Cervantes’ groundbreaking novel, Don Quixote, is a comic but profound meditation on dreams, disillusionment and the blurred line between illusion and reality Its legacy is less timeless than differently meaningful across time, from the tragic idealism identified by the Romantics ( the term “quixotic” originates from Cervantes’ protagonist) to the metafictional complexity engaged with by modern critics. 

Professor Isabel Torres explores how the ancient root of poetry, ‘poiesis’, comes alive in the creative madness of Cervantes’s protagonist, and the power of lyric in early modern Spain.

Speaker: Professor Isabel Torres FBA 

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