Showing results by narrator "IIan Stavans" in All Categories

Distinguished man of letters Ilan Stavans believes Miguel de Cervantes’ Don Quixote de la Mancha “invented modern consciousness.” In these lectures, Stavans explores the work’s impact within Renaissance Spain and discusses Cervantes’ career as a soldier, tax collector, and failed playwright. Stavans also focuses on the baroque style and the way Spain has built its national identity around Don Quixote.

In this sweeping history, Ilan Stavans explores the way humans have evolved in their conception of the divine, from an animistic view defined by spirituality to Greek myths and the Aztec pantheon, onward to the development on monotheism as a powerful religion in the Middle East that was crystallized in the biblical narrative. He meditates on what type of divine presences coexist in the Hebrew Bible and how these entities take bifurcating paths in Christianity and Islam.