don quixote and le morte d'arthur...comp lit

A detailed Summary of don quixote and le morte d'arthur...comp lit

In Malory's literature, men were knights, ladies were damsels, and magic was preponderant. By the time that Cervantes wrote Don Quixote, men got real jobs, the innocent damsel had become a myth, and magic was reduced to superstition.

These works both examine the chivalric ideal: "physical prowess, courtesy, truth in love and friendship, tenderness, humility, gentleness" (The Legend of Arthur in British & American Literature, p. 65) and remark much on it. While they both find this ideal to be too much for a man to maintain, they express it in different ways. Malory's knights are generally chivalrous, but sometimes deviate from the righteous path. His opinion is that men are incapable of being wholly magnanimous at all times. Cervantes' character is always noble and always courageous... but is also mentally ill. This paper will discuss both authors' point of view on the institution of chivalry.

Le Morte d'Arthur and Don Quixote are very dissimilar in many ways. The first is a tragedy, the

The knights, Don Quixote's morality and ability to resist temptation can never be questioned. He is the noble, chaste hero that Malory's knights fail to be. The problem is though, his world no longer needs a knight-errant, to "roam the world on horseback, in a suit of armor...[righting] every manner of wrong, placing himself in situations of the greatest peril". (The History of Don Quixote de la Mancha, p.2) It had been doing very well, for several hundred years, without knights to correct it's injustices. The very idea of a knight in shining armor, evening the scales and battling giants reduces bystanders to fits of laughter. Tragically, Don Quixote can never be like Amadis de Gaul and El Cid, who are the heroes he would like to imitate. The time that heroes like that walked the earth, if they had ever, had passed long before Don Quixote mounted Rocinante. So if Quixote is so chivalrous, and morally irreproachable, then why doesn't he seem to be heroic?

second a comedy. Le Morte d'Arthur is a

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Approximate Word count = 674
Approximate Pages = 3 (250 words per page double spaced)

Category: English

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