El ingenioso hidalgo don Quixote de la Mancha

October 28, 2010 2:49 AM

El Quijote Interactivo is a site from the Biblioteca Nacional de España displaying the 1605 edition of Miguel Cervantes' Don Quixote.
You can of course turn pages and zoom in and out. But, you can also search text, get a map of Don Quixote's travels, read associated books and expert commentaries, forward through 50 editions of the book, listen to music referenced by Don Quixote and, yes, share pages with your Facebook friends.
This Youtube video walks you through it.
posted by vacapinta (9 comments total)

You can of course turn pages

I turn these pages. Some say the pages are just windmills, but I turn them, because I will conquer them.
posted by twoleftfeet at 3:03 AM on October 28, 2010 [1 favorite]

This is great. It's a beautiful book. And I love the dramatic page-turning sound effect.

The music that plays automatically, ni tanto.
posted by chavenet at 4:28 AM on October 28, 2010

Yeah, I wonder how much the page-turning effects contribute to the site's slow loading. I don't see the purpose in pretending that these are real paper pages--it's a website.
posted by MrMoonPie at 5:14 AM on October 28, 2010

I really wanted to like this but it's Flash: jerky 5 fps (on a Core 2!), horrible text rendering, and mystery navigation (i.e. took random clicks before finding the magic spot in the opening text swirl to get to the actual book) - and the worst part is that the only thing you couldn't do in pure HTML would be the page curl, although you certainly could do similar transition effects. The YouTube presentation sure looks spiffy, though…
posted by adamsc at 6:33 AM on October 28, 2010

But does it have the apocraphyl second book? I've never been able to find an English edition of that book...
posted by PostIronyIsNotaMyth at 8:16 AM on October 28, 2010

PostIrony, are you talking about the bootleg Avellaneda book, or Cervantes' own Part II? If it's the latter, it's usally just included with the first part.
posted by MrMoonPie at 8:48 AM on October 28, 2010

omg, this is funny. my old copy of El Quijote, which i've had since i was in my teens, is a paperback version that has a reproduction of the introduction and emblemas.

thanks for the link.
posted by liza at 2:08 PM on October 28, 2010

PostIrony, are you talking about the bootleg Avellaneda book, or Cervantes' own Part II? If it's the latter, it's usally just included with the first part.

Speaking of PostIrony, you can tell you're in Cervantes' second book because it talks about both his first book, and Avellaneda's fake sequel (fakequel? fanfic?) in the text. The Duke and Duchess actually say "Oh, you must be the famous Don Quixote whose adventures we read about in that great book," and he's quick to slam Avellaneda's version.
posted by msalt at 3:01 PM on October 28, 2010

oh, fab, thanks for this!
posted by toodleydoodley at 5:25 PM on October 28, 2010