Svět Literatury (Oct 2015)
Don Quijote: jiná modernita // Don Quijote: another modernity
Abstract
Is it possible to read Don Quijote de la Mancha as a work representing modernity, and if so, in which sense? So sounds the question that this essay tries to answer. On the one hand, Close has warned about the problems of the romantic reading of Don Quijote, like, for instance, to assert that the book symbolizes Spain or an epoch. But, on the other hand, Cervantesʼ major work is in contact, through Huarte de San Juan, with the problem of truth, developed by renaissance thought in 16. century. That problem of truth, and the origin of knowledge criticism, is interpreted by Kundera as characteristic of modernity, even if different to the tradition founded by Descartes.
