Laughter Tamed (1) (Anthony Close's Book the Approach to Don Quixote: A Critical History of the Romantic Tradition in Quixote Criticism) (Romanticism and Humor in Literary Criticism‪)‬

The appearance of Anthony Close's The Romantic Approach to Don Quixote: A Critical History of the Romantic Tradition in Quixote Criticism in 1978 was met with cheers by some and brickbats by others. Those who cheered were those who sympathized with Peter Russell's "funny book" approach to Don Quijote, in which stress was placed on a historicizing return to the work's vis comica to the detriment of the more philosophizing or sociopolitical readings which had prevailed since the early nineteenth century. In effect, Close's book put on display rather convincingly the Romantic roots of virtually all the principal approaches to Cervantes' masterpiece, up through and including that of Americo Castro and his followers. Those who threw brickbats tended to see Close's book as unjustifiably cutting off fertile theoretical reflection on the part of cervantistas, including the first few attempts to use more au courant critical approaches. Any attempt to look for a "deeper" meaning in Don Quijote Close deemed "symbolic," or even "esoteric," and therefore anachronistic. The lesson dinned in by The Romantic Approach was that scholars needed to slough off the accretions of erroneous readings generated over the past two hundred years and to see Don Quijote for what it fundamentally was: a funny book.