Readers are still finding new things in Don Quixote, 400 years after the Cervantes classic was first published, writes Catherine Foley

Who says the great Spanish masterpiece, Don Quixote, is boring? Ask friends who have read the book and they'll possibly sigh and reflect ruefully on the hours they spent trying to complete the great tome.

After four centuries, Don Quixote has almost been turned into a mausoleum, said writer and journalist Pedro Sorela when he spoke in Dublin last month. Following a number of talks in Dublin recently to celebrate the 400th anniversary of its publication in 1605, academics continue to argue passionately that this is a book to be enjoyed, not endured.

"Some have been trying to turn it into a sculpture, elevate that character to the rank of commander-in-chief of a national literature, transform him into a headstone that will always be venerated," said Sorela. In spite of this, Don Quixote "is still alive, and, it can be said, victorious".

Dr John Rutherford, of Oxford University, whose widely acclaimed translation of Don Quixote, published by Penguin in 2000, won the Valle-Inclan Prize for Spanish Translation in 2001, says "the whole gamut of the comic, from broad belly laughs to subtle irony" is there. The dialogue between Don Quixote and Sancho is the first great comic double-act, precursors of Laurel and Hardy. He hopes the discussions during the anniversary year will "make people realise that this is above all else a very funny book but no less important or profound for being funny. A lot of people have thought of it as deadly serious and many translations have presented it as such".

In the past, he says, "a lot of people have thought of it as meritorious but very boring . . . It's not at all boring".

"What makes the reading of Don Quixote such a rewarding experience is its synthesis of humour, virtuoso narrative technique and humanity," according to Stephen Boyd, of UCC's Department of Hispanic Studies. The character of Don Quixote is "an unfathomable mixture of lunacy and good sense", he said at the event, which was organised by the Instituto Cervantes in Dublin last month. A concert of songs from the time of Cervantes, who was 58 when Part One came out, was also held in Dublin to celebrate the book's publication. The book's Part Two was published in 1615, a year before the author died.

New studies are looking at the depiction of women in Miguel de Cervantes's book, said Grace Magnier, a lecturer in Hispanic studies at TCD.

"Undeterred by the pressures and restraints of a patriarchal society, they seek freedom and self-determination and show qualities of rationality and firmness of purose that were then considered a male preserve," she said at the same event, which was held in the Royal Irish Academy.

Because this is a long book which takes a relatively long time to read, and also because the various facets and inconsistencies of Don Quixote's character are slowly revealed and developed, Boyd says that "as readers, we have the sensation that we get to know him as we might get to know a real person, but we are also simultaneously aware that we never quite know who Don Quixote is", that we are dealing not with a "character" but with an enigma, an illusion.

"This is especially so because his pursuit of an illusory dream in the face of the dullness of daily existence is so representatively human."

"I read it when I was 15 as my father was always mentioning Don Quixote, he found it very funny," recalls Aurora Sotelo, director of the Instituto Cervantes. "I was curious about why. I didn't find it so funny when I was 15 but when I was at university in Madrid I really discovered the genius that Cervantes was. For me the most surprising thing was how universal it was."

The dialogues between Don Quixote and Sancho "are the best part of the book", says Rutherford.

He believes Cervantes had fun writing the book.

"Fun is a weapon against the harshness and nastiness of life. There is a great depth of human feeling in comedy," he says. "There's a sort of prejudice against comedy, that it's light and frivolous, but it's my view that comedy can deal as well with those profound aspects of life."