"Don Quixote" is seen as a work of monumental cruelty by some, with the protagonist enduring physical punishments.
"Lies and Sorcery" by Elsa Morante was influenced by "Don Quixote" and aimed to be the last of its kind, a bourgeois epic.
Morante's novel is a parody of 19th-century literary masterpieces and a work of literary disenchantment.