Mancing, Howard
“Don Quixote: Coming to America”. En: Cervantes y su mundo III. (Estudios de literatura 92) Kassel 2005, pp. 397-418.

The Quixote has been of major influence on the novel in America, from the very beginning to the present day. In this paper I would like to try to document the pervasive presence of Cervantes‘ novel in the literature of the United States throughout its history. My method is to choose no more than three novellists from the following periods: 1) the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century,) 2) the early twentieth century, 3) mid twentieth century, 4) late twentieth century and 5) early twenty-first century. In each case, I will outline very briefly how the fictional production of each of this novelists relates to the Quixote, and then make only brief mention of other names.

Finally I will speculate on why the connection with Cervantes‘ novel is so extensive, suggeszing that it is not really possible to write a novel that that does not in some way resemble the Quixote. Throughout, I will use the term quixotic novel to refer to any novel that bears some degree of intertextual relationship to the Quixote. The quixotic novel most typically is one that involves a character who has some of those qualities we associate with Don Quixote and/or displays an innovative, postmodern, narrative self-awareness that places a work in juxtaposition to Cervantes. Often there is an element of satire in a quijotic novel, but by no means are all such novels mere satires or anti-romances.