Anthony Close. A Companion to Don Quixote. Woodbridge: Tamesis, 2008.287 pp. ISBN: 978-1-855-66170-7. Anthony Close's new book is an updated version of his Cervantes: Don Quixote ("Landmarks of world literature," 1990), bearing the refinements of considerable scholarly activity in the interim. Meant as an introduction to Don Quijote for the English-speaking non-specialist, it contains a brief overview of Cervantes' life and rimes, a discussion of the novel's sources, narrative structure and strategies, the development of its protagonists, analysis of key episodes in parts I and II, an account of Don Quijote's reception by critics and novelists, and a guide to further reading along with informative bibliography. Close has long been a prominent and occasionally magisterial voice admonishing critics who would anachronistically imbue Cervantes' novel with meanings--political, epistemological, religious, psychological--that the author could never have intended. Some feathers have likely been ruffled along the way, and Close's "intentionalism" is susceptible, amidst the leaps and bounds of critical inquiry, to the charge of antiquation. When, in the present study, Close partly attributes a lack of overt political dissent in Cervantes to "innate good taste" (13), some readers may wince. There are those of us who may feel let down by someone who defers to the staid canon of Toledo (rather than the zealously imaginative don Quijote) in questions of literary theory, and who insists on the decency of the caballero verde gaban, and on Cervantes' detached approval of the entertainments of the Duke and Duchess. But instead of strident polemics or aloof dismissals, this book offers a good deal of clear, well-informed, subtle and, not least, accommodating discussion of Don Quijote and its legacy.
