Novel Friendships and Community in Cervantes's "Don Quixote"

Novel Friendships and Community in Cervantes's "Don Quixote" analyzes Don Quixote through the critical lens of friendship studies. Turning a critical spotlight on the friendship between Don Quixote and Sancho Panza, this book examines the formation, growth, and dynamics of their friendship as the nucleus of the first modern novel in the West and the source of the work's enduring power. Novel Friendships also examines the theme of amity in relation to the evolving concept of community as a throughline in Cervantes's fiction-before, during, and after Don Quixote. This book shows the power of the arts, especially storytelling, to build friendships and foster community, and highlights how Cervantes deploys fiction to cultivate his readers' sense of friendship and to create a community of readers. Novel Friendships suggests that today's readers may find Cervantes's views on amity and community highly relevant to the contemporary world.

Marsha S. Collins is a Professor of Comparative Literature and Chair of the Department of English and Comparative Literature at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. A Hispanist and comparatist, she studies the Literature of Early Modern Spain in its European and global contexts. She has written on romance, pastoral, and other idealizing fictional forms; literature and the visual arts; early modern lyric poetry; and Early Modern European court culture. Known for her research on Cervantes, Lope, Góngora, and others, she currently serves as Vice President and President-Elect of the Cervantes Society of America and is a member of the Executive Committee of the Asociación de Cervantistas.

Acknowledgments Preface: Cervantes, Friendship, and a Community of Readers 1 Cervantes's World of Friendship and Community 2 "I was the first" ... before Don Quixote 3 Don Quixote and Sancho, a Novel Friendship 4 Don Quixote's Gallery of Friendships 5 Cervantes, Community, and Don Quixote Conclusion: Persiles, Cervantes's Last Words on Amity and Community Index