Don Quixote

Alonso Quixano, a middle-aged gentleman of La Mancha, lives with a housekeeper and a young niece. He has sacrificed his usual pastime of hunting and caring for his estate for the all-consuming passion of reading books of chivalry. Cervantes shows that the books are so illogically written that it is no wonder a poor gentleman loses his reason when he feeds this faculty with such fabulous tales day and night. To the dismay of his household members, as well as engaging the concern of the Don's friends, the curate and the barber, the respected citizen of La Mancha feels himself inspired to become a knight-errant and systematically collects the effects necessary to his calling. He shines his great-grandfather's armor, devises a visor and cap after working on them more than a week, and renames his skinny stable horse Rosinante, which means that before having a knight-errant for a master, this steed was once an ordinary horse. Now thought Don Quixote, after renaming himself, his horse, his ambitions, he must name the lady of his pure heart, for a knight-errant "without a mistress, was a tree without fruit or leaves, and a body without a soul." He selects a young country lass named Aldonza Lorenza for his own Dulcinea del Toboso although she is all but a complete stranger to him.