The quixotic eighteenth century

“Quixotism” is a term pivotal to the histories critics tell about literature. Despite a scholarly consensus regarding the significance of quixotism to eighteenth-century transatlantic writing, there remain vast discrepancies in critical formulations of what quixotism actually is, to the point where trying to find common ground in different scholars' definitions of quixotism might appear, at first glance, a quixotic endeavour. Yet scholarship on quixotism persistently returns to dichotomies: romance versus the novel; the exceptional versus the typical; the original versus the copy; reason versus imagination. Quixotism remains both vexing question and floating signifier, caught between character and genre, system and allusion as it traverses and transforms eighteenth-century literature and culture. In this article I will both reflect on the state of quixotic studies in eighteenth-century studies and offer an account of Don Quixote's place in the history of literary criticism and theory.