“Somewhere in la Mancha, in a place whose name I do not care to remember, a gentleman lived not long ago, one of those who has a lance and ancient shield on a shelf and keeps a skinny nag and a greyhound for racing…”
{First words of the novel Don Quixote.}
Was it just me, or could anyone else relate to Thorburn and Jenkins’ Don Quixote example?
While studying Spanish at Wingate University, I had the pleasure of taking a class solely dedicated to Don Quixote and his author Miguel Cervantes. Naturally, when my eyes gazed upon the words such as “Quixotic,” I was compelled to really start paying attention.
Though these scholarly gentleman discuss the matter of a new age that seemed to blindsight the world, it is ironic to me that they use an example of a revolutionary literary piece that is so… old. To me, it shows that just because we are moving through life and technologies at the speed of sound (notice how I don’t say the speed of light, I don’t think we are moving quite that quickly) doesn’t mean we will forget what has truly influenced our world.
For those of you who may have skimmed through the Don Quixote part, please note this: El ingenioso hildago don Quijote de la Mancha by Miguel Cervantes is considered to be one of the most influential pieces of literature from the Golden Age in Spain. The term “Quixotic” comes from this two-part novel and it is defined as exceedingly idealistic; unrealistic and impractical.
Here is Don Quijote in a nutshell: The main character Alonso Quijote is an older man who is obsessed with old books about knighthood. He becomes so enthralled that he leaves his home and sets out to be a knight on his trusty steed Rocinante with his comedic friend Sancho Panza. They have many crazy adventures all in the name of his fake love Dulcinea, and Quijote, at many points in the novel, believes he is a real knight. In the end, you find out that he knew he was not a real knight all along, and though most people found him to be crazy, he was actually the brightest of them all. He wanted to become a knight so that he could experience what he thought a knight experienced based on his readings such as Amadis de Gaula.
What I am getting at is many of our lives are not too far off from the good ole’ Don’s. He wanted to be something, so he changed himself based off of things he read in other novels. Since the evolution of extensively accessible information, have we also changed ourselves to be things that we have read, seen, or heard from different medias? I like how Thornburn and Jenkins discussed a consuming self-consciousness is ever-present in the emerging new media. People can censor, or even uncensor, themselves on Facebook; create a blog that shows their different personality, like Perez Hilton; tweet about things they don’t even care about, but the world around them does, etc.
Though at times it may seem our project assignments are “quixotic,” I think that this idea of quixoticity posts a challenge to be ideal, to do what others think is unrealistic and to overcome the notion of impracticality. Because in today’s world, who wants to be unidealistic, realistic or practical?