In Forms of Modernity, Rachel Schmidt examines how seminal theorists and philosophers have wrestled with the status of Cervantes' Don Quixote is as an 'exemplary novel', in turn contributing to the emergence of key concepts within genre theory.

Prologue
Abbreviations for Cited Material
Note on Translations and Quotations

1. Don Quixote and the Problem of Modernity
2. Arabesques and the Modern Novel: Friedrich Schlegel’s Interpretation of Don Quixote
3. The Emptiness of the Arabesque: Georg Lukács and the Theory of the Novel
4. Ideas and Forms: Hermann Cohen’s Novelistics
5. The Poetics of Resuscitation: Unamuno’s Anti-Novelistics
6. Form Foreshortened: Ortega y Gasset’s Meditations on Don Quixote
7. Don Quixote in Bakhtin
8. Revolutions and the Novel