'Don Quick-sottish, or so': Cervantic ingredients in Aphra Behn's the emperor of the moon (Article)

• Main Author: Castro-Santana, Anaclara
• Other Authors: School of Humanities
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: 2023
• Subjects: Humanities::Literature::English
• Online Access: https://hdl.handle.net/10356/172644
• Institution: Nanyang Technological University

In a brief critical assessment of Aphra Behn’s The Emperor of the Moon (1688), Jane Spencer pronounces it “a play that, in the best Quixotic tradition, enchants even as it mocks the victims of enchantment.”1 Behn’s farce does precisely that, and much more, with the aid of Cervantes’s hypotext. However, scholars have yet to study at length exactly how quixotism is invoked in The Emperor of the Moon and the ways in which it bears upon the satirical targets as well as the general humor and the larger implications of the piece.