List of works influenced by Don Quixote
The novel Don Quixote, was said to be written by the Spanish author Miguel de Cervantes. Published in two volumes a decade apart, Don Quixote is one of the most influential works of literature from the Spanish Golden Age in the Spanish literary canon. As a founding work of modern Western literature, it regularly appears high on lists of the greatest works of fiction ever published. It has been the inspiration for a wide array of cultural adaptations.
Influence on literature
Drama
- 1612 The Knight of the Burning Pestle by Francis Beaumont has been described as "the first English imitation of Don Quixote".
- 1613 Cardenio, a lost, presumably Shakespearean play, is believed to be based on an episode in Part One of Don Quixote.
- 1694 The Comical History of Don Quixote is a comic play by Thomas D'Urfey with music and songs by composers including Henry Purcell. The play was written in three parts, adding up to more than seven hours of playing time. It is seldom if ever performed today, and never at its full length.
- 1734 Don Quixote in England by Henry Fielding was written in 1728 as an attack on Prime Minister Robert Walpole.
- 1785–1787 Don Chisciotti e Sanciu Panza by Giovanni Meli is a Sicilian parody of Don Quixote.
- 1864 Don Quichotte, a play in three acts by Victorien Sardou. Recently translated into English as "Don Quixote".
- 1953 Camino Real by Tennessee Williams features a cast of classic literary characters that includes Don Quixote and Sancho Panza.
- 1982 Don Quixote, theatre adaptation by Keith Dewhurst, first performed at Royal National Theatre with Paul Scofield in the title role.
- 2016 The Royal Shakespeare Company's version of Don Quixote, with David Threlfall in the title role and Rufus Hound as Sancho Panza, played at the Swan Theatre and was revived in 2018 for shows at the Garrick Theatre in London.
Novels and other literature
- 1742 Joseph Andrews by Henry Fielding notes on the title page that it is "written in Imitation of the Manner of Cervantes, Author of Don Quixote".
- 1752 The Female Quixote, a novel by Charlotte Lennox. A major influence on Jane Austen's Northanger Abbey.
- 1759–1767 The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman by Laurence Sterne was influenced by Cervantes' novel in several ways, including its genre-defying structure and the Don Quixote-like character of Uncle Toby. Intentional nods include Sterne's own description of his characters' "Cervantic humour" and naming Parson Yorick's horse 'Rocinante'.
- 1760-1762 The Life and Adventures of Sir Launcelot Greaves by Tobias Smollett. Smollett shows the influence of Don Quixote in many of his novels, but this is his "own explicit version of the D Q story." Smollett had also produced his own translation of Don Quixote in 1755.
- 1773 The Spiritual Quixote by Richard Graves is a satire on Methodism.
- 1856 Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert was heavily influenced by Don Quixote. In the view of the critic Howard Mancing, "of all the many female incarnations of Don Quixote, Emma is the most original, profound and influential. Flaubert's admiration for Cervantes knew no bounds. It has been suggested that it was his reading of Don Quixote in childhood which convinced Flaubert to become a novelist rather than a dramatist." In Madame Bovary, the heroine, like Don Quixote, tries to escape from the tedium of provincial life through books, in Bovary's case women's romances and historical novels.
- 1869 The Idiot by Dostoyevsky. Prince Myshkin, the title character of the novel, was explicitly modeled on Don Quixote.
- 1874 The Three-Cornered Hat, by Pedro Antonio de Alarcón, has been compared with Don Quijote.
- 1917-1919 "The Truth About Sancho Panza" by Franz Kafka imagines Sancho as Author.
- 1914 Vida de Don Quijote y Sancho by Miguel de Unamuno often perceived one of the earliest works applying existential elements to Don Quixote. The book, on Unamuno's own admission, is of mixed genre with elements of personal essay, philosophy and fiction.
- 1927 The Return of Don Quixote by G. K. Chesterton tells the tale of the librarian Michael Herne, who, after performing as the lead actor in a medieval theater play, finds contemporaneous realities unacceptable and decides to carry on with medieval costume, then gets elected to a dictatorial real kingship, but disappoints the rich who helped him get there, and then has to roam the country in the fashion of Don Quixote, since persecuted by the police after losing his short-lived power.
- 1939 "Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote" by Jorge Luis Borges is a short story about a fictional 20th-century writer who re-authors Don Quixote. According to the story, "The text of Cervantes and that of Menard are verbally identical, but the second is almost infinitely richer."
- 1949 Silverlock by John Myers Myers The novel's settings and characters, aside from the protagonist, are all drawn from history, mythology, and other works of literature.
- 1960 The Art of the Novel by Milan Kundera extensively references and extols Cervantes' Don Quixote as the first, and perhaps best, novel. Kundera writes that his own novels are an homage to Cervantes.
- 1966 The Order of Things by Michel Foucault. Quixote's confusion in Cervantes' novel plays an important part in Foucault's book, serving as an illustration of the transition to a new configuration of thought in the late sixteenth century.
- 1982 Monsignor Quixote by Graham Greene is a pastiche of Cervantes' novel. Greene's character Monsignor Quixote regards himself as a descendant of Don Quixote.
- 1985 City of Glass in The New York Trilogy by Paul Auster. In this postmodern detective story, the protagonist, Daniel Quinn, is modeled after Don Quixote. The novella includes an explicit discussion of Don Quixote's authorship.
- 1986 Don Quixote: Which Was a Dream, a novel by Kathy Acker, revisits the themes of Cervantes' text to highlight contemporary issues.
- 1995 The Moor's Last Sigh by Salman Rushdie, with its central themes of the world being remade and reinterpreted, draws inspiration from Cervantes's work.
- 1997 One Piece, a Japanese manga series by Eiichiro Oda, features Donquixote Doflamingo, an antagonist presumably named after Don Quixote.
- 1998 Yo-Yo Boing!, a Spanglish comic novel by Giannina Braschi, features conversations between Don Quixote, Sancho Panza, and Dulcinea, who have been transported into 20th-century New York.
- 2009 The Shadow Dragons, the fourth novel in James A. Owen's series The Chronicles of the Imaginarium Geographica, features Don Quixote as one of its major characters.
- 2009 Going Bovine by Libba Bray, a YA novel about a 16-year-old high school student with "transmissible spongiform encephalopathy" and contains many allusions to “Quixote” in plot, theme and characters.
- 2015 Supernatural season 10's Book of the Damned features protagonist Castiel searching for his grace, his angelic essence which turns out to be in a copy of Don Quixote with the riddle leading to it being the quote "what's the maddest thing a man can do? Let himself die."
- 2019 Quichotte by Salman Rushdie is described as a modern take on Don Quixote.
Music, opera and ballet
- 1690 Der irrende Ritter Don Quixotte de la Mancia, first performed in Hamburg with libretto by Hinrich Hinsch and music by Johann Philipp Förtsch
- 1719 Don Chisciotte in Sierra Morena - tragi-comic opera by Francesco Bartolomeo Conti written for the Viennese court. Highly popular at the time, it was an object for some borrowings from other composers.
- 1721 Les folies de Cardenio - ballet de cour by Michel Richard de Lalande based on an episode from the novel; some roles in the ballet were danced by young Louis XV.
- 1727 Don Chisciotte in Corte della Duchessa written for performance in Vienna by Antonio Caldara
- 1730 Sancio Panza Governatore dell’isola Barattaria written for performance in Vienna by Antonio Caldara
- 1739 Amor medico, o sia il Don Chisciotte , opera libretto printed in a bilingual edition anonymously in Vienna
- 1743 Don Quichotte chez la Duchesse, a short ballet with vocals by Joseph Bodin de Boismortier, was loosely adapted from the novel's chapters dealing with the frivolous Duke and Duchess, who play practical jokes on Quixote.
- 1761 Don Quichotte auf der Hochzeit des Comacho, an opera by Georg Philipp Telemann, was based on an episode from the novel.
- 1767 Don Quichotte orchestral suite by Georg Philipp Telemann
- 1769 Don Chisciotte della Mancia, an opera composed by Giovanni Paisiello.
- 1770 Don Chisciotte alle nozze di Gamace, an opera by Antonio Salieri, based on the same section of the novel as Telemann's opera.
- 1770 Don Chisciotte, an opera buffa by Niccolò Piccinni
- 1777 Il curioso indiscreto, an opera composed by Pasquale Anfossi based on chapters 33 and 34 of the novel, and later revised in Vienna 1783 and 1785, including insertion arias by Mozart.
- 1795 Don Quixote der Zweyte, an opera composed by Carl Ditters von Dittersdorf with an original libretto by the composer, premiered at the Herzogliches Hoftheater in Oleśnica.
- 1827 Die Hochzeit des Camacho is an early opera by Felix Mendelssohn based on the same section of the book on which Telemann based his opera.
- 1830 Don Chisciotte alle nozze di Gamaccio, an opera composed by Saverio Mercadante
- 1833 Don Quixote or The Knight of the Woeful Countenance: A Romantic Drama in Two Acts by George Almar, premiered in London at the Surry Theater, April 8, 1833.
- 1833 Il furioso all'isola di San Domingo, an opera by Gaetano Donizetti based on the story of Cardenio and Lucinda in Part I of Don Quixote.
- 1846 An Adventure of Don Quixote, a musical drama by Sir George Alexander Macfarren premiered at Drury Lane Theatre.
- 1861 Don Quijote, a zarzuela by Francisco Asenjo Barbieri, had its premiere on 23 April 1861, the anniversary of Cervantes' death.
- 1869 "Combate de Don Quijote contra las Ovejas" is a scherzo for orchestra by the Spanish composer Ruperto Chapí.
- 1869 Ludwig Minkus composed the music for Marius Petipa's ballet Don Quixote, which was staged for the Bolshoi Theatre in Moscow in 1869, and was revised in more elaborate production for the Imperial Ballet of St. Petersburg in 1871. The libretto was based on the same chapters in the novel which attracted Mendelssohn and Telemann. Petipa's ballet was substantially revised by Alexander Gorsky in 1900 for the Bolshoi Theatre in Moscow, a version which was staged for the Imperial in 1902. Gorsky's 1902 staging was revisited by several other choreographers in the twentieth century in Soviet Russia, and has since been staged by ballet companies all over the world. In 1972, Rudolf Nureyev filmed his version of the ballet with the Australian Ballet.
- 1898 Don Quixote, a tone poem by Richard Strauss. The music makes explicit reference to several episodes in the novel, including the sheep and windmill episodes.
- 1910 Don Quichotte by Jules Massenet at Monte Carlo Opera with operatic basso Feodor Chaliapin. When director G.W. Pabst made a semi-musical film in 1933 with a score by Jacques Ibert, he chose Chaliapin to play Don Quixote.
- 1914 Don Quixote Suite for concert band by the Bohemian-American composer and arranger Vincent Frank Safranek.
- 1923 Master Peter's Puppet Show, a puppet opera by Manuel de Falla, is based on an episode from Book II and was first performed at the Salon of the Princess de Polignac in Paris.
- 1932-4 Don Quichotte à Dulcinée by Maurice Ravel, three songs for voice and piano set to Quixote poems by Paul Morand.
- 1940–41, Don Quixote, ballet by Spanish composer Roberto Gerhard. The ballet became the source for a number of orchestral suites and Gerhard also used it in the incidental music he provided for a BBC radio adaptation of Cervantes's novel by Eric Linklater, The Adventures of Don Quixote. Gerhard re-wrote the ballet in 1947–49 and it was staged by Sadler's Wells Ballet at Covent Garden with choreography by Ninette de Valois and décor by Edward Burra.
- 1960 Don Quixote, symphony by the Azerbaijani composer Gara Garayev
- 1965 Don Quixote, a ballet by George Balanchine, with music by Nicolas Nabokov, dedicated to and starring Suzanne Farrell.
- 1965 Man of La Mancha, a full-length Broadway musical with music by Mitch Leigh, lyrics by Joe Darion and based on Dale Wasserman's non-musical teleplay I, Don Quixote. Written to be performed without intermission, the musical combines episodes from the novel with a story about Miguel de Cervantes, as a play within a play. It premiered in 1965 and was filmed in 1972. It featured the song "The Impossible Dream", which was subsequently recorded by many artists.
- 1968 Windmill Tilter: the story of Don Quixote, a jazz album by Kenny Wheeler, with Johnny Dankworth.
- 1972 Gordon Lightfoot releases the album Don Quixote , which is also a song on the album. The album peaked at #42 on the Billboard charts.
- 1982-3 Don Quixote and Sancho Panza, a work for two guitars by British composer Ronald Stevenson consisting of a double theme with seventeen variations, based on various events in Cervantes' novel. The work premiered in Glasgow in 1998.
- 1984 "Don Quichotte ", a French Top #10 and US Top #60 single by Magazine 60
- 1985 "Don Quixote", a song by Nik Kershaw
- 1994 Dulcinea is an album by Toad the Wet Sprocket, whose title is a reference to Quixote's love interest in Cervantes' novel. The lyrics of two songs on the album, "Crowing" and "Windmills", allude to elements from the novel.
- 1996 "Don Quixote", a ska punk song by American band Cherry Poppin' Daddies from their album Kids on the Street, addressing the thematic elements of the novel.
- 1998 La Leyenda de la Mancha, a concept album by the Spanish group Mägo de Oz, is a modern retelling of the story of Don Quixote.
- 2002 "Don Quixote", a rap song based on the story from the album Chicano Blues by the Funky Aztecs.
- 2003 "Donkey Hot", an album by the Macedonian band Foltin.
- 2008 Symphony No. 3 ″Don Quixote″ with movements I. The Quest, II. Dulcinea, III. Sancho and the Windmills, IV. The Illumination; a work for concert band published by the American composer Robert W. Smith.
- 2010 "Don Quixote ", a song by British band Coldplay, premiered during their 2010 Latin American tour. The song's lyrics refer to elements from the novel.
- 2013 "Tilting against Windmills", a song by Canadian progressive metal band Protest the Hero from their album Volition; the song's lyrics allude to the idiom, explicitly referenced in the title.
- 2014 "Being Dead ", a stage work by Kerith Manderson-Galvin, presented by that has been touring Australia periodically since. The title of the work also references the book by Kathy Acker.
- 2018 Music from Man of La Mancha, a studio album by Brazilian jazz pianist Eliane Elias.
Selected film adaptations
- 1906 Don Quixote, a French short directed by Lucien Nonquet.
- 1911 Don Chisciotte, an Italian short.
- 1915 Don Quixote, a silent US film starring DeWolf Hopper, directed by Edward Dillion.
- 1926 Don Quixote a silent Spanish-Danish co-production directed by Lau Lauritzen Sr., starring Danish comedians.
- 1933 Don Quixote directed by Georg Wilhelm Pabst, with music composed by Jacques Ibert. Rather than going out with foreign language subtitles, this version was made three times in the same year, and in three different languages: French, English and German. All three versions used the same script, set designs, and costumes, and all three starred the great Russian bass Feodor Chaliapin.
- 1934 Don Quixote directed by Ub Iwerks and published as a Comicolor cartoon, is an animated cartoon loosely based on the novel.
- 1945 Garbancito de la Mancha, the first feature-length animated film produced in Spain
- 1947 Don Quijote de la Mancha, the first full-length Spanish film version of the novel, directed by Rafael Gil.
- 1957 Don Quixote, Soviet film directed by Grigori Kozintsev, music by Gara Garayev and starring Nikolay Cherkasov, the first live-action version in widescreen and color.
- 1965 Don Quijote, a French/German made-for-television miniseries in four parts. It was directed by Carlo Rim and starred Josef Meinrad.
- 1965 Don Quichotte de Cervantes, a 23-minute French film by Éric Rohmer.
- 1968 Don Chisciotte and Sancio Panza, Italian film directed by Giovanni Grimaldi and starring Franco Franchi and Ciccio Ingrassia.
- 1971 They Might Be Giants, a 1971 film based on the play of the same name, whose title is a reference to Don Quixote's exploit of tilting at windmills, believing them to be giants. The two lead characters have a relationship similar to Quixote and Panza, with one appearing delusional and the other seeing reality clearly but following the "visionary" out of concern and friendship.
- 1972 Man of La Mancha, directed by Arthur Hiller, is a film version of the stage musical by Dale Wasserman, with music by Mitch Leigh and lyrics by Joe Darion). The film version starred Peter O'Toole, Sophia Loren and James Coco. The stage musical was based on Wasserman's 1959 non-musical television play, I, Don Quixote, which combines a semi-fictional episode from the life of Cervantes with scenes from his novel.
- 1973 Don Quijote cabalga de nuevo. Mexican/Spanish, directed by Roberto Gavaldón, starring Cantinflas and Fernando Fernán Gómez.
- 1973 The Adventures of Don Quixote, a British made version starring Rex Harrison and Frank Finlay, directed by Alvin Rakoff, with a script by Hugh Whitemore. It was first broadcast as part of the BBC's Play of the Month, and was later shown as a stand-alone television special in the U.S.
- 1973 Don Quixote, a film version of the Minkus ballet, starring Rudolf Nureyev, Lucette Aldous, Robert Helpmann and artists of the Australian Ballet.
- 1976 The Amorous Adventures of Don Quixote and Sancho Panza, softcore erotic musical adaptation, directed by Raphael Nussbaum.
- 1978-80 Don Quijote de La Mancha, a Spanish animation series produced and distributed by Romagosa Internacional and translated into several languages.
- 1980 Don Quixote: Tales of La Mancha, a Japanese anime series produced by Ashi Productions and distributed by Toei Animation.
- 1988 Life of Don Quixote and Sancho, a nine-episode series filmed in Georgia and Spain by Georgian director Rezo Chkheidze.
- 1991 Monsignor Quixote, a television film of Graham Greene's 1982 novel, directed by Rodney Greene, starring Alec Guinness, Leo McKern, Ian Richardson and Rosalie Crutchley.
- 1991 El Quijote de Miguel de Cervantes, a television miniseries of Part I of the novel, directed by Manuel Gutiérrez Aragón, scripted by Camilo José Cela and starring Fernando Rey and Alfredo Landa. The project of a second miniseries including Part II was stopped because of Rey's death.
- 1992 Don Quixote. Begun by Orson Welles; a reshaped version by Jesus Franco was released in 1992.
- 2000 Don Quixote, a US TV film directed by Peter Yates, co-produced by Hallmark Channel and Turner Network Television, starring John Lithgow, Bob Hoskins, Vanessa L. Williams, and Isabella Rossellini. Script was by John Mortimer.
- 2002 Lost in La Mancha, a documentary film about Terry Gilliam's failed first attempt to make a film adaptation of Don Quixote.
- 2002 El Caballero Don Quijote, Manuel Gutiérrez Aragón's two-hour theatrical film based on Part II of the novel. This belated sequel to Aragón's 1991 miniseries starred a completely different cast, including Juan Luis Galiardo as Quixote.
- 2006 Honor of the Knights, a compilative film adaptation by Catalan director Albert Serra.
- 2007 Donkey Xote, a Spanish-Italian CG-animated film that re-envisions the book with Sancho's donkey Xote as the lead character.
- 2009 Defendor, a Canadian superhero comedy-drama about a quixotic and mentally challenged vigilante who uses wasps and marbles to fight drug smugglers and crooked cops.
- 2012 The Newsroom has multiple mentions to Don Quixote including the episode titled "I'll try to fix you"
- 2016 In October 2016, it was announced Disney is developing an adaptation of the classic Spanish novel about a man who believes he is a knight to be streamed on Disney+ with Gordon Gray and Billy Ray producing. Billy Ray is also writing the script. Some sources state that the plan is to adapt the work in a tone that recalls the madcap and fantastical nature of the Pirates of the Caribbean film series.
- 2018 The Man Who Killed Don Quixote, directed and co-written by Terry Gilliam. Rather than a direct adaptation, the film is set in modern times and features an old man who is convinced he is the famous literature character.
- 2018 Maniac, a Netflix miniseries directed by Cary Joji Fukunaga, references Don Quixote in Season 1: Episode 5 when characters Arlie and Ollie attend a seance at the Neberdine mansion looking for the lost 53rd chapter of Don Quixote.
Paintings and illustrations