I'm a little disjointed. I understand the overall importance of Don Quixote as a didactic narrative of the world and of literature and/or literary criticism, but I'm somewhat unsettled that we haven't talked about the marvelous, affluent and ironic sense of humor that so pervades the novel. It helps make the unordinant amount of reading more tolerable, but also serves to advance a reader's love for the book. I smile. I laugh. Out loud. In the quiet study section of the library. People turn to look at me and I apologize without further noise.
Never since a few humorous parts of various other stories or writing specifically made for laugh-based pleasureable reading (Dave Barry, etc.) have I had so literal a "good time" reading a book. Don Quixote is no pharmakos. He is no tragic figure. He is a comic hero. He forces smile and joy at the ironic mistakes of peasants for beautiful maidens, a neglected old horse for the elegant and deserved steed of the righteous knight. True, we may find musings of humor in his less fortunate mistakes that end in bodily harm for our poor may Spaniard, invoking the universal spirit of humor from others' misfortune. He may exibit the commonalities of a scapegoat, but his character, self-deluded truimphs and innocent nature make him so much more lovable as a person, outside the ridicule and rediculous harm upon his person, that I dare say he is far too beloved by his audience of readers that he transcends the idiom of pharmakos.
Never since a few humorous parts of various other stories or writing specifically made for laugh-based pleasureable reading (Dave Barry, etc.) have I had so literal a "good time" reading a book. Don Quixote is no pharmakos. He is no tragic figure. He is a comic hero. He forces smile and joy at the ironic mistakes of peasants for beautiful maidens, a neglected old horse for the elegant and deserved steed of the righteous knight. True, we may find musings of humor in his less fortunate mistakes that end in bodily harm for our poor may Spaniard, invoking the universal spirit of humor from others' misfortune. He may exibit the commonalities of a scapegoat, but his character, self-deluded truimphs and innocent nature make him so much more lovable as a person, outside the ridicule and rediculous harm upon his person, that I dare say he is far too beloved by his audience of readers that he transcends the idiom of pharmakos.
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