By Claire Dietz
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By the time you’re celebrating your 400th birthday, you know a lot of people. And it’s all about who you know.
Don Quixote has connections to Huckleberry Finn, Tom Sawyer, Moby Dick, and Thelma & Louise. Miguel de Cervantes’ novel also has connections to the University of Iowa.
The university intends to celebrate this with an exhibit at the Old Capitol Museum, events with the University of Iowa Symphony Orchestra, WorldCanvass, FilmScene, and various lectures throughout the semester.
Located in the Old Capitol Museum in the Keyes Gallery for Arts, Humanities, and Sciences, the exhibit will run through Jan. 3, 2016.
The exhibit is an excellent opportunity to gain exposure to a piece of literature that has an immense history but is not exactly visible in American culture, said Trina Roberts, the interim director of the Pentacrest Museums.
“I like to think of it as bringing people to think about things in new ways,” Roberts said. “You’ll be able to see actual books from Special Collections, as old as 1687 … [It’s] a way of thinking about books that you haven’t before.” We have illustrations frAfter 400 years, Don Quixote now lives in film, television, literature, and theater, said Denise Filios, an associate professor of Spanish and Portuguese.
“When you think about the character, you don’t think about the novel,” Filios said. “He’s become this popular figure as a part of popular culture. Very well-known, sort of iconographic, this sort of tall, old, skinny man wearing weird armor; sometimes he’s riding this super skinny horse.
“This image is both ridiculous and heroic. The dreamer of the impossible dream, but he’s also tilting at windmills. So you have both things that we admire and we like; but he’s also ridiculous, and flawed.”
Don Quixote is the story of a man who lived a quiet life in central Spain until his life was changed by reading books on chivalry and the knights of the Medieval Ages, said Ana Rodríguez-Rodríguez, a UI associate professor of Spanish and Portuguese.
Rodríguez-Rodríguez said the creation of this fantastic, ridiculous man led to the creation of the modern novel known so well today.
“While telling the story of this character, Cervantes discovered the new genre, the modern novel,” she said. “He created characters who have inner lives, who have personalities, who interact with other characters and are changed by these experiences. At the same time, he likes to experiment with how stories are written, how stories are read, what is the power of telling a story, what is the power of listening to a story, talking to each other, and creating these stories with words and literature we can change the world.”
Kathrine Moermond, the education and outreach coordinator at the Old Capitol Museum, said it is important when leaving the gallery that people know it is not an impossible, dusty tome.
“It is an accessible classic novel,” she said. “There is something in it for everyone.”
ART
Illustrations of Don Quixote: Interpretation of Imagination
When: 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Tuesday-Wednesday, Friday-Saturday
10 a.m.-8 p.m. Thursday
1 p.m.-5 p.m. Sunday
Where: Old Capitol Museum Keyes Gallery
