video

Michael Sugrue: Cervantes, Don Quixote

by Michael Sugrue

From his Great Authors lectures, Michael Sugrue reads Don Quixote as the first great novel and a hinge between the chivalric Middle Ages and a more democratic modern literature, then walks through the windmills and wineskins to the book's real ending: Sancho inheriting his master's idealism as the knight dies. A warm, lucid 45 minutes arguing that comedy, not tragedy, is the heroic mode left to us.