Early criticism of Don Quixote: Why is this work great?

This study aims to evaluate Don Quixote's early criticism in the 18th and early 19th centuries. The criticism of Don Quixote in Spain was indifferent in the 17th century and began in the 18th century with the wind of criticism blowing in England. The works of Gregorio Mayans y Siscar, Vicente de los Ríos, Juan Antonio Pellicer, and Diego Clemencín are the subject of this study. Early criticism focuses on what work is Don Quixote and why it is great. The responsibility for the early criticism was to create arguments that could explain the greatness of this masterpiece. Mayans went to the concept of a new knight novel described by a priest of Toledo in Chapter 47 of the first part of the text. Vicente de los Ríos tried to bring in Homer and put Cervantes in the same ranks. Pellicer who followed partially the frame of Don Quixote by Don Vicente proposed the concept of parody. Clemencín was well aware of the distortion of early criticism. The first distortion was an inclination that focused only on excessive praise, and the second distortion was a neoclassical methodology to demonstrate the greateness of Don Quixote. His achievement was in the dissolution of the early criticism. The dissolution should lead to new horizons, but critics of the 19th century, including Clemencín, did not know what it was.