Don Quixote 

This is Gustave Doré’s “Don Quixote,” a wood engraving which illustrates a scene from Miguel de Cervantes’s novel. Doré made hundreds of these to accompany the popular book, which allowed the artist to reach a broad audience during France’s Second Empire. We see the titular character and his squire Sancho Panza resting near a brook in the forest. Quixote lays prone on the ground with his armor on, and looks exhausted from his chivalrous adventures. Doré’s images added a visual component to the popular novel, which was published in two parts in 1605 and 1615. Cervantes’s story satirizes the chivalric romances popular at the time, using Quixote’s delusional adventures to comment on the values of Spanish society. I wonder, can we see Don Quixote's adventures as a way to explore and critique social norms through comedy, but also acknowledge the pain and absurdity of the story?