Don Quijote and Stimming as Critical Praxis

Abstract

Chapter 2 is about the vital role of the neurodivergent reader, and the multiple neurodivergent ways that we engage with books. Describing Miguel de Cervantes’ Don Quijote de la Mancha (1605, 1615) as a ‘stimmy’ text, this chapter argues that people who stim have a privileged understanding of Cervantes’ novel. Early moderns described a variety of neurodivergent effects of engaging with literature; for instance, they might be unexpectedly struck with lovesickness after watching a play or cured of or blasted with scholars’ melancholy after reading Robert Burton’s The Anatomy of Melancholy. In this sense, many early modern texts are technologies for producing and arousing neurodivergent feelings, thoughts, and behaviour. Don Quijote is a text that invites us to stim, while remaining aware of its own stimmy effect. It is a text that asks us to read it neurodivergently.