Quixotism and the Aesthetic Constitution of the Individual in Wieland's Don Sylvio von Rosalva

John P. Heins, George Washington University

Cervantes's Don Quixote has often been referred to as the first modern work of literature, particularly because of the way in which it thematizes fictionality, or the relationship between representations and that which is represented.1 Since its publication in 1605, this text has inspired a wide variety of appropriations and critical engagements that have played a central role in ongoing debates about literature's relationship to the empirical realm. Tracing these appropriations, particularly in the form of explicitly quixotic figures in literary works, can illustrate changing conceptions of the nature and function of literature, and of the arts more generally, in modern societies. In the eighteenth century in particular, the literary engagement with quixotism addresses the role of aesthetic illusion in the constitution of individuals as it satirically or humorously portrays the purported effects of reading imaginative literature.