A01=Cory A. Reed
Author_Cory A. Reed
Category=DS
Category=DSBD
Category=DSK
Category=PDX
Cervantes
Don Quixote
early modern technology
empiricism
eq_bestseller
eq_biography-true-stories
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_new_release
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
eq_science
Golden Age
human agency
machines in literature
magic and engineering
mechanical devices
scholasticism
Scientific Revolution
Spanish literature
Product details
- ISBN 9781487566036
- Weight: 560g
- Dimensions: 160 x 236mm
- Publication Date: 15 Dec 2025
- Publisher: University of Toronto Press
- Publication City/Country: CA
- Product Form: Hardback
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This book examines the technological and scientific imagery in Cervantes’s novel, Don Quixote, and the ways in which the Scientific Revolution participated in the author’s examination of early modern European culture during a time of crisis and change.
Cervantes’s representation of technology not only documents the cultural dynamics of the transition between medieval scholasticism and early modern empiricism in Spain but also celebrates the agency of the individual to effect change in the world. Machines in Don Quixote often function as the would-be knight’s nemesis, playing a role in foiling his quest to revive a mythical, pre-technological Golden Age. They also appear as ingenious devices that straddle the border between magic and engineering in a modern expression of human creativity and ingenuity. For Cervantes and his characters, technology is not just about machines, but about the human desire to reverse power structures and exercise agency.
Cory A. Reed, a specialist in early modern Spanish literature, analyzes how Cervantes’s aesthetic of instrumentality encourages his reader to engage critically with the world in a time of cultural transformation. Cervantes, Technology, and the Novel thus demonstrates how Don Quixote becomes an instrument of enlightenment achieved through imagination.
Cervantes’s representation of technology not only documents the cultural dynamics of the transition between medieval scholasticism and early modern empiricism in Spain but also celebrates the agency of the individual to effect change in the world. Machines in Don Quixote often function as the would-be knight’s nemesis, playing a role in foiling his quest to revive a mythical, pre-technological Golden Age. They also appear as ingenious devices that straddle the border between magic and engineering in a modern expression of human creativity and ingenuity. For Cervantes and his characters, technology is not just about machines, but about the human desire to reverse power structures and exercise agency.
Cory A. Reed, a specialist in early modern Spanish literature, analyzes how Cervantes’s aesthetic of instrumentality encourages his reader to engage critically with the world in a time of cultural transformation. Cervantes, Technology, and the Novel thus demonstrates how Don Quixote becomes an instrument of enlightenment achieved through imagination.
Cory A. Reed is an associate professor of Spanish literature and culture at the University of Texas at Austin.
