Title: Crossing the Atlantic
Subtitle: Representations of Quixotism in the Early American Novel
Subject Classification:  Literature and Literary Criticism, History, Philosophy  
BIC Classification: DS, HB, HP
BISAC Classification: LIT004020, LIT004280, LIT007000
Binding: Hardback, eBook
Planned publication date: Jun 2026
ISBN (Hardback): 978-1-83711-265-4
ISBN (eBook): 978-1-83711-266-1

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Description

Crossing the Atlantic aims to explore various representations of quixotism in early American thought and literature, with particular focus on the novel. Moving beyond textual, structural and narratological similarities and character identification with Cervantes’s Don Quixote, the author shows that both the novel and its main protagonist – acculturated in the early American republic through English translations (Tobias Smollett’s being the most famous) – were employed by early American novelists for socio-ethical and political purposes.

In the past two decades, scholars such as Ilan Stavans have argued that in the United States Don Quixote was read “as a guidebook to exceptionalism”, a statement which is further investigated in this book. In contrast to Sarah Wood’s claim (2005) that quixotic fiction can be read as a formative genre in the early Republic, the author argues that early American fiction unravels an utterly unstable conflation of both romantic and rational models of quixotism understood by Eve Tavor Bannet as a “transatlantic genre” (2007) due to the great number of translations, imitations and adaptations.

Biography

Author(s):  Dr. Dragoș Ivana is an associate professor at the University of Bucharest, Romania.

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