Which describes the condition and profession of the famous Don Quixote of La Mancha, as seen through the eyes of a fellow Spaniard and Cervantes scholar

Professor Rogelio Miñana is so devoted to studying and teaching Don Quixote that he jokes: "It's like a personal obsession at this point." GREG HELGESON

Every year, Professor Rogelio Miñana teaches Don Quixote to Macalester students. Every year, he publishes a new paper on some aspect of the world's most famous novel. He has already written one book on Cervantes and the Golden Age of Spanish literature (Verisimilitude in Early Modern Spain: Cervantes and the Short Novel) and is at work on two other books relating to Don Quixote. "It's like a personal obsession at this point," the 33-year-old native of Valencia says with a laugh.

Miñana, who joined Macalester's Hispanic and Latin American Studies Department five years ago, played a key role in the 2005 Macalester International Roundtable. He suggested the theme--the global legacy of Don Quixote on the 400th anniversary of its publication--and helped choose the eminent scholars who were invited to speak at the Oct. 13-15 conference. He also presented his own paper on the book. He spoke with Jon Halvorsen of Macalester Today:

You're fond of asking your students, with a smile, "Has Don Quixote changed your life yet?" What about you? Has Don Quixote changed your life?

Definitely. It has given me a different perspective, different lenses through which to look at the world. What Don Quixote has taught me is humility, for one thing, and what I would call perspectivism--what other people like to call relativism: understanding that truths are not always absolutes, that the way you look at the world is a subjective feeling. You have to be aware that other people might not see the world the way you do.

How did Don Quixote teach you humility?

Because Don Quixote is a powerful example of how someone who is on the outside, who is on the margins of society, without any political or economic power, can actually change the world around him, through persistence, enthusiasm, idealism--and sometimes through a little too much violence for my own taste. But he gives us that example of how to change the world around you, at any time in your life, under any circumstances. That's a very powerful message and makes us feel humble because we all have the power to bring about change to society.

Do you have a favorite chapter?

My favorite is Chapter One. Just the first four pages of Don Quixote summarize the whole novel. What you find is an elderly man--in his 50s, which for the 17th century was a very old person--who is no one, who has a very gray existence. Suddenly, by the power of words and his own imagination, he becomes someone else, becomes someone whom he gets excited about. He wants to be that person, to change his life and the lives of others through his transformation.

Why do you enjoy teaching Don Quixote to new classes of Macalester students?

It is very exciting because Don Quixote relates to different people in different ways. You can find almost anything in the text, so different people pick up on different themes. The chemistry that you find in a class is really what leads you in one direction or another. And my own research dictates a little bit what the focus is going to be in my classes. Lately I've been teaching a lot on what I call the "discourse of monstrosity," which is how people use a rhetoric or discourse to either change society or have an image of a monster that you need to fight. That has been my focus the past couple of years--mostly how oppressed people and the power structures in a society use the image of a monster to fight enemies or overcome obstacles and to move their ideals forward.

In your presentation at the Roundtable, you noted that Don Quixote is used even today as an important symbol in contemporary Spanish politics.

Don Quixote is a perfect example of how a cultural icon actually matters, how it has an actual influence on the lives of people. Don Quixote is indeed used today for multiple political purposes. In my own country there is a movement in some regions towards independence from the Spanish state. So the central government is using the celebrations of Don Quixote as a way to sort of reunite the country under this great cultural symbol. But obviously some nationalists in the Catalan and Basque regions see Don Quixote more as a threat, as something that is imposed upon them. In that sense, Don Quixote is used as a symbol both for those who support imperialism and those who oppose it.

What do you see as the most relevant message of Don Quixote to people today, 400 years after it was published?

The exciting thing about Don Quixote is that each one of us can find a message in it that we relate to; we can find powerful voices in the text that really tell us something. In my own case, Don Quixote has given me that awareness that you can change yourself and the world around you, that you don't have to start a revolution or become a politician to change things.

I think change starts in one's self, and one of the best places for us to look for help when we want to transform ourselves is books. Sometimes the results are crazy, sometimes they can be taken to an extreme. But Don Quixote proves that books are a valuable source of social and personal transformation.