Fighting Windmills: Quixotism and Old/New Issues Facing Humankind

ENG: The most recent reimagining of Miguel de Cervantes’s Don Quixote (1605) —Salman Rushdie’s Quichotte (2019)— represents the volatile identities in American society under the conditions of blurring a line between fact and fiction. Exploring quixotism as the conflict of idealism vs realism elucidates the idea of humans who fight with the windmills in their heads. Against the background of this conflict, topical concerns are vividly highlighted to remain constant throughout the centuries, considering specific historical and sociocultural circumstances. The impact of this binary opposition on the worldview of the people of that time and the modern ones, created by Cervantes and Rushdie correspondingly, is a primary focus of the article. Both novels share a symbolic reflection of the world through the distinct aesthetics of a work of fiction that moves them beyond metafictional narration. A comparative study of the diachronically different stories emphasises a similarity of the strong questions raised about the societies whose ideals quixotes reflect.