Oct 20 – Literary Festival Opens With Fascinating Cervantes Talk
This year’s Gibraltar International Literary Festival opened this morning with a talk on Cervantes delivered by Professor Edwin Williamson of Oxford University.
Professor Williamson attempted to explain why Cervantes’ major work – the novel Don Quijote – had managed to exert such a huge influence over literature and art.
In 2016, exactly 400 years after Cervantes’ death, the novel, which Williamson described as a “spoof on the romances of chivalry”, is still widely regarded as a seminal text in the Western canon.
Williamson started with a detailed biographical sketch of the author. Cervantes led an exciting life; he was, at various stages, a soldier, an imprisoned slave and a tax collector. Williamson argued that this “rich experience” fed directly into the novel.
Turning to his masterwork, ‘El Ingenioso Hidalgo Don Quijote de la Mancha’, Williamson said that the genius, power and originality of this work lay in the madness of its main protagonist. He said the book, with its psychologically complex characters and interplay between appearance and reality, provided the foundations for the modern novel.
The Gibraltar international Literary Festival continues. Visit http://www.gibraltarliteraryfestival.com for more info.
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