Don Quixote - A Traditional Text in a Postmodernist Interpretation
Don Quixote - A Traditional Text in a Postmodernist Interpretation

Summary/Abstract: According to the Oxford Advanced Learners Dictionary, masculinity denotes the quality of being masculine, i.e. “having the quality or appearance considered to be typical of men; connected with or like men”. Masculinity may refer to the properties characteristic to the male sex, but also to the trait of behaving in ways considered typical for men. Manipulative images of masculinity are spread into culture, while literary texts are dominated by manhood. The pillars of maleness continue to be strength, invulnerability and maintaining a competitive edge. Any misuse of one of these along with a mere hint of emotion or feelings may trigger a masculinity that has failed, deliberately or not, to meet the expectations formulated by culture and society. Don Quixote is obsessed with mimicking the lives and adventures of the chivalric knights-errant of the medieval age. Therefore, in an attempt to elaborate parody of the romances of chivalry, Cervantes teasingly calls into question his knight’s potency. The knights-errant that populate the libros de caballerías test their powers in every arena, often including the erotic, thing which proves to be quite unsuccessful for Don Quixote. One of his many failings is his inability to liberate himself from the moral restrictions of the age. Cervantes employs numerous strategies to hint in a humorous way that his protagonist’s moral abstinence may be accompanied by a psychological or even physical impotence. Thus, one should consider some of the symbols of Don Quixote’s impotence that he hides under vows of chastity and also examine the relationship between a master who struggles to follow the path of virtue and his very carnal and worldly nag, as a constant suggestion of the knight’s symbolic,and perhaps literal impotence.

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