Don Quixote Iconography

The Cervantes Project (CP) is creating a fully accessible, searchable and documented electronic database and digital archive of all the illustrations that form the textual iconography of the Quixote, as permitted by copyright limitations, along with the necessary interfaces and visualization tools to allow for the kind of access and knowledge until now unavailable. We further envision the archive as a research depository to complement the textual and bibliographical electronic resources already present in the CP. This comprehensive archive will allow worldwide electronic access to unique and rare textual and graphic resources by scholars, students and users in general interested in Cervantes’ work and on the impact and influence of his masterpiece through 400 years from several perspectives: textual, artistic, critical, bibliographical, and historical.

The main rare book collection supporting our project is the Cervantes Project Collection at the Cushing Memorial Library and Archives of Texas A&M University. In recent years, the Cervantes Project and the Cushing Memorial Library have acquired a large number of significant illustrated editions for the purpose of creating a collection specialized in illustrated editions of the Quixote. The Quixote textual iconography collection includes at present (March 2006) 480 illustrated editions and related materials, published since 1585. The collection comprises more than 1000 volumes and is concentrated in 18^th and 19^th century English, French, and Spanish illustrated editions. We estimate the digital archive of the collection will eventually include upwards of 10,000 images and a fully searchable database complimented by innovative visualization tools.

The rich artistic tradition of illustrated Quixotes remains largely unknown due in great part to the rare and inaccessible nature of the editions in which the thousands of engravings and drawings that constitute the visual narrative and interpretation of Cervantes’ masterpiece have appeared. Although some sample illustrations are often reproduced in critical studies, catalogues and expositions, we lack knowledge of and access to the complete iconographic tradition associated with the publication of the Quixote as a major contributing element to both the canonization of the novel and to the iconic transformations of its principal character.

The archive is designed to elicit active responsiveness and to provoke new types of inquiries and new forms of textual, visual, and critical analyses. The dissemination through the web of a digital archive about the textual iconography of the Quixote, both at Texas A&M University and through our collaboration with the National Library and the University of Castilla-La Mancha in Spain, will make possible a more complete and profound knowledge of the role, functions and diverse uses of textual illustrations, and will help us understand in particular their contribution as visual narratives and how they have shaped reader’s responses and critical interpretations of the Quixote as an experimental and postmodern text.

See also:

"Don Quixote Illustrated: Textual Images, Visual Readings"