Tilting at windmills Cervantes wrote and published "Don Quixote" during the Eighty Years' War, or Dutch War of Independence (1568–1648), a revolt by the Habsburg Netherlands to end Spanish rule. In "Don Quixote", the eponymous protagonist consistently misinterprets the motives and actions of his adversaries and allies, and struggles to even understand his own at times — a conundrum regularly resulting in apparently unjustified violent actions and consequences. One way of interpreting Don Quixote's tilting at windmills could be allegorically, thereby promoting critical, skeptical, or satirical evaluation of either a hero's motives, rationales and actions, or the ultimate aims of a nation's foreign
The Tilted Cross of words like red-back spiders stirring in a thick web in a dark corner." The Tilted Cross The Tilted Cross (1961) is a novel by Australian author Hal Porter. The novel is set in Hobart, Tasmania, in 1845-46. It follows the last few months in the life of Judas Griffin Vaneleigh, a transported forger and suspected poisoner. A reviewer in "The Canberra Times" was not as enthusiastic as some of his colleagues: "Porter's baroque style gives his wordage full play. He spins his words like a thick spider's web and in the depths of the web he sets an evil