Don Quixote
The Ingenious Hidalgo Don Quixote of La Mancha (frequently shortened to simply Don Quixote), is a novel written by Spanish author Miguel de Cervantes in the early seventeenth century and originally published in two parts in 1605 and 1615. It is often considered to be the first modern novel.
The main character, Don Quixote, is a deluded man who believes he is an itinerant knight. At one point in the story, he thinks that a group of windmills are actually evil giants, and attempts to do battle with them (this is the origin of the English idiom "to tilt at windmills", meaning to fight an imaginary enemy). This inspired the name and plot of a 1971 film, They Might Be Giants, in which George C. Scott plays a man who thinks he is Sherlock Holmes. In the mid-1980s, New York-based performer Raoul Rosenberg considered using this title for his ventriloquist act. When it was discarded, it was lent to his friends John Flansburgh and John Linnell, and is now commonly abbreviated to TMBG.
In 1959, Dale Wasserman wrote a teleplay of the book called I, Don Quixote, which he converted into the libretto for the musical Man of La Mancha around 1964. In the song "Pencil Rain" TMBG makes reference to the lyrics and music of "The Impossible Dream" from the musical.
External links[edit]
- Don Quixote on Wikipedia