Pages

Showing posts with label comedy. Show all posts
Showing posts with label comedy. Show all posts

Saturday, 25 May 2013

'Don Quixote' by Miguel de Cervantes



First published more than 500 years ago, Don Quixote has become a quintessential comic adventure fiction and a great work of spanish literature. Alonso Quijano, the main character of the novel is a hidalgo, a member of the Spanish nobility. After reading too many books of chivalry, he starts to daydream of becoming a knight. He renames himself Don Quixote and embark into adventure, with his skinny horse Rocinante and foolish neighbor Sancho Panza. Don Quixote loses his grip on reality and gets completely absorbed by his fantasy. After many such adventures and wondering around, a defeated and humiliated Don Quixote returns back to his country town, where he writes his final will before he dies. Don Quixote is a tragicomic adventure fiction which will suit any reader. 

Cervantes, Miguel de. Don Quixote, London : Everyman’s Library, 1991. 

Library Catalogue Entry

'Gulliver's Travels' by Jonathan Swift




Jonathan Swift’s famous novel Gulliver’s Travels can be described as a philosophical masterpiece, a fairy story or a political comedy, but above all it is an entertaining satire-adventure. The novel tells the story of Lemuel Gulliver, who was a surgeon but decides to go out to the sea to travel. He goes to four voyages - A Voyage to Lilliput, A Voyage to Brobdingnag, Voyage to Laputa, Balnibarbi, Luggnagg, Glubbdubdrib, and Japan and A Voyage to the Country of the Houyhnhnms. Gulliver encounters various strange beings, cultures and customs and provides detailed account of his adventure from a comical point of view. After almost 300 years of original publication, Jonathan Swift’s novel Gulliver’s Travel remains a funny and mesmerising read.

Swift, Jonathan. Gulliver's Travels, London : Everyman’s Library, 1991.


Library Catalogue Entry