Don Quixote in the 20th century: four readings of writers

Cervantes' Don Quixote has produced a rich exegetical tradition since its publication four centuries ago. A long-standing reading tradition has described it as the foundation of the modern realist novel. An also well-established reading tradition, not necessarily opposed to the other one, has stressed an element of semiotic indeterminacy and instability of meaning as its major attribute. This article focuses on the readings of four twentieth-century writers: Miguel de Unamuno, Franz Kafka, Jorge Luis Borges, and Milan Kundera. How did these writers place themselves in relation to those reading traditions? In what ways do their texts interact with Cervantes' novel and with the multiple elements it has to offer? This essay highlights aspects of Don Quixote that the readings of these four writers reveal, while at the same time reflecting on aspects of their own poetics that their readings serve to clarify.