Don Quixote

Would have Cervantes deserved such recognition, had he not written the Quixote? The answer is no. However, he would probably be remembered for some of his other works. Two of The Exemplary Stories, significantly connected together, are commented in this lecture. "The Deceitful Marriage" deconstructs marriage both as a social institution and as a narrative tool: Cervantes manipulates literary conventions by beginning with what is normally the end of a story, a marriage, and works backwards to undue a union that never took place legitimately. In "The Dogs Colloquy" we skirt the supernatural idea that dogs can talk. The story is a picaresque autobiography in which the pícaro pretends to be a dog. Perhaps Scipio's life, not told here, could have been another Quixote. The author of a story, it is suggested, does not control the text while it is being read. A short comment on Kafka's parable "The Truth about Sancho Panza" and Borges' story Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote precede the end of this last lecture that refers to Cervantes' death. Drawing a parallel between Cervantes' death and that of Don Quixote and Alonso Quijano, González Echevarría reads the dedication to Persiles and Cervantes', and also his own, farewell to this course.

24 - Don Quixote, Part II: Chapters LXXI-LXXIV (cont.)

González Echevarría focuses on the end of the Quixote. He starts referring to Cervantes' humor, which allows us to see humanity in contrast to the mad hero and thus appreciate everyone's folly. The novel's plot, with Don Quixote's repeated returns home, suggests that life consists of going and coming back, and this is probably why we approach the end by returning to the beginning. In his last return home Don Quixote has conquered himself. By accepting his defeat by the Knight of the White Moon, who is a reflection of himself, he accepts himself for what he is. In the process of returning, Cervantes has underlined that reality has become fictionalized in Part II independently of Don Quixote. Cervantes is aware that his hero, as we see in Sancho's comments at the last inn, belongs to the great fictions of the ages. The Quixote closes in three ways, corresponding to a three-part conception of the worlds in which Don Quixote lives: Don Quixote is defeated; he regains his sanity; and he dies. Death is necessary in the novel, as it is a form of closure that everyone understands. A reference to Unamuno's, Borges' and Picasso's visions of Don Quixote ends this lecture.

23 - Don Quixote, Part II: Chapters LXXI-LXXIV

As we approach the end of the novel, Cervantes compresses and combines elements from different types of romances (morisco, Greek, pastoral) in what seems to be an attempt to create a new literary genre; the modern novel. In the episodes in Barcelona, the prank with the talking head makes literal the figure of prosopopeia; Don Quixote's visit to the printing shop explores the very origin of the book; the sign the boys hang on Don Quixote's back also reduces him to language. Avellaneda's misreading of the Quixote coincides with that of the dueñas who punish Sancho, and is also ironically represented in Altisidora's dream. By taking literature to its limits, by incorporating Avellaneda's book into the Quixote, by rejecting bookish knowledge in favor of experience, Cervantes seems to point to the idea that there is no position from which to stand outside of the world of fiction. The only way out would be through a voluntary act of the will, equivalent to the one Don Quixote makes after being defeated by the Knight of the White Moon.

22 - Don Quixote, Part II: Chapters LIV-LXX (cont.)

Three issues related to the impending end of the novel define this lecture. The first one is improvisation, as we see it in the confluence of actual geography with current historical events: the expulsion of the moriscos, and the Turkish and Huguenots menaces. With the story of Ricote, a kind of morisco novel in a nutshell, Cervantes provides a smorgasbord of narrative possibilities, and presents the consequences that political decisions have on common people. The second issue is the international dimension that the novel acquires with the episode of Roque Guinard and the entrance in Barcelona. The third issue is the influence that art or literature has on reality: the prank organized by the duke and duchess makes possible the marriage of dueña Rodríguez's daughter. Fiction, Cervantes seems to be suggesting, affects reality and improves it. Finally, Sancho's fall into the pit, a parody of the episode of his master in the cave of Montesinos, makes the squire an equal to Don Quixote as the novel progresses.

21 - Don Quixote, Part II: Chapters LIV-LXX

The developments of Part II of the Quixote are based and measured against Part I. In the episode of the afflicted matron, the story about Countess Trifaldi, and Clavileño, we see these expansions (the presence of love and death, the black color, the monsters, the clashing elements, the cross-dressing, the grotesque, the inclusiveness) which reach the limits of representation, in consonance with baroque aesthetics. The increasing presence of Virgil and to the Aeneid seem to point out that Don Quixote's task is somewhat equivalent to that of Aeneas, but Don Quixote's pursuit is not to found Rome, but to conquer himself. In part one we learned to look for the story behind the story, now, with all the pranks and stories made up by the duke's steward, we learn how a story is made.

19 - Don Quixote, Part II: Chapters XXXVI-LIII

According to González Echevarría, Don Quixote's epic task within the novel is to control his madness by accepting the vanity of his dreams and the futility of his quest. The protagonist's change started with Sancho's enchantment of Dulcinea, and peaked in the cave of Montesinos. Now, he displays his deepened wisdom in the counsel to his squire on how to govern the island of Barataria. The good government of Sancho, together with the fact that the cleverest character in the second part is the steward, reflects a crumbling society: Barataria is related to the breakdown of aristocratic authority and the emergence of the common man as potential ruler. The island, too, like a mock Utopia, is a laboratory of fiction making, in which the steward, who is the author, ironically gets trapped. In a very baroque like inversion, Sancho and Don Quixote endure all the pranks from the duke and duchess with their dignity untouched, proving that the mockers are the ones finally mocked.

20 - Don Quixote, Part II: Chapters XXXVI-LIII (cont.)

González Echevarría starts by commenting on three of the returns and repetitions (characters who reappear and incidents that, if not repeated, recall previous incidents) that take place at the end of part one of the Quixote and which give density to the fiction: the galley slaves, Andrés, and the postprandial speech or the speech on arms and letters. Don Quixote's insanity not only gives him a certain transcendence, but also shows the arbitrariness of laws, which causes their rejection by society and other characters' insane behavior. González Echevarría comments on the intersection between literature and history before moving on to the captive's tale, the culmination of those intertwined stories, in which religious conversion overcomes social barriers and transcends the neo-platonic convergence of opposites in Renaissance plots. With his creation of Don Quixote, the first hero-fugitive from justice in the Western tradition--a "highway robber," as the officer of the Holy Brotherhood calls him--Cervantes has created the first important novelistic protagonist drawn from the legal archives. His is the case of the insane hidalgo who set out to act out chivalric fantasies and in the process committed a series of crimes. And yet, he is the agent of Providence.

10 - Don Quixote, Part I: Chapters XXXVI-LII

The insertion of the Novel of the Curious Impertinent at the end of part one of the Quixote may be explained by Cervantes' intention of meshing both the forms of the chivalric romance and of the collection of Italian novelle. The result, though awkward, leads to the creation of the modern novel. This short novel seems to have been included by Cervantes as a way to publishing it in the same way. Reading the novel out loud, with all the characters gathered connects with the old tradition of reading literature out loud. The irony, however, is that this perverse love story is heard in the voice of the priest. González Echevarría interprets the novel trough René Girard's theory of love always mediated by a third person who also works as a motivator. The story gives a contrasting mirror of literature to the young people at the inn who are involved in love stories about to culminate in marriage. Don Quixote's interruption of the reading allows the court-like scene of reconciliations among the various couples and all restitutions which were made, as a reaffirmation of new social forms. Cervantes' point is that mental life is made up of levels that mirror and distort each other.

09 - Don Quixote, Part I: Chapters XXVII-XXXV (cont.)

This lecture covers two of the most important episodes of Part II of the Quixote: the descent into Montesinos cave and Master Peter's puppet show. The first one, on the one hand, engages the main literary topics and sources of the novel. Cervantes, by submitting Don Quixote's fantasies to natural law, questions the belief in the authenticity of the romances of chivalry and the reality of what his protagonist sees. The episode also provides a glimpse into the inner workings of Don Quixote's subconscious: his descent is a harsh look onto himself which, while not completely destroying his beliefs, weakens them seriously, and from now on he will act saner. Master Peter's puppet show introduces again Ginés de Pasamonte, the character who represents the figure of the modern author in both parts of the novel. With Ginés now disguised as a master puppeteer, Cervantes criticizes his contemporary playwright Lope de Vega, but most importantly, through the complex trompe-l'oeil that the puppet show constitutes, Cervantes analyzes the act of mimesis.

17 - Don Quixote, Part II: Chapters XXII-XXXV

The fact that the second part of the Quixote is the first political novel is manifested in several ways. The second part adds (taken from the picaresque novel) geographic concreteness to its realistic portrayal of Spanish life and sociopolitical background to the novel: the episode of the boat shows the contrast between Don Quixote's Ptolemaic obsolete notions of geography and the new Copernican conception of an infinite universe. The duke and duchess represent the Spanish idle upper classes in debt and kept financially afloat through loans, like the Spanish Crown. Don Quixote's debate with the ecclesiastic is a critique of the Church, not of religion. The hunt in the wood was a reproduction of a leisure activity, a sport. The pageant in the forest is a baroque perversion of Dante's Purgatorio (XXVIII-XXX). Dulcinea as a transvestite seems to represent a burlesque manifestation of Don Quixote's repressed inner desire.

18 - Don Quixote, Part II: Chapters XXII-XXXV (cont.)

The professor’s detailed lecture was an exacting review of the story, the symbolism and context of the Quixote.

He placed the story in its place atop the pantheon of Western and Spanish literature.  

I learned much about 16th century Spain, Cervantes and Cervantes contemporaries.   

Much as Gracias!

Wonderful companion to the Quixote!

I can&#39;t tell you how much I have enjoyed Prof Gonzalez Echevarria&#39;s  lectures on El Quijote.  I have always wanted to take another course on the Quijote, slowly and carefully reviewing and rereading this master work within the context of the times.   I have found this and more in these lectures and have encouraged many friends and colleagues to do the same.

Gracias, Doctor González

Diana Torres

Cervantes Don Quijote

Cervantes' Don Quixote - Video

Professor González Echevarría resumes his commentary on the galley slaves episode by talking about Ginés' cross-eyedness as a metaphor for congenital internal perspectivism. This is a new model of conflictive being, capable of seeing simultaneously in two ways. The character among the galley slaves that he calls "the prisoner of sex" follows. Professor González Echevarría shows how Cervantes can create a complex character in just one paragraph while portraying the historical and legal background of Cervantes' time. The Sierra Morena episodes, the core of part one of the Quixote, take the second half of the lecture. They consist of a set of narrative strands tightly woven around two of the principal drives in the book: Don Quixote's love quest for Dulcinea, and the series of crimes and misdemeanors perpetrated by the hidalgo and his squire. All the interpolated stories have common elements with the central plot, with the Marcela and Grisóstomo interlude, and with each other: the perpetration of offenses due to passion, honor, body and property, and with the resulting need for restitution, recompense, requital, pardon or revenge. In all of them, marriage looms as the inevitable and most appropriate form of reparation as well as the most effective kind of narrative closure.

07 - Don Quixote, Part I: Chapters XXI-XXVI (cont.)

In this part of the Quixote, Cervantes makes a boast of narrative mastery by combining the sequential structure of the chivalric romance with the multiple story design of collections of novellas. The stories invented by the characters, who create meta-characters, lead to the revelation of other stories not being told, or being told obliquely. The relation among all the stories, including the main plot, is predicated on cuts and crisscrossing made possible by traumatic interruptions, which jostle the memory of the tellers and drive them to reveal other stories behind the one they tell, and making them disclose their inner thoughts. Memory is in all cases the key element a repository of recollections from the past and the structuring force of the self in the present. The whole network of stories, itself a superb display of narrative skill and variety, is one of the aims of Renaissance art, announced by the scene in which Dorotea is ogled (in parts) by other characters. As González Echevarría explains, the Quixote leads us again to ask questions that are pertinent and relevant to our lives. Is living the acting out of roles? Are we characters in somebody else's fiction, and if so, are we bound by ethics?

08 - Don Quixote, Part I: Chapters XXVII-XXXV

Front

Commentary of the key concepts of Spanish Baroque, desengaño, introduces González Echevarría's suggestion that the plot of the Quixote follows a Baroque unfolding from deceit (engaño) to disillusionment (desengaño). The discussion of Don Quixote and Sancho about knight-errants and saints is not only about arms and letters, but about good actions for their own sake and for the sake of glory (or deceit). This discussion echoes the religious debates of the time and shows Don Quixote's broad knowledge of them, anticipating Part II's projection beyond Spain. The episode in El Toboso announces much of the mood of Part II with the darkness and the urban scenario. The lie of the enchanted Dulcinea is important because it will leave a deep imprint in the knight's subconscious and because it is the first episode in which the roles of Don Quixote and Sancho are reversed. The lecture ends with the comment on the episode of the cart carrying actors and all its baroque connotations.

14 - Don Quixote, Part II: Front Matter and Chapters I-XI (cont.)

The modern novel that develops from the Quixote is essentially a political novel and an urban genre dealing with cities. In Part II there is a sense of the text being written and performed in the present because it incorporates current events, such as the expulsion of the moriscos, a critic of the arbitristas and a satire of the aristocracy. In part two of the Quixote Part I plays the role that the romances of chivalry played in Part I: the characters have read the first part and so a new larger mirror has been added to the play of mirrors that was already present. Characters evolve within a social context, which is consonant with the political character of the novel and has much to do with the development and evolution of realism in literature in the representation of everyday life and of common people. An explanation of the Baroque aspects that appear in the second part of the novel helps to understand the Quixote as a whole and its relation with the first part.

13 - Don Quixote, Part II: Front Matter and Chapters I-XI

The lecture focuses on the ending of the first part of the Quixote, which for the seventeenth-century reader was, simply, the end because no second part existed yet or was envisioned. Probably because it represents a difficult process (since the Quixote is not an ordinary story with a clear beginning) the end is already contained in the prologue, which also works as an epilogue echoing the characteristics of the meta-novel. With this in mind, González Echevarría comments on episodes that constitute partial endings: the caging of Don Quixote, and the prophecy contrived by the barber foretelling a possible ending for Don Quixote's fantasies. The conversation among Don Quixote, the priest and the canon of Toledo, who ironically is the "idle reader" from the prologue and a critic of chivalric romances, explores the multiple possibilities of the romances of chivalry, which Cervantes follows in his novel, with the Poetics of Aristotle in the background. The episode is also a critique of Lope de Vega and his innovative plays. Here is one of the great ironies in literary history: that Cervantes, while being wildly original in narrative fiction, was exceedingly conservative in the theater. Don Quixote's arrival at his village has made him madder; it is now the space of the uncanny and the unfamiliar.

11 - Don Quixote, Part I: Chapters XXXVI-LII (cont.)

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