Cervantes, Ariosto, and the Art of Reading

This article aims to help instructors tackle a perennial challenge in teaching one of the classic works of Spanish literature: Miguel de Cervantes's Don Quixote. Many instructors teaching the novel for the first time may feel overwhelmed at the prospect of helping students appreciate the numerous ways in which Cervantes references the novel's intertexts, especially given students' general lack of familiarity with earlier literary traditions, and the lack of time in the semester in which to read examples of many of them. The article proposes that in addition to customary lectures on the most important literary genres underpinning the Quixote, a carefully structured, systematic approach to one major Cervantine intertext in particular, Ludovico Ariosto's Orlando Furioso, can help undergraduates gain fuller appreciation for the myriad of ways in which Cervantes addresses the art of reading, as well as for the importance of honing their own judgment regarding the written word.