In this course students read and analyze Don Quixote, Miguel de Cervantes's classic novel, attempting to situate it within its historical period as well as to study the many innovations that make it one of the founding texts of literary and cultural modernity. In addition to reading both volumes of Don Quixote, they read selections from Alonso de Avellaneda's faux second part of the Quixote and Garci Rodriguez de Montalvo's Amadis of Gaul, as well as critical texts by, among others, Ian Watt, Mario Vargas Llosa, Jorge Luis Borges, Vladimir Nabokov, and Harold Bloom. This course satisfies the single-text/author requirement for Literary Studies majors.