Cervantes' Don Quixote
A close reading of Don Quixote set against the art and history of renaissance and baroque Spain, taught at Yale by way of Open Yale Courses. Lectures pair the novel with four of Cervantes' Exemplary Stories, a critical casebook on Don Quixote, and J.H. Elliott's Imperial Spain, while paintings by Velazquez are brought in to show how Cervantes' contemporaries were working through the same historical moment in a different medium. Recorded from a Yale College course taught twice weekly in Fall 2009, the series follows the semester's actual class discussions and keeps returning to one organizing question: why the book is still read today. Materials include full video lectures and the reading list; there are no assignments or certificate, just the course as delivered on campus.