In my first essay on this topic, I surveyed the epistolary evidence for Jefferson’s subtle appreciation of Cervantes’s Don Quijote. In my second, I showed how, for his part, the inventor of the modern novel deployed the picaresque genre as a way to critically examine racism, slavery, tyranny, and monetary manipulation in late-Renaissance Spain. It’s […]
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Did Thomas Jefferson ever meet England’s King George III? It would seem not. In 1786, he visited Buckingham House and stayed overnight. Yes, it was called a “house” in those days. As a gardener and a farmer, the American Founder appears to have wanted to see Buckinghamshire’s famous Stowe Gardens. But to leave his visit […]
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Jefferson’s geopolitical and diplomatic gestures, alongside his formal and personal correspondence, allow us to understand his essay on Cervantes. I refer to “Query VI” of Notes on the State of Virginia (1785). The meaning of this text remains invisible to those unfamiliar with the protocols of Don Quijote de la Mancha (DQ). Most readers expect Montesquieu’s […]
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Americans think George Ticknor (1791–1871) was their nation’s first Hispanist. They’re wrong; and they overrate the intellect of the Harvard professor. Like his admirers, Ticknor had a linear and encyclopedic mind. We should be grateful—he collected and collated the major texts of the modern history of European literature. But his analysis was buggy, handicapped by […]
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“To justify a general conclusion, requires many observations, even where the subject may be submitted to the Anatomical knife, to Optical glasses, to analysis by fire, or by solvents.” —Thomas Jefferson, Notes on the State of Virginia, Query XIV I’ll never forget a beautiful Peruvian girl, breathtaking she was, and a true friend, Ivy Arbulu. […]
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Excerpts from Ian McEwan’s commencement speech at Dickinson College, May 17, 2015 I would like to share a few thoughts with you about free speech. Let’s begin on a positive note: there is likely more free speech, free thought, free enquiry on earth now than at any previous moment in recorded history (even taking into […]
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