Quixotic Quests: Salvador Dalí's First Illustrated Don Quixote(Toronto Iberic)

Salvador Dalí illustrated Miguel de Cervantes’s Don Quixote for the first time while living in exile in the United States in the 1940s, collaborating with Random House to produce a special edition that was published in 1946. Quixotic Quests examines the material history of this 1946 edition by bridging art history, book history, literature, and narratology, while exploring Dalí’s role as its illustrator and the reception of both by mid-century popular culture, art historians, and literary scholars. Positing that much of Dalí’s life was quixotic in nature, the book investigates his quest to illustrate the novel with an unprecedented level of pictorial didacticism, despite challenges that the artist and Random House faced during and after the Second World War. It details his resolute passion to integrate surrealism with classicism, visual art with narrative, sexuality with sublimation, and privacy with public persona. Contrasting Dalí’s visual achievements with other artists and stylistic movements, Quixotic Quests sheds new light on the niche that Dalí created for himself as a surrealist illustrator of Don Quixote. Consulting his autobiographical narratives, the book analyses Dalí’s unique artistic contributions to the four-hundred-year print history of the novel, while emphasizing the artist’s heartfelt appreciation and respect for his book illustrations.

Table of Contents:
List of Illustrations List of Tables List of Appendices Preface 1. Foundations Dalinian Quixotism Defining Classicism: Dalí, Freud, Sublimation, and Imitation Conscious versus Unconscious; Public versus Private Ut pictura poesis: Dalinian Narrative and Criticism Object as Fetish: Lacan’s L’objet petit a and Salvador Dalí’s Clédalism Experto credite: Dalí’s Quixotic Sally to the United States 2. Materialities The 1946 Edition: Publishers, Economic Woes, and Literature Public Documents: Unforeseen Challenge and Success Revival of Literature Private Documents: Random House Records A Quixotic Cast of (Random House) Characters The Adventure of the Missing Illustrations 3. Receptions Salvador Dalí in an Unpredictable World Malgré Lui: Past Political Polemics Surrealism and Avant-Garde as Kitsch Popular Culture and Translations: Peter Motteux US Academic Reception Battling the Black Legend 4. Illustrations Engaging Beholders: Dalinian Didacticism and Academic Art Battling Surrealism as Kitsch: Futurity of Renaissance Classicism and Baroque Methodologies Classicism and Myth: Don Quixote’s First Sally with Phoebus and Aurora Pictorial Diegesis: Don Quixote and the Windmills Fantasy and Reality: Don Quixote and the Adventure of the Flock of Sheep (Not So) Impossible Dreams: Surrealism in Dalí’s Other Seven 1946 Watercolours Respecting Narratives: Dalí’s Black and White Line Drawings 5. Traditions Illustrating Don Quixote: Academic Conversations at the Four-Hundred-Year Anniversary of Part I (2005) Sister Arts: Literature and Book Illustration Illustrative Trends: Foundational Early Illustrated Editions of Don Quixote Spanish Illustrators: Neoclassical Spanishness in the 1780 Royal Spanish Academy Edition French Romanticism: Tony Johannot (1836) and Gustave Doré (1863) Pictorial Benchmarks: Book Illustrations of Don Quixote and the Windmills before Dalí Imitatio: Dalinian Compositional Tropes in Book Illustrations after 1946 Epilogue Works Cited Index

About the Author :
Daniel Holcombe is an associate professor of Spanish at Georgia College & State University.