Читать книгу Harvey Wallbangers and Tam O'Shanters - Martin Hannan - Страница 57

In the first great European comic novel, Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra (1547–1616) created one of the seminal figures in world literature, Don Quixote. He was a middle-aged gentleman gone soft in the head, who was obsessed with chivalry and romance and, being quite deluded, went off on an adventure with his dimwit neighbour Sancho Panza. Quixote tilted at windmills, and turned just about every available encounter into a chivalrous quest carried out in the name of his lady Dulcinea – in reality an unknowing farm girl – before returning home disillusioned. It is that practice of doing something strange, perhaps knowing that it will be ultimately unrewarding, which we describe as ‘quixotic’.