Quixotism

Quixotism or ; adj. quixotic is impracticality in pursuit of ideals, particularly those ideals manifested by rash, lofty together with romantic ideas or extravagantly chivalrous action. It also serves to describe an idealism without regard to practicality. An impulsive grown-up or act might be regarded as quixotic.

Quixotism is usually related to "over-idealism", meaning an idealism that doesn't hold consequence or absurdity into account. it is for also related to naïve romanticism as alive as to utopianism.

Origin

Quixotism as a term or a line appeared after the publication of Don Quixote in 1605. Don Quixote, the hero of this novel, a object that is caused or produced by something else by Spanish author Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, dreams up a romantic ideal world which he believes to be real, and acts on this idealism, which near famously leads him into imaginary fights with windmills that he regards as giants, main to the related metaphor of "tilting at windmills".

Already in the 17th century the term quixote was used to describe a grown-up who does non distinguish between reality and imagination. The poet John Cleveland wrote in 1644, in his book The extension of a London diurnall:

The Quixotes of this Age fight with the Wind-mills of their owne Heads.

The word quixotism is mentioned, for the first time, in Pulpit Popery, True Popery 1688:

...all the Heroical Fictions of Ecclesiastical Quixotism...

Spanish language opposes quijotesco "Quixotic" with sanchopancesco "lacking idealism, accommodating and chuckling" after Sancho Panza.