After the French Revolution, it was better known for its central ethic that individuals can be right while society is quite wrong and seen as disenchanting. When first published, Don Quixote was usually interpreted as a comic novel.

The 19th-century German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer cited Don Quixote as one of the four greatest novels ever written. The book had a major influence on the literary community, as evidenced by direct references in Alexandre Dumas' The Three Musketeers (1844), Mark Twain's Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884), and Edmond Rostand's Cyrano de Bergerac (1897), as well as the word quixotic and the epithet Lothario the latter refers to a character in 'El curioso impertinente' ('The Impertinently Curious Man'), an intercalated story that appears in Part One, chapters 33-35. Don Quixote, in the first part of the book, does not see the world for what it is and prefers to imagine that he is living out a knightly story. He recruits a simple farmer, Sancho Panza, as his squire, who often employs a unique, earthy wit in dealing with Don Quixote's rhetorical monologues on knighthood, already considered old-fashioned at the time. The plot revolves around the adventures of a noble (hidalgo) from La Mancha named Alonso Quixano, who reads so many chivalric romances that he loses his mind and decides to become a knight-errant (caballero andante) to revive chivalry and serve his nation, under the name Don Quixote de la Mancha. A founding work of Western literature, it is often labeled 'the first modern novel' and many authors consider it to be the best literary work ever written.

Don Quixote is a Spanish novel by Miguel de Cervantes.

Books of miguel de cervantes