Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-8bhkd Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-10T07:36:21.499Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The Subterranean Grail Paradise of Cervantes

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 December 2020

Philip Stephan Barto
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

The Don Quixote of Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra was written (1606-1615) in ridicule of the chivalric romance at that time so overwhelmingly popular. The sickening exaggeration of these latter-day tales of knighthood apparently not only cloyed Cervantes but excited his sense of the ludicrous as well, giving him the idea of turning upon this type of story his powers of subtle satire. Since Cervantes was a man of by no means great academic erudition, what he knew of the background of knightly romance he had doubtless secured in the everyday way of popular reading. Certain high lights must naturally enough have struck his attention in his perusal of current tales of chivalry, and such came in for especial attention in his Don Quixote. Each episode of the book has, indeed, its more serious counterpart in the literary background which inspired Cervantes to his task.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 38 , Issue 2 , June 1923 , pp. 401 - 411
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1923

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 Cf. the author's Tannhäuser and the Mountain of Venus, chapters I and II.

2 Adventures of Don Quixote de la Mancha, trans. Charles Jarvis.

3 Von der Hagen, Minnesinger, III, 182.

4 Dialogus Miraculorum, ed. Strange, Bk. XII, chap. xii.

5 Schilter, Thesaurus Antiquitatum, vol. III, under “gral.”

6 Caspar Abel, Sammlung Etlicher . . . Alten Chronicken, p. 56.

7 Barto, op. cit., chapter III.

8 Wartburgkrieg, ed. Simrock, stanza 84.

9 On mythological identity of sleep and death, see article by Müller, Germania, I. 430 ff.

10 Konrad von Würzburg, Der Schwanritter, ed. Roth, ll. 107 ff.

11 P. 670.

12 “De Magorum Daemonomania,” translation by Fischart, p. 201.

13 Stutt. Lit. Ver., vol. XXVII, ll. 29532 ff.

14 Cf. Barto, Jour. Eng. and Germ. Phil., XIX, 190 ff.

15 Maynadier, The Arthur of the English Poets, p. 57.

16 op. cit., stanza 85.

17 Barto, Tannhäuser, etc., pp. 18 ff.

18 Wolframs von Eschenbach, Parzival, Martin, 235, ll. 20 ff.

19 Jarvis translation, p. 516.

20 Wolfram, loc. cit.

21 Jarvis translation, p. 517.

22 Dübi, Zs. des Ver. f. Volkskunde, XVII, 252.

23 loc. cit.

24 Jarvis translation, 517.

25 ibid. p. 516.

26 “Ernewerte Beschreibung vom Herrn Petern von Stauffenberg,” ll. 55 ff.

27 Jarvis translation, p. 518.

28 ibid. pp. 520, 521.