Don Quixote and the First Modern Novel

For the past few months, I have been slowly and steadily making my way through Cervantes’ sixteenth-century burlesque of all things chivalrous, Don Quixote. It is a hefty work, with the Penguin Classics edition clocking in at just under one thousand pages, and so I have been consuming it in small, easily digestible mouthfuls, leaving much time to chew in between each bite. Fortunately, the form of this satire aids my intermittent interaction, as it is separated into short chapters, some only a few pages long, each containing a standalone misadventure (somewhat similar to the manner of episodes in a sitcom). There is not much in the way of a cohesive plot winding throughout these sections, and it is clear that Cervantes was quite comfortable with including any and all bizarre encounters that his brilliant imagination conjured up, like a never-ending improv session— but if anything, this disjointed structure befits the narrative, as comedic episode after comedic episode is rattled off in quick succession, without much time for boring reflection or rumination. After all, Don Quixote refuses to learn from his series of failures, and so why should the reader take much notice of them, either?

It is an evasive work, one that shifts into a new beast whenever the reader feels comfortable enough to claim a grasp on what to next expect. One moment, it feels a light-hearted romp alongside an old man’s questionable grip on reality, the next it is a searingly comedic commentary on the Church’s censorship of texts deemed morally misguiding, the very next it is a tongue-in-cheek denouncement of the shallow escapes and false fantasies peddled by the dull romances of the time. Yet despite its nebulous nature, some still endeavour to pin down this slippery text, with the (rather ambiguous) label of ‘the first modern novel’.

One of these people happens to be John Rutherford, the man behind the artful Penguin Classics translation, and who repeatedly awards Don Quixote that momentous title throughout his introduction to the text. Rutherford never does quite qualify what it is about Cervantes’ masterpiece that marks it as a breakthrough into an entirely original literary form— nor does he really define what the distinguishing features of a novel are either, other than it is apparently longer than a novella (in case anyone doubted that). Literary historian Ian Watt, on the other hand, provides an extremely comprehensive argument as to what makes the modern novel differ from the literary forms of antiquity, and in his book The Rise of the Novel insists instead that the form emerged in the early 18^th century with the writings of Defoe, Fielding and Richardson, a little over a century after the publication of Don Quixote. Thus, I considered that it would be a briefly intriguing exercise to compare Cervantes’ piece against the facets of the modern novel that Watt presents so meticulously in his book, and see whether there is any truth in the claim that Don Quixote is in fact the instigator of this now ubiquitous artform.

Don Quixote is, first and foremost, a satirical parody of the Spanish chivalric romances that had been so popular in that country for the previous century, and many of which had been of questionable literary quality. They had been viewed by the censoring authorities on high as morally repugnant, tempting readers away from God and into their make-believe worlds of base humanity, and so Cervantes gently mocks them as having a somewhat deluding effect— Don Quixote has spent his entire life reading them, and in his old age decides to set out in search of a chivalric quest of his own, donning a cardboard helmet and finding glorious castles in lowly inns and warring armies in herds of sheep. It is this burlesque of chivalry, that at once pokes fun yet also fondly remembers, that gives the work its vibrancy and charm, but unfortunately also immediately limits its capacity to be considered a modern novel. After all, for Watt, the novel must have a ‘total subordination of the plot to the pattern of the autobiographical memoir’; in other words, the novel’s principal concern is with the experience of the individual, and thus everything in its narrative is born from and driven by the protagonist’s individual experience of events. This is not the case in the classical epic, whose characters are overshadowed by the grand scale of the events that they partake in, and by the abstract gods who move them across their fates like chess pieces. Nor is it the case in the romance, where the characters are less particularised individuals as they are a representation of tropes plucked from existing literary tradition.

And it is not the case in Don Quixote, either, which similarly entrenches itself in the romantic tradition in order to satirise it. For Watt, the status of protagonists of the modern novel as ‘completely individualised entities’ is exemplified by the fact that they have a personalised, proper name; those genres more derivative of tradition preferred ‘either historical names or type names’, that worked to set their namesakes ‘in the context of a large body of expectations primarily formed from past literature’. This completely stands against the modern novel’s aim of providing truth to individual, unique human experience. Regarding Don Quixote, it is obvious that the titular man’s name is a satirical device, drawing from the titles of chivalric heroes of old and awarding it to someone who is very much not a capable ‘knight errant’. His squire Sancho Panza is given a proper name, but it is a generic nomenclature based in the fact that he himself is a stock character lifted from sixteenth-century Spanish comedies, described by Rutherford as ‘the rustic buffoon, selfish and materialistic’. Neither of these characters have names or roles that demarcate ‘a particular person and not a type’, and thus fall short of Watt’s demands for the contemporary individual of the modern novel.

Indeed, whilst in Watt’s conception of the modern novel it is the protagonist’s interaction with the world that drives the plot, in Don Quixote, the hidalgo is whisked through Cervantes’ satirical smorgasbord with little agency as to what happens next. It is true that his choice to embark on this adventure is what sets the narrative wheels rolling, but from then on, the characters and events appear as if from nowhere and largely happen to, not because of, Don Quixote and Sancho as they plod on through the fields of Mancha. Here, the two characters conform to the needs of the narrative (to satirise the chivalric tradition), and not the other way round, as is the business of the modern novel. In the latter literary form, everything that occurs within the plot is parsed through the protagonist’s perspective of it, of which we are closely informed, and the worth of all that happens is measured only by the opportunity it gives the main character to develop. Then, the new, perhaps even improved protagonist makes a new action, the next sequence of events happens as a reaction, and the cycle of development continues. Crucially, everything that takes place does so in that specific way only because the protagonist, with all their specific traits and idiosyncrasies, experiences the world as they do and thus makes the decisions that they do. This constructs an overarching progression to the proceedings, as the same character’s constitution that triggers these events is also being moulded by those events as well. John Locke, after all, defined personal identity as ‘an identity of consciousness through duration of time: the individual was in touch with his own continuing identity through memory of his past thoughts and actions’.

Referring this back to Don Quixote, however, we see that again it does not qualify on this front. Its episodic structure is excellent in providing bite-sized burlesques, but necessitates a lack of a coherent character development. A particular event has little connection with the one that happens before or after it; indeed, despite Sancho’s common complaint of cracked ribs, even injuries seem to fade away (conveniently) right before the next misadventure makes itself known. If an article of clothing or a possession is lost, then naturally they are subsequently without it, and particular trials are referenced at later points, but Don Quixote himself never seems to develop a greater understanding from these experiences (and it is fortunate he doesn’t­— had he been more self-aware, he likely would’ve headed home before the tenth chapter, and we would’ve all been worse off for it). He has his moments of lucidity, but these are fleeting desert islands within the ocean of his shuttered delusion. Sancho is somewhat more receptive, but he never learns enough to pack it all in and go back to whence he came. As such, the plot cannot be subordinate to the development of Don Quixote’s own agency, for he has no development nor agency at all.

All of this, of course, is not to disparage Cervantes’ seminal work. It may not bear the qualities that Watt identifies with the true first modern novels, but it is remarkably and undeniably forward looking in its sentiments. It is acutely aware of its own position in the genre and of the many shortcomings of the tradition that it draws from (as the best satires must be). It gleefully breaks the fourth wall, and wryly plays with the concept of long-lost historical texts being discovered and relayed by contemporary narrators, however dubious those narrators might be. It delicately criticises some of the more tired and archaic commonalities of its genre; for example the damsel in distress trope is contrasted in the shepherdess Marcela, who is demonised by a village for refusing the advances of her suitors, then arrives to deliver an impassioned and moving rebuttal on how she chooses her own independence over submission to a man she does not love and never pretended to lead on. And, just because Don Quixote isn’t driven solely by the protagonist’s individual agency, that is not to say that his own perceived experience is not given a higher place than in other contemporary texts; if anything, it furthers the satire, as it is through his experience that we are given a glimpse of the abstract fantasies and universalities of the chivalric genre (giants, knights, princesses etc) which are in turn satirised as entirely incompatible and absurd in the real world of material experience. This latter point is one that deserves to be unpacked in far greater detail, and I likely shall do so in some future, longer-form piece. (Hopefully it shall not be as long as Don Quixote itself, however, otherwise it will never be finished.)

Ultimately, Don Quixote’s place in pre-existing literary form excludes it from the category of the modern novel, but is also its greatest strength. It mucks in with the other chivalric romances of contemporary Spain, shaking hands and sharing jokes with innocent amicability, but always has two fingers crossed behind its back. In doing so, it lays down much of the groundwork for the novel, and yet is quite content to remain in the comforting folds of tradition, watching with a wry grin its legacy persist through the ages after it.

Thank you for reading,