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Full Description
This book examines the technological and scientific imagery in Cervantes's novel, Don Quixote, and the ways in which the Scientific Revolution participated in the author's examination of early modern European culture during a time of crisis and change.
Cervantes's representation of technology not only documents the cultural dynamics of the transition between medieval scholasticism and early modern empiricism in Spain but also celebrates the agency of the individual to effect change in the world. Machines in Don Quixote often function as the would-be knight's nemesis, playing a role in foiling his quest to revive a mythical, pre-technological Golden Age. They also appear as ingenious devices that straddle the border between magic and engineering in a modern expression of human creativity and ingenuity. For Cervantes and his characters, technology is not just about machines, but about the human desire to reverse power structures and exercise agency.
Cory A. Reed, a specialist in early modern Spanish literature, analyzes how Cervantes's aesthetic of instrumentality encourages his reader to engage critically with the world in a time of cultural transformation. Cervantes, Technology, and the Novel thus demonstrates how Don Quixote becomes an instrument of enlightenment achieved through imagination.
Contents
List of Illustrations
Introduction
1. Ingenious Revolutions: Early Modern Science and a Hermeneutics of Technology
1.1 Scientific Revolutions and Shifting Paradigms
1.2 Bridging Art and Science: The Theatrum Mechanorum and the Aesthetics of Mechanical Innovation
1.3 A Hermeneutics of Technology
2. Shifting Paradigms: Don Quixote's Confrontations with Technology
2.2 The Adventure of the Windmills: Don Quixote's Normative Paradigm
2.3 The Adventure of the Fulling Mills: Paradigmatic Instability
2.4 The Adventure of the Enchanted Boat: A Paradigm in Crisis
3 Enchanting Devices: Fabricating Illusion and Revealing Truth
3.1 Automata, Puppets, and Machines of Theatre
3.2 Technologies of Communication
4 An Aesthetic of Instrumentality
4.1 Instrumentality and Empire: Navigation, Cosmography, and Artillery
4.2 Instrumentality and the Individual: Cervantes's Praise of Agency
Notes
Works Cited
