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JOURNAL OF MODERN MYTHOLOGY AND POP CULTURE INTRODUCTION PAGE 11
Grandville Illustration of Don Quixote from the 1848 edition.
All traces of the Super-Human and Almost-Super-Human are missing in Don Quixote by Spanish author Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra. Cervantes published his masterpiece in two parts, 1605 and 1615, and it is one of the most influential novels in history. The all-too-human Alonso Quixano lives in a fantasy world rather than the real and mundane, and with his companion Sancho Panza embarks on a satirical crusade. A satire on exaggerated behavior and idealism frustrated, the hero is mocked by a greedy world, and the book stands between medieval chivalric romance and the modern novel. The use of everyday speech brought a realism the reading public responded to, and populating the story are ordinary but fascinating people, a divergence from the standards of chivalric characterization. Cervantes wished to obliterate that standard which had held the general public enthralled for a hundred years. The only trace of the Super-Human/Almost-Super-Human left is in Don Quixote's mind. Carlos Fuentes noted: "Cervantes leaves open the pages of a book where the reader knows himself to be written." The mythological connections to Don Quixote extend to such diverse characters as Philip Marlowe, Raymond Chandler's philosophical private investigator, who is also looking for truth.
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