Quixotic Quests
Salvador Dali's First Illustrated Don Quixote
Published on 4. June 2025
Book
Hardback
394 pages
978-1-4875-5574-0 (ISBN)
Description
Salvador Dali illustrated Miguel de Cervantes's Don Quixote for the first time while living in exile in the United States in the 1940s, collaborating with Random House to produce a special edition that was published in 1946. Quixotic Quests examines the material history of this 1946 edition by bridging art history, book history, literature, and narratology, while exploring Dali's role as its illustrator and the reception of both by mid-century popular culture, art historians, and literary scholars.
Positing that much of Dali's life was quixotic in nature, the book investigates his quest to illustrate the novel with an unprecedented level of pictorial didacticism, despite challenges that the artist and Random House faced during and after the Second World War. It details his resolute passion to integrate surrealism with classicism, visual art with narrative, sexuality with sublimation, and privacy with public persona. Contrasting Dali's visual achievements with other artists and stylistic movements, Quixotic Quests sheds new light on the niche that Dali created for himself as a surrealist illustrator of Don Quixote. Consulting his autobiographical narratives, the book analyses Dali's unique artistic contributions to the four-hundred-year print history of the novel, while emphasizing the artist's heartfelt appreciation and respect for his book illustrations.
Positing that much of Dali's life was quixotic in nature, the book investigates his quest to illustrate the novel with an unprecedented level of pictorial didacticism, despite challenges that the artist and Random House faced during and after the Second World War. It details his resolute passion to integrate surrealism with classicism, visual art with narrative, sexuality with sublimation, and privacy with public persona. Contrasting Dali's visual achievements with other artists and stylistic movements, Quixotic Quests sheds new light on the niche that Dali created for himself as a surrealist illustrator of Don Quixote. Consulting his autobiographical narratives, the book analyses Dali's unique artistic contributions to the four-hundred-year print history of the novel, while emphasizing the artist's heartfelt appreciation and respect for his book illustrations.
More details
Series
Language
English
Place of publication
Toronto
Canada
Target group
College/higher education
Professional and scholarly
Product notice
sewn/stitched
Cloth over boards
With dust jacket
Illustrations
19 illustrations
Dimensions
Height: 231 mm
Width: 157 mm
Thickness: 33 mm
Weight
776 gr
ISBN-13
978-1-4875-5574-0 (9781487555740)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Person
Daniel Holcombe is an associate professor of Spanish at Georgia College & State University.
Content
List of Illustrations
List of Tables
List of Appendices
Preface
1. Foundations
Dalinian Quixotism
Defining Classicism: Dali, Freud, Sublimation, and Imitation
Conscious versus Unconscious; Public versus Private
Ut pictura poesis: Dalinian Narrative and Criticism
Object as Fetish: Lacan's L'objet petit a and Salvador Dali's Cledalism
Experto credite: Dali's Quixotic Sally to the United States
2. Materialities
The 1946 Edition: Publishers, Economic Woes, and Literature
Public Documents: Unforeseen Challenge and Success
Revival of Literature
Private Documents: Random House Records
A Quixotic Cast of (Random House) Characters
The Adventure of the Missing Illustrations
3. Receptions
Salvador Dali in an Unpredictable World
Malgre Lui: Past Political Polemics
Surrealism and Avant-Garde as Kitsch
Popular Culture and Translations: Peter Motteux
US Academic Reception
Battling the Black Legend
4. Illustrations
Engaging Beholders: Dalinian Didacticism and Academic Art
Battling Surrealism as Kitsch: Futurity of Renaissance Classicism and Baroque Methodologies
Classicism and Myth: Don Quixote's First Sally with Phoebus and Aurora
Pictorial Diegesis: Don Quixote and the Windmills
Fantasy and Reality: Don Quixote and the Adventure of the Flock of Sheep
(Not So) Impossible Dreams: Surrealism in Dali's Other Seven 1946 Watercolours
Respecting Narratives: Dali's Black and White Line Drawings
5. Traditions
Illustrating Don Quixote: Academic Conversations at the Four-Hundred-Year Anniversary of Part I (2005)
Sister Arts: Literature and Book Illustration
Illustrative Trends: Foundational Early Illustrated Editions of Don Quixote
Spanish Illustrators: Neoclassical Spanishness in the 1780 Royal Spanish Academy Edition
French Romanticism: Tony Johannot (1836) and Gustave Dore (1863)
Pictorial Benchmarks: Book Illustrations of Don Quixote and the Windmills before Dali
Imitatio: Dalinian Compositional Tropes in Book Illustrations after 1946
Epilogue
Works Cited
Index
List of Tables
List of Appendices
Preface
1. Foundations
Dalinian Quixotism
Defining Classicism: Dali, Freud, Sublimation, and Imitation
Conscious versus Unconscious; Public versus Private
Ut pictura poesis: Dalinian Narrative and Criticism
Object as Fetish: Lacan's L'objet petit a and Salvador Dali's Cledalism
Experto credite: Dali's Quixotic Sally to the United States
2. Materialities
The 1946 Edition: Publishers, Economic Woes, and Literature
Public Documents: Unforeseen Challenge and Success
Revival of Literature
Private Documents: Random House Records
A Quixotic Cast of (Random House) Characters
The Adventure of the Missing Illustrations
3. Receptions
Salvador Dali in an Unpredictable World
Malgre Lui: Past Political Polemics
Surrealism and Avant-Garde as Kitsch
Popular Culture and Translations: Peter Motteux
US Academic Reception
Battling the Black Legend
4. Illustrations
Engaging Beholders: Dalinian Didacticism and Academic Art
Battling Surrealism as Kitsch: Futurity of Renaissance Classicism and Baroque Methodologies
Classicism and Myth: Don Quixote's First Sally with Phoebus and Aurora
Pictorial Diegesis: Don Quixote and the Windmills
Fantasy and Reality: Don Quixote and the Adventure of the Flock of Sheep
(Not So) Impossible Dreams: Surrealism in Dali's Other Seven 1946 Watercolours
Respecting Narratives: Dali's Black and White Line Drawings
5. Traditions
Illustrating Don Quixote: Academic Conversations at the Four-Hundred-Year Anniversary of Part I (2005)
Sister Arts: Literature and Book Illustration
Illustrative Trends: Foundational Early Illustrated Editions of Don Quixote
Spanish Illustrators: Neoclassical Spanishness in the 1780 Royal Spanish Academy Edition
French Romanticism: Tony Johannot (1836) and Gustave Dore (1863)
Pictorial Benchmarks: Book Illustrations of Don Quixote and the Windmills before Dali
Imitatio: Dalinian Compositional Tropes in Book Illustrations after 1946
Epilogue
Works Cited
Index