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Reading

Please read all of “The First Part” of Don Quixote. It’s long, but it’s relatively easy reading. Don’t be lulled into passive reading by the amusing and racy stories. Pay particular attention to Cervantes’ realistic techniques in describing the adventures of the Knight and his Squire. At the same time, don’t ignore the other tales and discussions in the book, which provide insights into Cervantes’ literary and ethical agenda. The questions hereafter follow the events chronologically. So, if you start reading, and aren’t sure what you should be noticing. Take a look at some of the questions and answers as you go along.

Questions to Consider:

1. What does the author’s Prologue tell you about the new kind of writing that Cervantes is attempting?

2. What is the danger of books of chivalry?

3. What is the significance of Dulcinea de Toboso?

4. What is interesting about Don Quixote’s language or reasoning?

5. How does Don Quixote illuminate the unreality of chivalric love?

6. How is Don Quixote able to support his imaginary world? How fragile is his mental stability?

7. What do you think Cervantes is trying to achieve by drawing such a sharp contrast between the real world and Don Quixote’s imaginary world?

8. How do we know that Cervantes is elevating an earthy and sense-based reality? What is the role of the squire, Sancho Panza?

9. Why is Sancho Panza so credulous with respect to Don Quixote? What does this tell you about Spanish society at the time?

10. Don Quixote is a genuine character and not simply a wise fool or other comic device. Individuals in literature often demonstrate their self-awareness in words or actions. Can you find a quote that shows that Don Quixote has a rich mental life in Chapter V?

11. Why do characters like the housekeeper, the priest and the barber believe that Don Quixote’s malady is so unfortunate?

12. What is the significance of the Inquisition of Don Quixote’s books?

13. What makes it so hard for the nobility to give up these romantic notions?

14. Don Quixote tilting at Windmills is one of the most famous images in the novel. What new idea does it introduce?

15. How does Cervantes show that the chivalric ideas are historically dated?

16. In his conversation with Sancho (Chapter X), Don Quixote suggests something that is entirely missing from romantic literature. What is it?

17. What is the Golden Age? To what extent does Cervantes fall into the trap of creating his own golden age?

18. How does Cervantes show us that the education, erudition or learning of the past does not imply common sense in the present?

19. How do we know that Cervantes’ Spain is locked into an increasingly irrelevant feudal consciousness?

20. Is Cervantes totally against the language and literature of love?

21. What is the significance of the Shepherdess’s (later Dorothea) speech? Did you find anything interesting about its language?

22. In Chapter XVII, the Don and Sancho take the magic potion. How does Cervantes is this episode to mock enchantment or magic?

23. What is so interesting about the episode with the fulling hammers (Chapter XX)?

24. Mambrino’s helmet adds a comic touch throughout the novel. What is it?

25. The story of Mambrino’s helmet illustrates an important background characteristic of the novel and further illustrates the complexity of Don Quixote as an individual. How?

26. In the story of The Liberation of the Galley Slaves, Cervantes introduces a theme that will become more important as the novel goes on. What is it?

27. An Adventure in the Sierra Merena pairs off the Knight of the Sad Countenance (Don Quixote) and the Ragged Knight of the Sorry Countenance (later Cardenio). Both appear to be similarly mad. How are they different?

28. What is the significance of the story of Cardenio and Lucinda?

29. Cervantes plays with madness within madness when Don Quixote decides to go mad from his love for his lady fair. What’s the point of this episode?

30. When challenged with reality by Sancho in the chapter on “The Knight’s Penitence” (Chapter XXV), how does Don Quixote escape?

31. Sometimes Cervantes demonstrates the ability to realistically draw the background as well as the individuals in his stories. Can you provide an example from the chapter on “Cardenio’s Singing”?

32. In what ways is the “priest” not a realistic character?

33. The sub-plot in the novel is a love story about Ferdinand, Cardenio, Lucinda, and Dorothea. In what ways is this story real? In what ways is it artificial?

34. How do we know that Cervantes is not being sarcastic in developing these lovebirds? In other words, how do we know that he takes the sub-plot seriously?

35. What historical details does Cervantes bring into the novel to give it verisimilitude?

36. The relationship between Don Quixote and Sancho Panza is brilliantly and realistically drawn. It became a model for later comic duos like Abbott and Costello, Laurel and Hardy. In what ways is it conventional and contemporary?

37. Despite all its conventionality, how do we know the relationship between Don Quixote and Sancho Panza is a real human relationship?

38. In “Adventures at the Inn”, the priest who speaks for Cervantes outlines what he considers to be the biggest problem with chivalric romances. What is it, and what does he suggest doing about it? What does this tell you about Cervantes?

39. What is the point of “The Tale of Foolish Curiosity” (Chapter XXXIII) that follows directly on Cervantes’ criticism of historical romances?

40. In what ways does Cervantes’ agree with Boccaccio on the power of love?

41. What other evidence is there that the dynastic control of marriage is on the wane?

42. In what ways are Cervantes’ women still linked to an aristocratic society and its property arrangements?

43. In the tale of “The Princess Micomicona and Other Matters,” Sancho begins to really get wise about the madness of his master and the absurdity of his interpretations. He even remonstrates with Don Quixote. When all else fails, what does Don Quixote have to do to maintain his view of the world?

44. What is the significance of Don Quixote’s “Discourse on Arms and Letters”?

45. How does Cervantes undercut Don Quixote’s argument about the ideal warrior in “The Captive’s Tale” (Chapter XXXIX)?

46. How does Cervantes add touches of realism to “The Captive’s Tale”?

47. What stereotypes get in the way of the realistic touches in “The Captive’s Tale”?

48. How does Cervantes show his readers his mastery of the narrative technique in Chapter XLIV?

49. In “The Truth About the Madman’s Helmet” (Chapter XLV), Cervantes begins to speeds up the pace of the novel because he’s eager to make his point about chivalric literature more forcefully and to bring the First Part to an end. How does he do this?

50. In “The Knight is Enchanted” (Chapter XLVII), Cervantes speaks through the priest to sum up the problem of, and suggest a solution to, the problems caused by chivalric romances. Can you summarize what he says in your own words?

51. Don Quixote listens in on the conversation between the priest and the canon. True to form, he understands everything they say. How does he defend himself?

52. How do you think the priest or the canon would have answered this “well-reasoned nonsense of Don Quixote’s”?

Suggested or Possible Answers:

1. Cervantes is not interested in following the classical rules of literature or paying attention to the literary authorities. He says he is “too lazy”, but he really means is that he’s going to go it alone and write “what I can say myself without them.” He also makes it perfectly clear from the outset that the main purpose of his book is “an invective against books of chivalry.”

2. These are dangerous when they go beyond entertainment, by captivating the imagination. They have a tendency to substitute ideal and artificial values for common sense. An extreme case is Don Quixote, whose “wits dried up” reading these works.

3. She is a chivalric device – the lady to whom the chivalric knight dedicates all his great deeds. In this case, however, reality opposes an artificial ideal because Aldonza Lorenzo, her real name, turns out to be a robust and rather course farm girl. Later, Cervantes will play with the contrast between flesh and blood reality and a Platonic love to show how artificial and irrelevant the chivalric code is.

4. He’s got the inflated language of chivalry down pat. He also understands all the facts, rules and roles of the chivalric world perfectly and in all their complexity. Finally, when it doesn’t concern the romantic world of chivalry, Don Quixote is a highly intelligent person.

5. He does this by contrast. Don Quixote imagines women of easy virtue (prostitutes) to be noble damsels in distress.

6. Don Quixote has created an entire and fantastical world that he lives in. Many of the other characters in the book go along with his fantasy, for a joke or out of kindness. On those occasions when the real world seems to contradict the imaginary world, Don Quixote is able to explain away most problems by calling them enchantments.

7. He’s making the division between fantasy and reality so clear as to problematize any ideas that are not grounded in real life experiences. In other words, he’s inventing and discounting fantasy. During the seventeenth century, the world of fantasy (i.e. enchantments) and the world of reality were blurred. It was not easy to separate the ideal or mysterious from the real and common-sensical. Cervantes wants to draw that line much more clearly in favour of the world of empirical and sense-based reality.

8. He’s going to have a lot of descriptions of smells, bodily functions. Sancho Panza is partly a stock comic character from the lower orders. He is obsessed with his body and its functions and totally uninterested in ideals, unless he thinks he can get something out of them. He also represents the reality of common sense against Don Quixote’s chivalric imaginings.

9. Sancho often is overpowered by Don Quixote’s tightly integrated chivalric world, and goes along with it to the extent that he can understand it. This is a society where the lower classes respect their noble betters and take it for granted that these people must understand things better than them. Cervantes is criticizing the resistance of out-of-date chivalric ideas among the Spanish aristocracy

10. “I know who I am,” replied Don Quixote, “and I know too, that I am capable of being not only the characters I have named, but all the Twelve Peers of France and all the Nine Worthies as well, for my exploits are far greater than all the deeds they have done, all together and each by himself.”

11. They all believe that he has an excellent understanding of things, and a good brain, that was only corrupted by his emersion in the world of fantasy. Otherwise he would have been an excellent landlord and master of men.

12. Some chivalric romances have real literary merit and historical significance. They show imagination and contain clever ideas, and even good ethical suggestions. That Cervantes does not deny. It is the tendency of these works as a genre that he deplores. The chivalric romances, of knights-errant and damsels in distress, doesn’t relate to real life as it is now lived.

13. Cervantes suggests that these works honour the military elite as people to be revered for their honour and breeding. No one wants to give up that kind of status, especially not Don Quixote, who forever tells people that they should appreciate his wonderfulness (even when he is being modest). These inflated ideas of class importance reflect the values of a hierarchical society.

14. Enchantment. Don Quixote’s world, and the world of the chivalric romance, is enchanted. In order for a more realistic literature to emerge, enchantment has to be exploded and made to look ridiculous.

15. He often compares modern times with the times of long ago, when knights roamed the land slaying dragons and saving damsels from distress with these more prosaic times. Don Quixote notices all these contrasts himself, but suggests that he all the more significant because he is reviving the knight errant tradition in weird times.

16. The details of real life. Like how all these knight-errant found sustenance on their many days’ journeys through forests, deserts and mountains. Focusing on these details, however, tends to “wrench knight errantry off its hinges.”

17. In romantic literature, it’s a sort of Garden of Eden, where there was no war, hunger or need for heroes. It is the period that warrior knights yearn for. Although Cervantes wants to explode this world, he mirrors it somewhat in his pastoral descriptions of shepherds and herders, who are simultaneously civilized and natural. The Goatherds, for example, are the most artificial characters in a book that is full of richly drawn characters.

18. Don Quixote is very learned. He knows and employs words very well. He corrects those who do not know their facts or their grammar. He understands sciences like Astrology. But his major failing is that he can’t relate this learning to major problems in real life. Throughout Don Quixote, Cervantes suggests that authorities and precedents are useless, unless they relate to real life.

19. Don Quixote waxes poetically and brilliantly on the arts and importance of the warrior nobility, reflecting the values of a society that is still dominated by issues related to aristocratic warfare. This is happening in a society increasingly peopled by merchants, characterized by social mobility (lots of examples in the novel) and defended by professional police and armies, and where new pragmatic roles are needed for the aristocracy.

20. No he’s not. He’s very willing to talk about love in a pastoral sense, for example, with respect to shepherds and their loves. Even more, much of his novel is a sub-plot about love, mistaken identity and reconciliation. We’ll talk more about his new vision of love later. But what is important here is he wants love stories to provide something that ‘real flesh and blood’ people can learn something from. Chivalric tales are too removed from reality to provide examples or moral lessons.

21. It is a plea for combining common sense with love. Here Dorothea appears to be immune to love, but not to sense. Later we will discover that she is very much in love. What’s interesting is the artificiality of her language. Her speech, which is meant to be good sense, is highly rhetorical. Cervantes is brilliantly realistic when drawing comic characters, but he resorts to a much more artificial, elevated, style when discussing genuine heroes and heroines. This shows that his literature is still intermediate and that he can’t easily combine the tragic with the realistic.

22. The potion turns out to be a purgative (laxative) and Sancho vomits and excretes simultaneously, some of it in his pants and some on the beard of Don Quixote. Even these events can’t shake the Don from his imaginary world. But they do greatly offend his sense of smell. Again, Cervantes is contrasting sensual experiences at their most crude and basic – reality – with the world of fantasy, to show that there is no connection between the magical and the real world.

23. Lots of things. First, we have the real material world (an active mill) contrasting the imaginary world (possibly giants’ hammers). Second, we see the power of the imagination on our sense of reality, as our heroes are frightened to point of shitting their pants. Finally, we have a brilliant twist. Don Quixote eventually recognizes what the fulling mills are and demonstrates a sense of humour. This is a very complex characterization, to say the least, and Don Quixote isn’t always the victim of fantasy.

24. In legend, it’s a famous and enchanted warrior’s helmet. In this story, it is really a brass bucket used by barbers to bleed their patients (barbers used to also do medical chores, among which bloodletting was the most common).

25. Don Quixote discusses social mobility in contemporary Spanish society. It is happening all around him, but he uses it to show that, although his own lineage is uncertain, he may yet be: 1) elevated by his deeds; or, 2) able to trace his descent to a mighty line.

26. He quotes the character Gines as saying that “well-written, entertaining truth” is better than any fiction. Later, Cervantes will go on to argue that fiction can be a useful genre if it is more plausible, i.e. more realistic. The problem with fantasy is not that it is fiction but that it is entirely implausible fiction.

27. Don Quixote is insane. Cardenio is only temporarily deranged because of the love he has for his lost Lucinda. Love is a kind of madness, but love fulfilled in marriage, can redeem madness, suggests Cervantes. Cardenio, when lucid, is very aware of his madness. He does not confuse reality with fantasy, and he curses his fate when deranged. There is hope for him; not for Don Quixote, whose brain reading too many chivalric romances has truly fried.

28. This is a more up to date, modern, love story than the chivalric tales. Cervantes seems to be trying to modernize the genre in order to make it relevant, and to have a moral tale. In this and similar tales, Cervantes advocates love in marriage and, while he respects rank and position, he warns parents not to interfere with the progress of true love.

29. Don Quixote plays at going mad “without a cause.” If he were really unrequited in real love, he might have a reason for becoming unhinged. But his emotions with respect to love are totally artificial. “Our love,” he says, “has always been platonic, and never gone farther than a modest glance.” Sancho highlights the artificiality of this supposed love for the Lady Dulcinea by describing her as an earthy farm girl.

30. He claims that he “draws” the qualities of the Lady Dulchinea in his imagination. He is self-reflective enough to say that he “imagines all he says to be true, no more, no less.” This capacity for allowing imagination to usurp normal reality is exactly what Cervantes wants to attack.

31. “It was a hot day in August, the month when the heat is usually most intense in those parts; and the time was three o’clock in the afternoon, which made the please even more pleasing. In fact, it invite them to wait there for Sancho’s return, which they did.” Note that Cervantes isn’t able to sustain such descriptions for long and lapses into an artificial, pastoral description of shepherds and goatherds.

32. The priest is what is called a deus ex machina (God from the machine). The term is taken from dramas where all the confusions, complications and mistaken identities are cleared up by a god or angel who appears on the stage from above (hence the machine). The priest clears up confusions about Don Quixote, pays the bills that result from his lunatic adventures, and basically makes things right. Because he has this function or role to play, he is not a believable character. But he is a common character in a farce like this.

33. The story is real in the sense that it deals with real life and contemporary love matches that are thwarted by concerns about rank and property. The characters face obstacles that are not fantastical, but based on real historical situations occurring in the Spain of the day. It is artificial in the sense that its purpose is as a moral fable and it moves through complications to an inevitable happy ending. It is also artificial in the sense that it adopts pastoral imagery and dramatic conventions to push the plot along. Finally, it is artificial in the sense that the characters, in pastoral disguise or not, tend to deliver high blown rhetorical speeches that no one in real life would ever contemplate.

34. He has his characters comment on the good sense and elegant form of the speeches of these lovers. In the case of Don Quixote, on the other hand, he always shows that the other characters see through even the most lucid sounding speeches of the knight-errant? What is fascinating here is how original and realistic Cervantes could be while developing the main theme of his farce, but how bound by contemporary convention he became when developing the sub-plot.

35. He talks about: 1) noble families losing their fortunes because of the gradual decline of the Spanish Empire; 2) he talks about younger sons entering into the profession of merchants; 3) he discusses the political and economic effects of the Crusades; 4) he compares Arab and Spanish views on religion. What is interesting about all these details, however, is that they are just thrown into the novel to give it contemporary flavour. These aspects of political, material, social and cultural life are never related to one another.

36. It is clearly a hierarchical relationship in a society where nobility leads and other follow. Don Quixote, despite all his madness, is always the master. And Sancho Panza, despite all his mockery of Don Quixote, is always the servant. Social revolution is not a realistic option in Cervantes’ vision.

37. The two characters love one another. They are prepared to get hurt defending one another (well, sometimes in the case of Sancho). They often need to forgive one another. Don Quixote asks for Sancho’s opinion on several occasions, and takes it seriously. They relate on a human level, and not simply as master and man.

38. The problem is foolish people tend to think of these works as real histories whereas they are idle fantasies. He thinks that the civil authorities should control the publication of these books to prevent them from corrupting peoples’ minds, or at least make sure that the ethical values in these books are sound before authorizing their publication. Cervantes believes that the public is often ignorant and needs to be led by their intellectual and social superiors. Clearly, he is no democrat.

39. He’s showing us how to write a useful moral tale concerning love. He wants to show: 1) that love is a delicate blend of passion and self-control that needs to be cultivated; 2) that female modesty and reputation are crucial to the survival of love; and 3) that the sacrament of marriage is inviolate. Not how different Cervantes’ view is from that of Boccaccio, because the former places love firmly within marriage and will never condone adultery. Also note that Cervantes’ character Lothario has gone down in the literature as a deceitful seducer. Finally, note that, despite his strong and common-sensical heroines, Cervantes thinks that women are weak, fickle, and vulnerable because they love flattery.

40. Like Boccaccio, he knows that it is a sexual passion and he believes that it is “vain to struggle” against the “power of the flesh.” Unlike Boccaccio, he believes that marriage should be the “divine force” that tames the passion. Cervantes is writing later than Boccaccio, at a time when the connection between love and marriage is being more closely drawn. In part, this happens because aristocratic society and its dynastic marriages are breaking down in a more fluid and mobile society. Thus, many of Cervantes’ characters run the displeasure of their parents by seeking to marry those that they love.

41. Boccaccio’s brides were 13 and 14; one was a “pretty girl” of 11. Cervantes talks about 16 year old brides, whose parents think they are still a little on the young side to marry. Clearly, this isn’t our modern conception of an adult that is ready for marriage, but a distinct shift in perception is happening that conforms to the idea that men and women should be able to choose their own mates, and that marriage is not more than a property agreement between families.

42. Their reputation or virginity before marriage is of crucial importance.

43. He has to use his authority to force Sancho – the voice of common sense – to keep quiet.

44. It is a lucid and rational account of why aristocratic military values are more important than learning. The problem with this interpretation, so internally rational, is that it makes no sense in a world of professional armies and artillery (“diabolical engines’). As much as we might like some knightly values, they simply have become irrelevant and even dangerous. Don Quixote’s only fear is that he will be killed before he even has a chance to prove his mettle in battle.

45. He describes military men as “liberal” and “prodigal”. In other words, the old role for aristocrats was to consume conspicuously and to practice generosity. If they maintain these old values in the modern world, they will not be very good at managing money and, consequently, their estates. The implication is that they need to get rid of some of these liberal values and become more commercial minded, or they and their children will lose everything.

46. He spends a great deal of time discussing the political and military battles that Spain fought against the Turks and Moors. He describes Moorish cities to the extent of the latticework on their windows. His central hero is captured by the Moors after the Battle of Lepanto, and we learn all about the way that highborn captives were held for ransom. However, while these details do add verisimilitude and a contemporary flavour to the tale, they don’t really change the characters to any great extent. A happy ending is contrived to make sure that the nobly born don’t suffer any more than is fitting. Noble families are always redeemed at the end.

47. The Moors are labeled vicious, cowardly and “deceitful.” The beautiful Moor, Zoraida, is legitimized because she embraces Christianity. The hero continually claims the moral high ground for Christians. Thus, the opportunities for genuine cross-cultural exchange are extremely limited.

48. He tells his readers that he is going to stop talking about Don Quixote’s plight and “go back fifty paces” in order to pick up a sub-plot that he had left dangling. This intimacy with the reader, and playfulness with his role, reveals Cervantes as someone who feels that he is an expert storyteller and doesn’t mind telling his readers exactly that.

49. First, he really goes after the concept of enchantment or fantasy by repeatedly showing that this is the concept that made Don Quixote lose his touch with reality. All the elements that make the primary plot a farce are brought to a head with characters beating one another up, lots of shouting and confusion that is building to a resolution. Quickly, and artificially, all the complications are cleared up, with the exception of Don Quixote’s madness. But at least he is brought home to his village, to be tended by those who love him. Sancho Panza has the best line when he says of his blanket tossing: “That really happened in the ordinary way.” We are left in no doubt that “creatures of flesh and blood” have triumphed over “any unreal or imaginary phantoms” as the night comes home, still deluded, but an entirely pathetic creature. At best, he can claim to be the last of a “long-forgotten profession of knight errantry” in a world that no longer has any room for “enchantment”.

50. Chivalric tales are problematic because they depart way too far from reality (“verisimilitude”). While they offer a “good intellect a chance to display itself”, they do so in all the wrong ways. They are a poor form of literature because they consist of detached episodes that feed the imagination, rather than a well structured plot that speaks to the reason. Everything about them is “absurd”. The biggest problem about them is that the public loves this stuff, like the popular amusement it is.

    The prose form, argues Cervantes, could be used to much better purpose if it followed these rules. Good literature: 1) conforms to reality, 2) delivers a moral lesson, 3) presents a unified story, 4) portrays the qualities of its characters, 5) blends the best characteristics of the epic, the lyric, the tragic and the comic.

    In the conversation between the canon and the priest, they admit that there are touches of genius in chivalric literature, but these are swallowed up in a genre that is so absurd and fantastical that it stirs up the imagination rather than instructs the public. It isn’t only the ignorant that find themselves captivated by this kind of nonsense; “intelligent and well-born gentlemen” are taken it by it as well. Don Quixote is only the most extreme example of people who confuse fantasy with reality and end up playing no useful role in society.

51. He appeals to the superior reality of the imagination. He contrasts the delightfulness of the images and stories in chivalric literature as “delightful” to all members of the public “of ever quality and condition.” He points out that chivalric romances “drive away the melancholy and improve your temper if it happens to be bad.” He points out that these books made him a much better and more generous person. He wonders why anyone would not want to think that these things, so delightfully described, were real.

52. Your answer goes here: _______________________________________