Books, libraries, and authorship in Don Quijote

Botello López-Canti, JesúsGuardiola-Griffiths, CristinaThis study focuses on the significance of the print book as an object in Don Quijote. It examines the ways in which Cervantes uses print books to illustrate the changes and complexities within Golden Age Spain: though Cervantes’s use of the novel to offer literary criticism is a widely studied topic, the author also uses the presence of books as a way to develop his characters and to consider and often satirize his environment. I analyze Cervantes’s inclusion of print books as a symbol around three themes: changes in readership and the shift from oral to print culture; collections, preservation, and libraries in Golden Age Spain; and the regulation surrounding this new technology and its effects on authorship and a nascent concept of authors’ rights. The use of print books as a new technology in Don Quijote celebrates good literature but also cautions Cervantes’s contemporaries about the complexities of this new way of disseminating and interpreting information.University of Delaware, Department of Languages, Literatures and CulturesM.A