A few days ago we met the version that Radio Nacional de España was preparing of "Don Quixote" And this week we have been able to learn some details about the tribute that the Royal Spanish Academy will pay to the ingenious gentleman in its academic version, printed by Joaquín Ibarra in 1780.
The popular novelist and scholar Arturo Pérez-Reverte has been in charge of adapting the work for school use. This peculiar edition of the best-known work in Spanish literature will be published by Santillana in all Spanish-speaking countries, and will be on sale on November 29.
“There are numerous school 'Quixotes' that consist of adaptations, anthologies and rewritings of the Cervantes text. Some are highly recommended, but for the most part they do not allow a rigorous, clean and unobstructed reading of the basic plot, which narrates the adventures of the ingenious nobleman and his squire "
These words bear the signature of Pérez-Reverte who has made an adaptation of the work allowing the work to be read linearly and respecting the integrity of the text. What's more They will see original and unpublished drawings, among which we can find one by Francisco de Goya which was never included in the 1780 edition and when at that time the painter did not have much of a reputation.
This new edition of the work of Miguel de Cervantes it will serve to begin to put an end to the celebration of the tricentennial of the publication of “Don Quixote”, although the celebrations have not ended since 2015 and 2016 will also be important dates for the writer of Spanish origin and his best-known work.
As can be read in a press release from the RAE, the work of Arturo Pérez Reverte “reveals to readers the essence, the heart of the classic of world literature. With an impeccable revision work, this new edition offers for the first time a linear reading of the central plot of “Don Quixote”, respecting the integrity of the text, the fundamental episodes, the tone and the general structure of the work ”.
The RAE is in the news in recent days almost daily, but without a doubt if it is because of news like today and not because of those related to its serious economic problems, we should rejoice to a great extent.