The first imitation of Don Quixote in English prose narrative: The Essex Champion and the iberian romances of chivalry in England

Abstract

This essay deals with an English prose narrative which has remained almost unknown but is very relevant for the study of the reception of both Iberian chivalric romances and Don Quixote in seventeenth-century English literature: The Essex Champion, by William Winstanley, whose first edition has been assigned to 1690 but here is redated to at least 1694. In so doing, this essay provides a brief overview of the English reception of Hispanic romances of chivalry, which includes a review of their translations and editions as well as some significant testimonies of their impact on English readers. In the second place, it analyses Winstanley’s work as a literal imitation of Don Quixote and studies how it translates the Quixotic figure into the English context, paying attention not only to the presence of Iberian chivalric romances in the text but also to the process by which imitation leads to a critique of reading and literariness rather than literature, with social and satirical consequences. Finally, the essay delves into the most striking difference between the imitation and the Cervantine original, namely, the transformation of the Panzaic figure into a Quixote and his promotion to the leading role as a means of criticising authority both in its literary and social dimension, in a way that can be described as carnivalesque, even though of course this difference is also related to the epoch dominant in the reception of the Quixote on English soil, as is described in the article.