Don Quixote and Catholicism

<P>Four hundred years since its publication Miguel de Cervantes's <I>Don Quixote </I>continues to inspire and to challenge its readers. The universal and timeless appeal of the novel however has distanced its hero from its author and its author from his own life and the time in which he lived. The discussion of the novel's Catholic identity therefore is based on a reading that returns Cervantes's hero to Cervantes's text and Cervantes to the events that most shaped his life. The authors and texts McGrath cites as well as his arguments and interpretations are mediated by his religious sensibility. Consequently he proposes that his study represents one way of interpreting <I>Don Quixote </I>and acts as a complement to other approaches. It is McGrath's assertion that the religiosity and spirituality of Cervantes's masterpiece illustrate that <I>Don Quixote </I>is inseparable from the teachings of Catholic orthodoxy. Furthermore he argues that Cervantes's spirituality is as diverse as early modern Catholicism. McGrath does not believe that the novel is primarily a religious or even a serious text and he considers his arguments through the lens of Cervantine irony satire and multiperspectivism. As a Roman Catholic who is a Hispanist McGrath proposes to reclaim Cervantes's Catholicity from the interpretive tradition that ascribes a predominantly Erasmian reading of the novel. When the totality of biographical and sociohistorical events and influences that shaped Cervantes's religiosity are considered the result is a new appreciation of the novel's moral didactic and spiritual orientation.</P>