Bruce Burningham: Parody and Postmodernism

Posted on Monday, August 31

Of Mad Knights and Dark Helmets:
Parody and Postmodernism in Don Quixote and Spaceballs

Saturday, November 14

10:00 – 11:00 am

First United Methodist Church at The Chicago Temple
77 W Washington

$5

With such films as Blazing Saddles and Young Frankenstein, Mel Brooks has made a career of spoofing various film genres. Brooks, of course, is not the first to engage in such parodies. Miguel de Cervantes’s masterpiece Don Quixote—which Cervantes claimed to be first and foremost a parody of the extremely popular chivalric romances of his day—has been delighting readers since its publication in 1605. By comparing Don Quixote and Spaceballs, Bruce Burningham, associate professor of Spanish and comparative literature at Illinois State University, will not only examine the social function of satire but will also explore Cervantes’s novel as a postmodern precursor to Brooks’s parody of George Lucas’s Star Wars films.