeare -with or without Fletcher- utilised the literary sensation of Don Quixote in the period either out of practical reasons or only admiration, whose content remained a mystery due to its disappearance. Besides dramatic allusions and adaptations, prose fictions, poems and literary criticism were the other genres that Cervantes’ influence could be observed in the seventee