Don Quixote, the Heroic Aspiration of a Gentleman from La Mancha

This paper explores the idea that Don Quixote's heroic aspiration is the central feature of his literary personality. It reviews some of the possible motives behind the mutation of Alonso Quijano into Don Quixote and, finally, it discusses whether the aspirational desire, through a self-created identity, is an emancipatory act or, on the contrary, the subjection to the values of feudal ideology, such as honour, to which the hidalgo is bound by inheritance and culture, and without which he could not identify himself as a member of that group.