Shouldn't there be a section for Trope Namer when it comes to the windmill related tropes? Or do indirectly named tropes not qualify? Windmill Political, for example, is probably not actually in the book, but the name is derived from his most famous misadventure. At the very least, he seems to deserve more than a potholed link to some of the Windmill trope pages.
RADDman
Since this doesn't have a WMG, I'm gonna post this here: what if Don Quixote was actually a giant-fighter and the greatest knight that Spain ever saw? He was brilliant, brave, and victorious in his battles against the giant scourge and the dark wizard Friston. However, in his final battle with his archnemesis, the sorcerer knocked Quixote unconscious and cast a spell that left him bewildered when he awoke. He was in his bed and asked his niece (Friston in disguise) what happened. The knight errant was tricked into believing that his adventures were all a hallucination conjured by reading too many chivalry stories. This is the same story his biographers heard, including Miguel Cervantes, the one who compounded the tales of his “follies” (in the book, it says that numerous people had some of his stories and Cervantes put them all in two volumes, sort of in-universe distillation that made it worse). Eventually, all of Spain, even Lady Dulcinea’s former kingdom, and the rest of the world came to believe the falsified account. However, in trying to make a mockery out of and eliminate a hero, Friston in fact may have strengthened Quixote's reputation by inspiring readers the world over with his admirable intentions. Any thoughts?
Edited by RADDman EVERYTHING YOU KNOW IS WRONG Hide / Show Replies
I don't frequent WMG pages so I don't know how to respond to that, but you could always create the page yourself over here.
That was the amazing part. Things just keep going.
I think the entry about "In Name Only" could interest you: Joel Silver is threatening to produce a big-budget, "Pirates of the Caribbean-like" film about a Swashbuckler Don Quixote that is not crazy and fights real monsters from Another Dimension.
I have a doubt about this definition of "Mis-blamed": Even many fans of They Might Be Giants assume that the band took their name directly from this novel. It actually comes from the 1971 movie They Might Be Giants, whose main character (who believes himself to be Sherlock Holmes, and has been compared to Don Quixote by another character) muses on the value of being open to the possibility of windmills being giants. Don Quixote himself had no such doubts; he was positively certain that he was charging against giants. The point is nobody is "blaming" Don Quixote for the name of the band. I think this example could better be placed under Shout-Out or Beam Me Up, Scotty!?
I have a doubt about this definition of "Fair for Its Day": "Several of the attitudes expressed by the characters are enough to make modern sensibilities cringe. Sancho, a man usually associated with being a loyal and amiable sort actually considers taking up selling people as slaves and turning 'black into gold' " . I think this example could better be placed under "Values Dissonance", because Fair for Its Day implies that something cringe-worthy or laughable today is also something worthy of applause for what it stood for.. I don't think that is the case with slavery.
Edited by Narutaki
Don Quixote is undoubtedly a deconstruction of the Chivalric Romance genre, but is really a deconstruction of the Knight Errant? In the first part of the novel, there is really few people that know what an Knight Errant is, and all of them realize Don Quixote is crazy. In the second part, almost everyone knows what an Knight Errant is, but they treat Don Quixote as one only to mock him. Is possible to deconstruct the Knight Errant when no one else (apart of Don Quixote) in the book knows or believes in an Knight Errant?
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Hi, I am the editor who added the Knight Errant deconstruction line.
It's a while since I read Don Quixote, so I don't remember whether and how often the term "Knight Errant" is actually used. But it's obvious that Don Quixote tries to live the life of a Knight Errant, and in doing so, inadvertently exposes the inherent silliness of being a Knight Errant.
Don Quixote never ever comes upon "enemies" that are worth fighting — instead he attacks a herd of cattle that he takes for a hostile army, windmills that he thinks are giants, and innocent travellers that he mistakes for challengers. Neither does he ever find people that need or deserve his help — there is the episode where he frees a bunch of convicted galley slaves; however, instead of honoring his chivalric deed, they just deride him and pelt him with stones (they're criminals, after all). Also, he hardly ever finds the castles that Knight Errants are supposed to hit upon on their adventures, and instead takes a tavern for a castle, and so on.—
In other words, his chivalric ideals and his expectations of what the life of a Knight Errant would be frequently clash with reality, and he does more harm than good in trying to help people.
That Don Quixote is the only one that believes himself to be a 'real' Knight Errant is, in my opinion, no hindrance. I'd still count it as a deconstruction.
The premise of Don Quixote seems ridiculously easy to move to a modern setting. Some guy reads too many comic books, puts on a costume, and sets out to fight crime. Have they made this movie yet? (Kick Ass started out with this premise, but abandoned it.)
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The film Defendor (not sure if we've an article on it here) sort of holds truer to it than Kick Ass did. A mentally handicapped man (or possibly insane, can't remember) decks himself out in homemade crimefighting gear to beat up street thugs all while hunting the nonexistant "Captain Industry." I'm not sure if it was intentional but looking back on it there's a lot of comparisons that could be made.
The book "Going Bovine" is about an apathetic teenager who finds out he's got Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (aka, mad cow) and he's going to die as holes are eaten in his brain. So he( a tall, gangly teenager) sets off one day after a hallucination of an angel named "Dulcie" tells him he has a mission to save the world, bringing his paranoid dwarf friend "Gonzo" with him on hallucinatory adventures that eventually end up in a car called the Cadillac Rocinante. It references Don Quixote often and unabashedly, although the themes are shifted a bit and the events themselves don't correspond. In addition to all this it's a really awesome, hilarious, heart-wrenching sort of book and you ought to read it.
I can think of some movies with the same premise of Don Quixote, but they are in the Cops and Detectives series, except The Fisher King that is the premise with a Chivalry Romance:
- They Could Be Giants: 1971 film starring George C. Scott as a man who thinks he's Sherlock Holmes, and Joanne Woodward as his psychiatrist, a doctor whose name happens to be Watson. Both of them look to solve mysteries and for Holmes Archenemy, professor Moriarty.
- Llámenme Mike (Call Me Mike): Mexican Film about Miguel, a poor Corrupt Cop that is the Silent Scapegoat of an Epic Fail of his unit and sent to jail, where he receives a terrible beating from the inmates. When he goes out, he believes himself his idol, Mike Hammer, has a lot of Private Eye Monologues in behaves like he is in a Film Noir… that certainly fits in the worst neighborhoods of Mexico City.
- The Fisher King.
So...yeah. How do you pronounce Quixote? German is my specialty, not spanish.
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The main page states that Cide Hamete Benengeli's chronicles of Don Quixote were written in Arabic. In a college class, I learned that they were actually written in aljamiado, which is just Spanish written with the Arabic writing system. So it's Spanish that looks like Arabic to sole Spanish-speakers. Can anyone verify this before I change the main page?