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Discussion thread for Week 13/22 of the revised Don Quixote schedule.

Anyone still with us? :)

Don Quixote's continued insistence that any contradiction to his observations is due to enchantment has me convinced still that he is mad as a hatter, but the observation that 'it is better for a knight to err on the side of courage than on the side of cowardice' makes me wonder if that's such a bad thing, even tho what led to it was his foolish bravado against the lion: DQ was lucky it wasn't hungry or angry.

I recall in B1C18 Quixote's argument for the value of arms over letters, so his discourse with Don Lorenzo about the value of poetry is a bit confusing. Then again, Quixote is more than a bit confused.

Random observations...

Is he that mad, or is enchantment an easy way to explain what would otherwise punch holes in his whole outlook? I feel like enchantment is an great excuse for most of the inconsistencies he would otherwise have to face.

Tina wrote: "Is he that mad, or is enchantment an easy way to explain what would otherwise punch holes in his whole outlook? I feel like enchantment is an great excuse for most of the inconsistencies he would o..."

Is that not a mark of madness? Explaining away reality as some sort of enchanted conspiracy?

Well, Book Two has confused me. As for enchantment, Europe was in the latter part of the Middle Ages at the time of this novel, so I think enchantments may have seemed real to many people of the time.

I think I mentioned before that Book Two seemed to “mirror� Book One - - we meet the Knight of mirrors. Could Cervantes have been playing with the idea of mirroring when he wrote Book Two, or am I imagining things?

I don't think you're necessarily imagining things. We know that Cervantes sold the rights to the 1st book about a year before publication, so he earned nothing from its almost immediate widespread popularity. That was a major motivation for him in writing the 2nd book. He may have incorporated that into the story... I wouldn't be surprised. So good sleuthing!

As for the Middle Ages, they more or less ended in the late 15th century, or 100+ years before these novels. But while Europe was no longer in the middle of what we refer to as the Middle Ages, I'm sure it was fresh enough in people's minds (as chivalry and knighthood was in those of Cervantes and therefore Quixote) that your explanation still makes sense to me!

One thing I really liked about the article concerning Cervantes burial from the Spanish Language School was that they outright said that The first volume of Don Quixote was satire. I found that helpful. When reading translated books, it is difficult to be sure about satire or humor.

So far the second volume seems to also be a bit zani.

Book 1 is satire because Cervantes was making fun of peoples obsession with stories about knights� when Don Alonzo Quijana reads those books, he’s essentially trying to figure out the deep meaning behind the words, but Cervantes point was that they were all nonsensical. He went crazy over stories that had no meaning and were absurd. Which is interesting because Cervantes would have read so many of these books himself in order to understand the cannon he was making fun of.

Hi Monica, thanks for joining in. I was just thinking we needed a member who is fluent in Spanish to join in the discussion. I looked at your profile and you read Spanish Fiction.

Looking at your "Read" list for Cervantes it appears that you have read the first volume of Don Quixote in both Spanish and English. And that you have read Volume Two in English. And that you have read Cervante's "La gitanilla" in Spanish.

I am so interested, did you read the Spanish Version of Don Quixote first? What was your key impressions of the book between the English and Spanish??

Cervantes must have read a bunch of chivalric novels, not just as research, but in the course of his lifetime. Books were still rare at the time, a privilege of the wealthy, and I'd bet he read everything he could get his hands on.

Monica, welcome! And thank you for joining the discussion.

It's really interesting how everyone else's impression of Don Quixote is that he seems very sound and sane when discouraging with him. But then he appears mad when focused on his knight-errantry. I am beginning to question whether he really is crazy, just as I assume Cervante's wants us to second guess. I noted the quote, "Tell us, now, who is the greater madman, he who is so because he can't help it, or he who is so of his own free will?" during the discourse between Sancho and Tome Cecial. Is DQ choosing to be mad?

Quixote did what we all aspire to do, but none of us does: put everything on the line for what we most believe in and want to do with our lives. That's a crazy thing to do right there. It can be mad and it can be sane... but if it's madness, it's the best kind. I think the central conflict in the novel might be: who is mad? Quixote, the others, or the reader.