Reading Don Quixote as political agenta Spanish knight in British ideological and literary wars

Abstract

In the midst of a political and literary battle, radical and anti-radical authors employed Cervantes’ Don Quixote to serve their ideological purposes. In particular, anti-Jacobin novelists used quixotism to identify the illusions of the Quixote with revolutionary ideas, to condemn them as foolishness or sedition, and to use the unavoidable cure of their characters’ quixotism as a call for political conservatism and for the preservation of British traditional values. The present paper will focus on three novels which were published at this time and which have at their core a political Quixote: The History of Sir George Warrington; or the Political Quixote (1797), The Infernal Quixote (1801), The Heroine, or the Adventures of a Fair Romance Reader (1813). It will highlight how quixotism becomes a foundation for the anti-radical discourse, how these novels adapt quixotism and how they contribute to the relevant and rich tradition of the reception of Don Quixote in Britain.