How Don Quixote drew on The Golden Ass
A documented line of influence: Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra demonstrably engaged Apuleius’s work. The commentary below is Gröblé’s, verbatim from each work’s page.
The source
The Golden Ass
Apuleius · c. 170
Ancient RomeThe influenced
Don Quixote
Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra · 1605
RenaissanceRelevance
7/10
On Don Quixote’s page
- That famous wineskin-slashing in Part 1 isn't original to Cervantes — he lifted it, knowingly, from Apuleius's Lucius butchering three wineskins he mistook for robbers
- Apuleius also gave Cervantes the trick of nesting standalone tales inside a wandering main plot, the very shape Don Quixote runs on
- Reading the Golden Ass first reveals just how deep this novel's roots reach into ancient comic prose
On The Golden Ass’s page
- Cervantes plundered Apuleius's playbook — the Golden Ass's knack for stuffing inset tales inside the main road-narrative becomes Don Quixote's whole architecture
- The most pointed debt is a single scene: Lucius stabbing three wineskins he takes for robbers at the Festival of Laughter is reborn as Quixote's midnight assault on the wineskins in Part 1
- Read the original drunken misadventure here and you'll spot Cervantes's wink across fifteen centuries