It just so happens that I have determined where the humor comes from in Don Quixote as well as the matrix of the entire story which is important for my ideas on re-writing it in a current formal. Fear not, I will share it with you.
You must understand the later to understand the former, so we will start with the matrix. Don Quixote is nothing more than a creamy core of Spanish proverbs surrounds by a flaky crust of a story about a flaky person (i.e. the mad Don).
The humor comes from mis-quoting; a bit a mis-direction. The quotes are misquoted, Don Quixote's side kick (Sancho Panza) mis-quotes words, particularly within phrases and the entire story is based on the humor surrounded by chivarly and knights errant out of place in time (although the war with the moors appears to be ongoing as at least a cold war if not outright combat throughout the story which is consistent with the constant conflict flaring up between east and west from time immemorial (well, actually from Troy at least) and between muslim and non-muslim in some fashion since Mohammad came up with the mother of all religions or perhaps properly identified as the grand daughter of judiaism and the daughter of christianity plus a lot of time in the desert thrown in which seems to be an important ingredient to make them stick (even the later day saints seem to have had the need to cross and settle in a desert).
But getting back to DQ, you have quite a bit of travel mixed in to add some spice to it. Travel, particularly with the right companion (and I do not mean Sancho Panza necessarily) is the spice to life, don't you think? It is, after all, movement that makes things appear to exist, but that's another blog entry.
You want some samples (just in case you are a high school kid doing a report who wants to miss the joy of reading this unique work or a plagiarist like me who plans to re-write the book with a current them...i.e. you want to plagiarize the plagiarist (for shame). It just so happens that I have some choice bits:
On page 38, one of my personal favorites "the innocent suffer for the guilty." You think I'm talking about you being innocent, but I'd make the case that is me, so perhaps we both suffer. :)
Here's another that seems to have a place in this discussion (out of context of course) "...instead of roam the world looking for better bread than ever came of wheat, never reflecting that many go for wool and come back shorn." That one's pretty funny.
Or this one: "thou art carrying water to the cat." Do you have any idea how much I'd like to read these in person? Probably not.
But you can agree from this it appears to be a collection of spanish proverbs baked into the center of a story or the matrix on which the story is built.
Now the entire story is the chivalry/knight errant out of context; so where is the humor in misquoting?
It actually get's pretty specific in the book. In one case a character notes this "droll" technique when Sancho uses the expression (he is the only one who misquotes in this way, the comic relief) "will and codicil that could not be provoked" when it should be "will and codicil that could not be revoked."
At one point in time, there is a lengthy discussion where DQ despairs of trying to understand what his "squire" is trying to say. "I would be willing to have the revenue of such island valued and stopped out of my wages in due promotion." SP to which DQ replies
"Sancho, my friend, sometimes proportion may be as good as promotion."
Other examples include using "focile" for "docile". Another is the statement that he "educed my wife" instead of "induced". There are numerous examples, but by including the travel in it they can be separated and the traveling adventures are bound by the loosely spread humor. Such is what is missing for our lives; there were bits of humor but the long travels together were missing, still are.
A non Spanish quote is that "God never dumps more on us than we can handle." I wonder what the insane and dead have to say about this? But if you write "God never dumps more on us than we can pander" it might be funny. That's part of the plagiarism now, it is "creative" plagiarism.
It does not change anything, nothing changes anything. What I'm trying to tell you is that love doesn't have to cost anything, but it comes with a steep price and you have to decide if you are willing to pay it every day. That's another story.
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