Reading Don Quixote

FAIN: FV-50183-08

SUNY Research Foundation, Binghamton (Binghamton, NY 13902-4400)
Salvador J. Fajardo (Project Director: March 2008 to June 2010)

A six-week seminar for fifteen school teachers focusing on multiple readings of Cervantes's Don Quixote.

Reading Don Quixote: During the six weeks of this seminar our purpose and our enjoyment will be to do a careful reading of Cervantes's masterpiece. Besides laying the foundation for the modern novel Don Quixote incorporates a critique of the reading of fiction and of literature as a whole. While reader-response will provide the general framework of our engagement, other theoretical strategies will offer useful approaches to key aspects of the book, in particular to issues such as the relationship of language to reality (the interplay of linguistic registers, the connections between narrative and identity, and others), and the interplay of fiction and history. The seminar will meet three times a week for three hours. Participants will be asked to write a journal of their engagement with the book and a short (5-6p) paper on a topic of their choice.