Quixotes, Imitations, and Transatlantic Genres

Abstract

Quixotic texts in the British Atlantic tested the cultural fit of common transnational models through the eruption into rural English or American localities of persons whose conduct and values had been fashioned by them. Fielding, Brackenridge, Lennox and Tenney also contrasted the absurdly "servile" imitation of their quixotes with their own more sophisticated techniques of imitation, to address questions of national difference raised by ubiquitous transnational imitation among the "polite." Imitative practices enable us to see how genres traveled between nations, and offer historically grounded transnational approaches based on the history of writing and reading.

The quixotic eighteenth century

“…At the same time, the character type itself is – when deployed outside Spanish literature – an international import (though Don Quixote is, arguably, by the eighteenth century, naturalized by enough different national literatures to be classed as a citizen of the world). Eve Tavor Bannet argues that quixotic texts “repeatedly put into question the continued applicability of anachronistic transnational imitations in conduct and writing to different ranks, localities, and genders” (Bannet, 2007, p. 553). Though Arabella is “a perfect Mistress of the French and Italian Languages” the romances she reads are “not in the original French , but very bad Translations” (Lennox, 1989, p. 7).…”

What Is Innovation? A Study of the Definitions, Academic Models and Applicability of Innovation to an Example of Social Housing in England

“…Godin [1] argues that the meaning of the term innovation in the twentieth century has been a resolution between the two contrasting terms of imitation and invention which have evolved through the centuries from ancient Greek philosophy. The imitation of reality was a central theme in the work of Plato and there has been a continuous debate throughout the centuries about art imitating, copying or being an interpretation of reality [3] [4] [5]. Imitation has been considered as invention at different points through history, during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries in England patents were given to importers of existing inventions to stimulate economic growth instead of to inventors [6] [7] and during the eighteenth century the imitation of goods produced for consumption was considered as invention for improving the quality, design and appearance of these goods [8] [9] [10].…”

Gendering the Quixote in Eighteenth-Century England

“…37 In this way, Lennox's quixotic narrative, as Eve Tavor Bannet discusses, questions "the continued applicability of anachronistic transnational imitations." 38 Arabella's quixotism leads to ambiguously "foreign" behavior. Her idiosyncratic dress and veil elicits speculation in the pump-room about her nationality.…”