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<P><B><FONT SIZE=6 FACE="Times New Roman">Ormsby - translator of Don Quixote</FONT></B>
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<P><B><FONT FACE="Times New Roman">John Ormsby</FONT></B><FONT FACE="Times New Roman"> (1829-1895) was a nineteenth-century British </FONT><A HREF="file:///wiki/Translator"><U><FONT COLOR="#0000FF" FACE="Times New Roman">translator</FONT></U></A><FONT FACE="Times New Roman">. He is most famous for his 1885 English translation of </FONT><A HREF="file:///wiki/Miguel_de_Cervantes"><U><FONT COLOR="#0000FF" FACE="Times New Roman">Miguel de Cervantes</FONT></U></A><FONT FACE="Times New Roman">'<I> </I></FONT><A HREF="file:///wiki/Don_Quixote_de_la_Mancha"><I><U><FONT COLOR="#0000FF" FACE="Times New Roman">Don Quixote de la Mancha</FONT></U></I><I></I></A><I></I><FONT FACE="Times New Roman">, perhaps the most scholarly and accurate English translation of the novel up to that time. It is so precise that </FONT><A HREF="file:///wiki/Samuel_Putnam"><U><FONT COLOR="#0000FF" FACE="Times New Roman">Samuel Putnam</FONT></U></A><FONT FACE="Times New Roman">, who published his own English translation of the novel in 1949, faults Ormsby for duplicating Cervantes' pronouns so closely that the meaning of the sentences sometimes becomes confusing.</FONT><B> <FONT FACE="Times New Roman">(Precision is what Wolfe would prize most.)</FONT></B></P>
<P><FONT FACE="Times New Roman">Ormsby's translation has seen more editions than any other nineteenth-century English version of the novel, having been included in the Heritage Book Club series of great novels, and in the famous </FONT><A HREF="file:///wiki/Great_Books_of_the_Western_World"><U><FONT COLOR="#0000FF" FACE="Times New Roman">Great Books of the Western World</FONT></U></A><FONT FACE="Times New Roman"> set. The contemporaneous translations by </FONT><A HREF="file:///w/index.php?title=Alexander_J._Duffield&action=edit&redlink=1"><U><FONT COLOR="#0000FF" FACE="Times New Roman">Alexander J. Duffield</FONT></U></A><FONT FACE="Times New Roman"> (1881) and </FONT><A HREF="file:///w/index.php?title=Henry_Edward_Watts&action=edit&redlink=1"><U><FONT COLOR="#0000FF" FACE="Times New Roman">Henry Edward Watts</FONT></U></A><FONT FACE="Times New Roman"> (1888) have been virtually forgotten. Ormsby's translation was the first English version of Cervantes's book to appear complete on the Internet.</FONT></P>
<P><FONT FACE="Times New Roman">Ormsby not only translates the novel; he provides a long and informative introduction with a brief analysis of all the major English versions of "Don Quixote" up to then (except for the Duffield version), as well as explaining the choices that he himself made in translating the novel. He also features a short biography of Cervantes in his introduction, as well as providing his own controversial analysis of the work. Ormsby refutes the widely accepted view that "Don Quixote" is a sad novel with allegorical meanings and a pessimistic philosophy, and states that because Cervantes himself declared it to be a satire against books of chivalry, it is primarily only that, although it does contain much observation on human character.</FONT><B> <FONT FACE="Times New Roman">Ormsby also refutes, in addition, the commonly held view that Don Quixote is an innately noble person, stating that his nobility of character is an attitude that he assumes simply to imitate his knightly heroes.</FONT></B> <FONT FACE="Times New Roman">An 1886 edition of the<I> </I></FONT><A HREF="file:///wiki/Quarterly_Review"><I><U><FONT COLOR="#0000FF" FACE="Times New Roman">Quarterly Review</FONT></U></I><I></I></A><I></I><FONT FACE="Times New Roman"> , published only a year after Ormsby's translation was first issued, took him to task for his limited interpretation of the novel and of Don Quixote's character, while praising the accuracy of the translation. </FONT><A HREF=""><U><FONT COLOR="#0000FF" FACE="Times New Roman">[1]</FONT></U></A></P>
<P><FONT SIZE=2 FACE="Arial">(</FONT><B><FONT SIZE=2 FACE="Arial">I think that's what Wolfe intends. That we read his story and wish to imitate his hero. Like he read the stories of knights as a boy and wished to imitate the hero (like I did a long time ago too). That is also, I believe, why he chose a boy changed into a man (who is still a boy inside) as a hero. All the better that we readers recall our desire to imitate the hero while at the same time reflecting on our current lives and measuring how closely we reached the mark we set ourselves as boys . . . </FONT></B></P>
<P><B><FONT SIZE=2 FACE="Arial">I think it was a beautiful thing indeed what he did in writing the book this way. It rang me like a bell I can tell you.</FONT></B></P>
<P><FONT SIZE=2 FACE="Arial">Is "arthur ormsby" another name for King arthur?. Pendragon - but what was the common name, family name? . . . </FONT>
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