Cervantes’ Don Quixote is one of the best-known fictional characters ever created. For some, Quixote embodies the noble quest for a romantic ideal in a fallen world; for others, he is a quintessentially comic figure. Yet the truth and great value of Cervantes’ creation is that he is indefatigably both: sublime and ridiculous, without interval or disjuncture. Not until Kafka do we find such a poignant and compelling vision of the self. The Quixote was published at the end of the Renaissance, when improvements to the printing press had created a mass readership for the first time in history. We find it's a book full of writers and readers. We also find that it’s full of questions about meaning, self-invention and literary art, most of which we still live with: what is good literature? What is secular literature good for? Is secular literature a danger to religious faith? How do new ideas about reading and writing affect the interpretation of scripture?  In this course, we will think about how the book stages these questions and pursue close readings of the novel’s major episodes within the artistic and historical contexts of the Spanish Renaissance.