Meditations on Quixote by José Ortega y Gasset. Short summary

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A philosopher reflects on what Don Quixote is all about. He equates the novel with modern times and believes that current readers will be interested in its contents.

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The author ponders what «Don Quixote» is. A common response to this question is that it is a novel of great significance. The current reader may find «Don Quixote» very interesting because it, although written long ago, has similarities to contemporary novels.

Looking through the pages of «Don Quixote» one can find a new age spirit that makes it close to the people of the modern era. The novel can thrill, as can the writings of Dickens, Dostoevsky, and Flaubert, who were the pioneers of the modern novel.

The philosopher wonders what the novel is. In antiquity, literary genres were assigned certain creative rules that the writer had to observe. The author considers the form and content of the work inseparable. At the same time, the poetic content is so free that it is difficult to impose any established forms on it.