Critical Images: The Canonization of Don Quixote Through Illustrated Editions of the Eighteenth Century

Carol A. Stos is an assistant professor of Spanish at Laurentian
University.

Rachel Schmidt points out that, unlike the manuscript, which appears to
belong to different times and places, the book takes on the form of
whichever culture reproduces it. The illustrator, who makes interpretive
decisions about the text, is representative of his or her culture;
accordingly, the flow of images creates a second narrative embedded
within the textual narrative. It is this reading that Schmidt analyzes,
focusing on the process of canonization experienced by Don Quixote, the
novel, in its physical construction as Don Quixote, the deluxe edition
created by and for the upper and middle classes of 18th-century England
and Spain. Her study of the illustrations (and illustrators) encompasses
sociopolitical conditions, as well as literary and art history,
exploring four “iconographic” traditions: the burlesque, the
satiric, the neoclassic, and the Romantic.

Beginning with the 17th-century burlesque culture that informed the
first readings and illustrations, Schmidt traces the novel’s
transition from the popular to the public sphere, the point at which it
is transformed from a work of entertainment to one of didactic purpose,
worthy of critical debate and achieving the classical status necessary
for canonization. She devotes two chapters to an analysis of the Lord
Carteret edition (London, 1738), the Smollet translation (London, 1755),
and the influence of William Hogarth and Henry Fielding on the
interpretation of the novel. Turning to Spain, and the 1771 Ibarra and
the 1780 Real Academia de la Lengua editions, Schmidt explores the
conflicts and the controversies of the time, ranging from the dispute
over illustrations between the Academies of Letters and Fine Arts, to
the desire to reclaim Don Quixote for the national literary “honor.”
She concludes with a chapter on Goya and the Romantic reading of the
novel.

An interesting irony of this detailed, well-documented, and fascinating
study is that in Schmidt’s role as an investigator of the
illustrations’ interpretive value and impact, she also interprets for
her readers the ways in which the illustrations reveal and reflect their
provenance, thus adding another layer to the interpretive strategies
portraying Don Quixote.