Lesage's Don Quixote (Paris, 1704): A reconciliation between Cervantes and Avellaneda?

Abstract

The French writer Alain-René Lesage published in Paris in 1704 a free adaptation of Avellaneda’s Quixote. His work is not only a valuable testimony about the apocryphal continuation’s reception; it offers a new starting point for the study of intertextual relationship between the two Second Parts of Don Quixote. The French novelist took inspiration both from the 1614’s Quixote and from the 1615’s version. As such, his work is a kind of literary «reconciliation» between both authors. Very far from admiring Avellaneda to the detriment of Cervantes, Lesage raised implicitly the possibility of a dialectical complementarity in which each of the two novelists would participate in his own way in the expansion of the quixotic universe. In this regard the French writer may have anticipated some of the current critical approaches.