Towards a conceptualization of the written culture: contexts and learned practices in and from El Quijote

Abstract

In this study, several interpretations and expressions of Written Culture in Cervantes’ Don Quixote are extracted and analysed. In first place, we will examine the global context of Written Culture, having a source conceptual related to the new works on literacy and the Written Culture concept by Chartier, adding also a more contemporary focus where digital culture harmonizes with traditional handwritten and typographic cultures. We should improve our studies of Don Quixote this way, but we should also analyse the various dimensions of this work about sign and about document. After a concise examining of some cultured practices which can be seen in Don Quixote in a traditional way, now we can create some new practices adapted to current requirements and circumstances, making this work become a tool in order to get new contemporary cultured practices thanks to its intertextual and interdiscursive devices.