Towards an Enlightened Readership <i>Don Quixote</i> , the European Cervantean Tradition and the Novel of the German Enlightenment

C.M. Wieland’s Die Abenteuer des Don Sylvio von Rosalva (1764) has been considered by certain scholars the first modern German novel due to its representational realism, its dialogism, its self-conscious nature. This paper seeks to address this issue, trying to contextualise Wieland’s Don Sylvio within the wider framework of the European Cervantean tradition, showing how, far from operating in an isolated context, Wieland often recurs to procedures and techniques already developed by other French and British Cervantean authors such as Charles Sorel, Pierre de Marivaux and Charlotte Lennox, but also to other German novels of clear Cervantean scent such as W.E. Neugebauer’s Der teutsche don Quichotte (1753).