måndag 25 april 2016

Virtureality

The author of the legendary Spanish novel Don Quixote (The Ingenious Gentleman Don Quixote of La Mancha), Miguel de Cervantes (assumed birtday 29.9.1547), died 400 years ago, 23.4.1616.

As is also the case with
William Shakespeare (baptised 26.4.1564), who died the same date, 23.4.1616. (But according to a different calendar, so in fact 11 days later.)

Both Cervantes and Shakespeare have still much to say - to us and to and about our modern world. Still I had not come to realise, that you could read Don Quixote as an allegory concerning the internet, social media and virtuality. But of course, as Björn Wiman points out in Dagens Nyheter: "Cervantes visste allt om vår tids virtuella verklighet". (Cervantes knew everything about the virtual reality of our time...)

"The story follows the adventures of an hidalgo named Mr. Alonso Quixano who reads so many chivalric romances that he loses his sanity and decides to set out to revive chivalry, undo wrongs, and bring justice to the world, under the name Don Quixote de la Mancha.

He recruits a simple farmer, Sancho Panza, as his squire, who often employs a unique, earthy wit in dealing with Don Quixote's rhetorical orations on antiquated knighthood. Don Quixote, in the first part of the book, does not see the world for what it is and prefers to imagine that he is living out a knightly story."
(
Wikipedia)

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