Idle English Reader: Romanticism and the Illustrated Reception of Don Quixote in England
The image of Don Quixote as a Romantic hero was mostly consolidated thanks to two French illustrators, Tony Johannot and Gustave Doré. However, in England, towards the end of the eighteenth century and at the beginning of the nineteenth, different editions evince aesthetic novelties and underline th...
| Autores: | , |
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| Tipo de recurso: | capítulo de libro |
| Fecha de publicación: | 2022 |
| País: | España |
| Institución: | Universidad de Castilla-La Mancha |
| Repositorio: | RUIdeRA. Repositorio Institucional de la UCLM |
| OAI Identifier: | oai:ruidera.uclm.es:10578/32667 |
| Acceso en línea: | https://www.peterlang.com/document/1305244 https://hdl.handle.net/10578/32667 |
| Access Level: | acceso abierto |
| Palabra clave: | Don Quixote Cervantes Romanticism Illustrators Reception Smirke Stothard |
| Sumario: | The image of Don Quixote as a Romantic hero was mostly consolidated thanks to two French illustrators, Tony Johannot and Gustave Doré. However, in England, towards the end of the eighteenth century and at the beginning of the nineteenth, different editions evince aesthetic novelties and underline the Romantic reading of Cervantes’s novel.Editions such as that of Harrison and Co. (1782), with illustrations by Thomas Stothard, or, more significantly, Cadell and Davies (1818), with designs by Robert Smirke, contributed to ending the Neoclassical tradition which John Vanderbank had imposed in England with the edition published by Tonson (1738). Tonson’s edition had helped to canonize Don Quixote, establishing an allegorical reading, serious and moralizing, which held sway to the end of the century. In opposition to this tradition, Stothard and Smirke, among others, began to emphasize aspects such as Don Quixote’s melancholy, the knight’s visions and the portrayal of Cervantes himself as a Romantic writer who had suffered a reversal of fortune.This essay examines this new way of reading Don Quixote, which spread throughout England in the nineteenth century, enjoying great success and popularity. |
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