Don Quixote

What do the names of Amadis of Gaul, Palmerin of England, Don Belianis of Greece, and Tirant the White tell us today? After all, it was precisely as a parody of the novels about these knights that Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra's (1547-1616) "The Ingenious Hidalgo Don Quixote of La Mancha" was created. And this parody has outlived the genre it parodied for centuries. In 2002, according to a survey conducted among writers by the Nobel Institute, "Don Quixote" was recognized as the best novel in the history of world literature. It is no coincidence that V. Nabokov claimed that "while reading other novelists, we will in some sense never part with Don Quixote for a minute," recognizing his features in John Jarndyce, Konstantin Levin, and even Emma Bovary.