In the year of his tercentenary and as a prelude to the celebrations of the Cervantes biennium, because in 2015 four centuries of the appearance of the second part of Don Quixote are celebrated and in 2016 the 400th anniversary of the author's death is commemorated, the Royal Spanish Academy pays tribute to the academic Quixote of 1780, printed by Joaquín Ibarra, with this popular edition of The Ingenious Gentleman Don Quijote of La Mancha, adapted for school use by the academic Arturo Pérez-Reverte and published in Santillana. The work incorporates prologues by Arturo Pérez-Reverte and Darío Villanueva, secretary of the RAE and coordinator of the III Centenary program.
Pérez-Reverte's adaptation reveals to readers the essence, the heart of the classic of universal literature. With an impeccable revision work, this new edition offers a linear reading of the central plot of Don Quixote, respecting the integrity of the fundamental text, the main episodes, the tone and the general structure of the work. This has been possible thanks to a careful work of pruning the secondary episodes and the digressions that made the text complex for school use. Arturo Pérez-Reverte writes in the prologue of the edition the following: "There are numerous school Quijotes that consist of adaptations, anthologies and rewrites of the Cervantine text. Some are highly recommended, but for the most part they do not allow a rigorous, clean and unread reading. obstacles, of the basic plot that tells the story of the ingenious gentleman and his squire.And when it comes to working in schools with the full text, the digressions and stories inserted in it sometimes disturb the pleasant, effective approach that an educational tool or a simple reading can claim. " Also below you can see in the video Arturo Pérez-Reverte himself explaining how they have done the work.
The work goes on sale on November 29th 2014 and will be presented at the International Book Fair (FIL) of Guadalajara, in Mexico, on December 2 and 3. The presentation in Madrid will be held on December 10 at the headquarters of the RAE. The work incorporates original and unpublished drawings, among them, an illustration of a young Francisco de Goya that was not included in the 1780 edition.
In the prologue of the edition, Darío Villanueva also remembers that the Royal Spanish Academy fulfills in this way the order received through a Royal Order of October 12, 1912 that entrusted the corporation "the address of two editions of Don Quixote, one of popular and school character and another critic and scholar." This last edition was published in 2004 by the academic Francisco Rico.
