Don Quixote Chapter-a-Day Read-along Day 1: Prologue and Poetry

Miguel de Cervantes

Welcome to the Prologue to Don Quixote, the beginning of the 2019 Chapter-a-Day Read-along! In order to read exactly 365 chapters this year, I am counting the prologue to Part 1 as a chapter (and will do so again at the beginning of Part 2), so we won’t start the actual story until tomorrow, January 2.

Though the story hasn’t begun yet, you can already get a sense of Cervantes’ humor as he worries about how his book will be received and frets that it will not contain enough quotations or citations to impress the public.

Cervantes also includes some poetry in honor of the great knight Don Quixote. These fictitious poems are attributed to some of the most famous characters from the literature of chivalry: Amadis of Gaul, Don Belianís, Lady Oriana, Gandalín, etc. These are characters from the novels Don Quioxte loves to read. In other words, fictional heroes are writing poems in honor of Cervantes’ fictional hero. It would be as if William Goldman had begun The Princess Bride with poetry written by Aragorn, Legolas, or Boromir in honor of Wesley, Inigo Montoya, or Fezzik.

Tomorrow we meet Don Quixote himself, and with school starting soon I anticipate not being able to write too many posts about the book. But I’ll be posting a quote each day on Twitter and Facebook using the hashtag #quixotereadalong. I encourage you to do the same if you so desire.

To stay on track with the chapter-a-day schedule, be sure to download the Chapter a Day Reading Schedule. Here’s the schedule for the month of January: