Rocinante
Rocinante is the name of Don Quixote's horse, in the novel Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes.
Etymology
Rocín in Spanish means work-horse or low-quality horse ("nag"), but also illiterate or rough man. There are similar words in French (roussin; rosse), Portuguese (rocim) and Italian (ronzino). The etymology is uncertain. The name is, however, a pun. On the first order, the Spanish ante means "before" or "previously". On the second order, it also translates as 'in front of'. On the third order, the suffix -ante in Spanish is adverbial; rocinante refers to functioning as, or being, a rocín reflexively. As such, Cervantes establishes a pattern of ambiguous interpretations present in many words in the novel. Another further explanation comes from the text itself: nombre a su parecer alto, sonoro y significativo de lo que había sido cuando fue rocín, antes de lo que ahora era, que era antes y primero de todos los rocines del mundo.[1] - "a name, to his thinking, lofty, sonorous, and significant of his condition as a hack before he became what he now was, the first and foremost of all the hacks in the world."[2]
As the narration describes in chapter 1 about the naming of Don Quixote's steed, "Four days were spent in thinking what name to give him, because (as he said to himself) it was not right that a horse belonging to a knight so famous, and one with such merits of his own, should be without some distinctive name, and he strove to adapt it so as to indicate what he had been before belonging to a knight-errant, and what he then was."[2]
Other uses in arts and literature
Elsewhere in literature, Rocinante refers to:
- The name John Steinbeck gives to the modified camper truck in which he travelled the country in his book Travels With Charley.
- Julia de Burgos's description of herself in her 1938 poem 'A Julia de Burgos': "que yo soy Rocinante corriendo desbocado" (trans. by Grace Schulman: "I am Rocinante, bolting free, wildly").
- Giannina Braschi's horses are named Rocinante and Clarin in the bilingual novel Yo-Yo Boing!
- The ship flown by Cervantes Quinn, a colorful freelance trader, in Harbinger, the first volume of the Star Trek Vanguard novel series.
- Rocinante is the name of a space ship in the songs of the Cygnus X-1 duology from the albums 'A Farewell to Kings' and 'Hemispheres' by Canadian progressive rock band Rush.
- Rocinante is the name given to a captured alien ship in the computer game Marathon 2: Durandal and its fan-made sequel, Marathon: Rubicon.
- Rocinante is the name of a horse in the Inside Track Betting in the video game Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas.
- The name given to the "salvaged" MCRN space ship in James S.S. Corey's SF novel "Leviathan Wakes" (c)2011, Orbit:Hatchette Book Group, 227 Park Ave., New York,NY 10017
- Rocinante is the name of a defunct publication from Chile.
- Rocinante is the name given to a car in the novel Briar Rose by Jane Yolen.
- An airplane that crashed while smuggling diamonds in the television series Psych on the USA Network.
- In Alexis Gilliland's Rosinante trilogy, Rosinante is a man-made, inhabited satellite located in the asteroid belt. Its partner satellite is called Don Quixote.
- Rocinante is the name of a fictional cafe in C. J. Sansom's Winter in Madrid.
- Rocinante is the name of the airplane that carried Mark Gravengood and Jackie Archer on their cross-country adventure in Wes Boyd's first novel in the Spearfish Lake Tales series.
- Rocinante is the name of a tulip created by a Dutch bulbgrower named C. van der Vlugt.
- Rosinante is the name of the vehicle driven by the namesake of the song An Animated Description of Mr. Maps by The Books.
- Rosinante is the title of a song by Southern California band Model Engine, from their CD The Lean Years Tradition.
- Rocinante is the name of the mare ridden by the protagonist David A. Reed in the 1973 novel So Far From Heaven by Richard Bradford.
- Rocinante(로시난테) is the title of a song by the Korean musical duo, Panic(members: Juck Lee, Jin-pyo Kim).
- Rocinante is the name given to his Seat 600 car by the eponymous hero of Graham Greene's novel Monsignor Quixote.
See also
References