1. Don Quijote (Spanish Edition) by
Miguel De Cervantes Saavedra
Lathrop's Spanish Edition For Students
UNABRIDGED AUDIOBOOK IN MP3 FORMAT.
Personal Review: Don Quijote (Spanish Edition) by Miguel De
Cervantes Saavedra
Miguel de Cervantes. El ingenioso hidalgo don Quijote de la Mancha.
Edited by Tom Lathrop. Fourth Centenary Edition. Newark, Delaware:
Cervantes & Co., 2005. xlviii + 888 pgs. Softcover. ISBN 1589770242.
Lathrop's edition is, as far as I know, the only edition of the Spanish text of
Don Quijote with English notes. As Lathrop explains in the introduction,
all-Spanish editions are designed for native Spanish speakers. The editors
therefore do not gloss quite a bit of cultural and language informati on that
native Spanish speakers know, but native English speakers do not.

2. Lathrop, a native English speaker, knows where the pitfalls are for English
students and has edited accordingly.
His text is that of the unmodernized Schevill-Bonilla edition. In Lathrop's
edition, spelling is modernized only when it does not affect the
pronunciation; thus "yua" becomes "iba," but "ansí" remains "ansí." Only in
a few cases have I found this confusing; normally I can easily deduce the
modern form of the word in question.
A potentially controversial aspect of Lathrop's edition is that he does not
change any apparent inconsistencies in the Quijote. He believes things
such as chapter titles that don't match what happened in the chapter and
the contradictory theft of Sancho's donkey were intended by Cervantes,
who wanted to make fun of similar things in the romances. He makes a
good case for the decision in the introduction.
The text is annotated in two ways: marginal glossing and footnotes. The
former is used for short equivalencies: "la cristiandad" = Christendom,
"orgullo" = pride. Footnotes are used to give English translations of extra-
convoluted sentences, or to provide background information about the text.
To his credit, Lathrop does not use the footnotes to interpret the work. (He
has also compiled a "Don Quijote Dictionary," the text of which is available
free. Since words are glossed only once, the Dictionary is really handy
when you've forgotten something.)
I began reading the Quijote in an all-Spanish edition while I was taking
Spanish IV. By Chapter 16, I had given up: it was simply too difficult, and I
was having to consult Ormsby's English translation far too often. Now,
using Lathrop's edition, I very rarely have to look at the English, and I'm
enjoying Cervantes much more. A case could be made that using an all-
Spanish edition is more satisfying, and I'm sure it is. But it was too
discouraging for me. At many universities, Don Quijote in Spanish is a
graduate-level course; Lathrop's edition makes the Quijote accessible to
people like me who aren't at the graduate level but still want to read
Cervantes in the original.
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