Discover Don Quijote de la Mancha, chapters 15 through 28 - donquijote.ufm.edu/en

Tirante el Blanco
Tirante el Blanco
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DonQuijote
Manchade
The greatest book of all time / Professor Eric C. Graf
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Discover Don Quijote de la Mancha
The greatest book of all time
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Chapters 15 - 18
Chapters 19 - 20
Chapters 21 - 22
Chapter 25
Chapters 26 - 27
Chapter 28
Course activities
INDEX
Chapters 23 - 24

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- Sophocles, Áyax
“In the darkness of night madness has seized
Our glorious Ajax: he is ruined and lost.”

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Iamworthahundred”
C
hapter fifteen begins the third part of the 1605 novel. It opens with another
interruption, somewhat similar, though not as drastic, to the one we saw
at the beginning of chapter nine when the narrator had lost the original
manuscript. This time, the narrator informs us that, according Cide Hamete, the original
Arabic author, DQ and SP “entered the same forest into which they had watched the
shepherdess Marcela disappear.” They look everywhere but cannot find her, so they stop
in “a meadow full of fresh grass, beside which ran a pleasant and cool stream.” This is
another literary topic, a “locus amoenus” or “pleasant place,” where master and servant
eat and rest. Thus, we are still within the scope of the pastoral genre when the narrator
reminds us of both the sexual theme and the southern trajectory of the preceding
chapters. It does not occur to SP to tie Rocinante, for “he knew him to be so meek and so
little prone to lust that all the mares of the pasture of Córdoba would not tempt him to
wander.”
As we saw in chapter five, the devil, a frequent intruder in the novel, arranges that
some Galician drovers choose the same spot to allow their herd of mares to graze. (By the
way, notice that the people of Yanguas referred to in the chapter heading have nothing to
do with the episode.) Cervantes’s description of Rocinante’s reaction is noteworthy, both
for its euphemistic approach to the horse’s sexuality and for its indirect imitation of DQ’s
chivalric voice: “he felt the urge to frolic with the maiden mares, and abandoning, as soon
as he caught scent of them, his natural manner and custom, and without taking leave of
his owner, he broke into a brisk little trot and he went off to communicate his need to
them.”The mares’ reaction reminds us of Marcela: “But they, who, so it seemed, were more
interested in grazing than anything else, received him with horseshoes and teeth.” Then,
the drovers also beat him, leaving him “on the ground in a bad way.” Poor Rocinante. Here
he reminds us of the pathetic fate of his master at the end of so many episodes.
LESSON 1
“entered the same forest
into which they had
watched the shepherdess
Marcela disappear.”

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DQ insists on revenge, and although SP notes that “they are more than
twenty, and we’re no more than two, and more like one and a half,” DQ responds,
“I am worth a hundred.” As usual, our heroes are crushed and thrown to the
ground where they contemplate their situation. First, “with a weak and mournful
voice,” SP asks DQ for “two swigs of that drink of Filthy Blas” and DQ swears that
he will have it “within two days.” Then DQ tries to explain what just happened,
attributing the disaster to his own violation of “the laws of chivalry” for “raising
my sword against men who were not armed knights.” For this the “god of
battles” has punished him and in the future it is the squire who must punish
“such scoundrels.” SP, as always, replies that he is a peaceful man and that “in no
way” will he take up his sword, “neither against villain nor knight.” This response
worries DQ and his speech is suggestive, first, of the major military disaster of late
sixteenth-century Spain; and second, of political authoritarianism. According to
the mad knight, SP must fight to obtain his proper social status: “if the winds of
fortune... turn in our favor, filling the sails of our desires such that... we land on
one of the islands that I have promised you, what good would it do you if, when I
conquer it, I were to make you its lord? For you will make that impossible by not
being a knight.” Political fortunes are unpredictable and one must have “wisdom
in order to assert control.”
Whereas DQ interprets “this great storm of
blows” they have just suffered as an inevitable
aspect of the life of knights-errant, SP remains
skeptical. So DQ must shore up his argument,
although we have to admit that the examples
he gives are not exactly convincing. Among
the knights who were “milled” during their
adventures, DQ mentions the hilarious case
of the Knight of Phoebus, who, trapped by
his enemies, “found himself in a pit deep
LESSON 1
For this the “god of battles” has
punished him and in the future
it is the squire who must punish
“such scoundrels.”

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underground, bound hand and foot, and there they gave one of those things known as enemas, made of melted snow and sand,
which almost finished him off.” It is not surprising that SP remains doubtful.
At the end of chapter fifteen we notice a turn toward the asinine theme similar to that of chapter five. SP’s ass is the only survivor
of the recent pounding and so DQ observes that “this little beast will now substitute for Rocinante, carrying me away from here to
some castle where my lesions will be healed.” DQ cites the mythological example of “that good old Silenus, a tutor and teacher of the
joyful god of laughter,” who, “when he entered the city of a hundred gates, was most pleased to ride atop a beautiful ass” (cf. John
12.15). This is a curious confusion between the Thebes of Greece and the Thebes of Egypt. The chapter ends in a way reminiscent
of the flight of Mary and Joseph, “Sancho lifted Don Quijote onto his ass and tied a rope to Rocinante, and, leading the donkey by
the halter, he headed more or less toward where he thought he would find the king’s highway... where he discovered an inn.” As
expected, our heroes are soon debating whether the building is an inn or a castle.
LESSON 1

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LESSON 2
Maritornes’sromanticencounter
I
n chapter sixteen Cervantes masterfully narrates the chaos experienced
by a group of people who spend the night at the novel’s second inn. The
episode anticipates by more than three centuries the intricate slapstick
films of directors like Charlie Chaplin and Blake Edwards. First, the narrator
reiterates the allusions to Christianity in the previous chapter, reminding us that
DQ arrives “lying across the ass” and then characterizing the innkeeper’s wife as
someone who “was naturally charitable and felt deeply the calamities of others.”
Is this sarcasm or an indication of the appreciation that Cervantes had for the
bourgeoisie of the time? While the innkeeper’s wife attends to DQ, the narrator
tells us that two very different girls assist her: one is her daughter, who is “a
very good-looking lass”; the other is an Asturian servant girl, who has a “broad
face, a flat back of the head, a blunt nose, one blind eye and the other eye not
very healthy.” This contrast between the daughter and the servant will unleash
the confusion that follows: we need only keep in mind DQ’s desire for Aldonza
Lorenzo and perhaps his own niece, which makes him something of a “viejo verde”
or a dirty old man.
The night’s chaos revolves around the fact that Maritornes, the Asturian
servant girl, has a rendezvous with a mule driver sleeping in the same attic as DQ
and SP. The poor quality of the “accursed bed” offered to DQ adds to the parody
of the romantic encounter that our crazy knight has in mind. Note that Cervantes
gives us a brief prelude to the sexuality of the episode when the innkeeper’s wife
questions SP’s explanation of DQ’s wounds, saying they seemed more the result of
blows than a fall. SP insists that his master fell, but then he has to explain his own
wounds as resulting from “the shock that I felt at seeing my master fall.” At this
While the innkeeper’s wife attends
to DQ, the narrator tells us that
two very different girls assist her:
one is her daughter, who is “a very
good-looking lass”; the other is an
Asturian servant girl, who has a
“broad face, a flat back of the head,
a blunt nose, one blind eye and the
other eye not very healthy.”

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point, the daughter says she has had a similar experience: “many times I have dreamed that I am falling out of a tower, but I never
reach the ground, and when I awake, I find myself bruised and sore, as if I had truly fallen.” It’s easy to imagine Cervantes influencing
Freud’s theories about dreams and sexuality.
SP then talks to this “maiden” about his master, whom he describes as an
“adventurous knight,” who, although today he might be “the most miserable
creature in the world,” next “morning he would have two or three crowns of
kingdoms to give his squire.” At this, DQ suddenly gives the innkeeper’s wife one
of his typical speeches about the life of a knight-errant: “Believe me, my fair lady,
you can call yourself fortunate for having hosted my person in this your castle.” But
he ends his speech by opening the door to the changeability of his carnal desires:
on the one hand, he claims he is enslaved by the ungrateful eyes of Dulcinea, but
then he says that he wishes that “those of the beauteous damsel of this castle were
the lords of my freedom.” This last detail, together with the appointment between
the mule driver and Maritornes, who “that night would frolic together,” gives us
the basis for the chaos that follows. By the way, the verb “frolic” (refocilarse) is
the same one used in reference to Rocinante’s carnal desire for the mares of the
previous episode.
One of the most sophisticated passages of the novel is about to begin, but
in a wonderful way, Cervantes pauses to tell us that the original author of the
story “makes particular mention” of the mule driver in this episode, “and some even
say that he was his distant relative.” Ha! What a coincidence, right? The second
narrator often questions the intentions of the Arab author, but here he asserts
that “Cide Mahamete Benengeli was a very attentive and very precise historian in
all things, and this can be clearly seen regarding those that are mentioned here,
which, although trivial and unimportant, he was unwilling to pass over in silence.”
What lies before us is a narrative feat almost cinematic in its effect. It begins
with a description of DQ fantasizing, “his eyes wide open like a jackrabbit.” Then
the narrator describes the “wondrous quiet” of the place: “The entire inn was silent,
LESSON 2
“Believe me, my fair lady, you
can call yourself fortunate for
having hosted my person in
this your castle.”

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and there was no light aside from a lamp that hung gleaming over the front door.” According to his madness, DQ believes the
innkeeper’s daughter “was the daughter of the lord of the castle, who, overcome by his gallantry, had fallen in love with him and
had promised that night, despite her parents (a furto de sus padres), to come lie down with him for a while.” This is the free indirect
style. The narrator’s voice phonetically signals the thoughts of DQ. And DQ is most worried by “the perilous risk which was about to
confront his virtue, and he proposed in his heart to commit no treason against his lady Dulcinea of Toboso.”
The episode is funny not only due to DQ’s hallucinations, but because his behavior is in stark contrast to his alleged loyalty to
Dulcinea. Once Maritornes enters the room, our hidalgo “threw out his arms to receive his beauteous maiden... he grabbed her firmly
by the wrist and pulling her toward him, she not daring to speak a word, he sat her down on the bed.” We should note how DQ’s
imagination makes Maritornes increasingly exotic, transforming her “burlap” into “the finest and most delicate gauze,” “some glass
beads” into “precious oriental pearls,” and her “hair, which was something of a horse’s mane” into “lucid strands of Arabian gold.”
Holding her tightly (too tightly Freud would say), DQ proclaims his loyalty to Dulcinea: “even if my desire wished to satisfy yours, it
would be impossible.” As this is happening, the mule driver gets jealous. Jealousy again!
Total chaos now erupts in the inn. The mule driver smashes DQ, Maritornes falls on top of SP and they beat each other, the
landlord comes in “and everyone set to hitting everyone else with such fury that there was not a second’s respite.” To top things off
the innkeeper’s lamp goes out and everyone is left in the dark, swinging about with such fury “that everything they touched got
whacked.” It’s like a scene from The Three Stooges. And in the midst of this chaos, the novel’s first lawman appears, an “officer of the
Old Holy Brotherhood of Toledo.” Known as a “cuadrillero,” he grabs his staff, a symbol of his authority, enters the room, and shouts
“Everyone stop in the name of the law!” Everyone slithers away, but when the officer encounters DQ “frozen stiff and lying on his
back,” he believes that our hidalgo has been murdered, and Cervantes’s narrative briefly wavers between a burlesque comedy and a
detective novel: “Lock the door to the inn! Nobody leaves, for they have just killed a man!”
LESSON 2
Everyone slithers away, but
when the officer encounters
DQ “frozen stiff and lying
on his back,”

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LESSON 3
TheblanketingofSancho
C
hapter seventeenth opens with a funny conversation
between master and squire, during which SP loses his
patience with DQ and then has to disguise the meaning
of his own words so as not to insult him. We will see this wonderful
technique repeated throughout the novel. But there is seriousness here,
too. For example, the novel’s north-south trajectory appears again in
the narrator’s reference to a famous ballad of the Cid. This is developed
further when DQ concludes that the beating he has just received was
because “the treasured beauteousness of this damsel must be guarded
by some enchanted Moor and must not be intended for me.” SP agrees,
adding that “more than four hundred Moors have beaten me.” DQ replies
that everything will be alright: “I will now prepare the precious balm
with which we will heal ourselves in the blink of an eye.”
When the lawman returns with a lamp, we have another vignette of
human cruelty. The officer asks DQ casually, “How are you, good fellow?”
DQ objects to the officer’s informality, saying,“Is it customary in this land
to speak like that to knights-errant, you idiot?” The officer then whacks
DQ in the head with the lamp and everyone’s in the dark again. SP now
produces an ironic comment: “Certainly, sir, that is the enchanted Moor,
and surely he keeps the treasure for others and for us only produces fists
and candle blows.” If “wrath” and “anger” are the main problems “in this
fortress,” DQ has their remedy at hand: “ask them to give me a little oil,
wine, salt, and rosemary in order to make the therapeutic balm; in truth
I think I have great need for it now because I am losing much blood from
“The treasured beauteousness
of this damsel must be guarded
by some enchanted Moor and
must not be intended for me.” SP
agrees, adding that “more than four
hundred Moors have beaten me.”

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the wound that phantom gave me.” This hint at the metaphysical topic of
ghosts will be explored in greater detail in coming chapters.
But back to the carnivalesque world of DQ and his balm. Note how,
when SP asks the officer for its ingredients, he insults the squire, this time
intentionally, by passing along to the innkeeper “what that good fellow
wanted.” DQ mixes his “basic elements” into “a compound of them” and now
we have another of the novel’s irreverent mockeries of Catholic ritual, as
our hidalgo says “eighty paternosters over the flask and as many Hail Marys,
Salve Reginas, and Apostles’ Creeds, and each word was accompanied by
the blessing sign of a cross.” If you can read what happens now without
laughing, perhaps you should rethink the idea of DQ practicing medicine:
“as soon as he finished drinking it, he began vomiting, such that he left
nothing in his stomach.” Nevertheless, three hours later, DQ feels completely
cured, and the narrator reports that “with that remedy he could undertake
henceforth with no fear whatsoever any fight, battle, or challenge, no matter
how dangerous it might be.”
When SP sees this, he takes it as a miracle and wants to try the balm
himself. Here Cervantes’s narrative voice is impressive: “It appears to be the
case, however, that poor Sancho’s stomach was not as delicate as that of
his master, and so, before he vomited, he felt so ill and such nausea, and
endured so much sweating and fainting, that he thought it was truly his final
hour; and, finding himself in such agony and distress, he cursed both the
balm and the thief that had given it to him.” DQ’s reaction is also laughable: “I
believe, Sancho, that you are so afflicted because you have not been dubbed
a knight.” And the final result is even worse: “At this point the potion took
effect, and the poor squire overflowed by way of both channels, and with
such force that neither the reed mat on which he lay nor the burlap blanket
with which he covered himself could ever be used again. He perspired and
dripped with such paroxysms and calamities that not only he but everyone
there thought his life was surely over.”
“ask them to give me a little oil, wine,
salt, and rosemary in order to make
the therapeutic balm; in truth I think
I have great need for it now because I
am losing much blood from the wound
that phantom gave me.”
LESSON 3

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But let’s not laugh for a minute. If we adopt the innkeeper’s perspective, what happens now is not at all funny. First, as he leaves,
DQ steals a pike in a corner of the inn, behaving very much like the thief that SP has just cursed. Then, all the time making eyes at
the daughter of the innkeeper, the hidalgo asks if he can repay his host by ensuring that he is “avenged of some arrogant villain who
hath offended thee.” The landlord responds with calm and precision: “All I want is that you pay me for the night you spent in my inn:
for the straw and barley given to your two beasts and for your dinner and your beds.” Oh Jesus! Again? Hath DQ learned nothing by
his previous outing?
And who pays in the end?
The squire, of course. The
episode ends with the famous
and unforgettable “blanketing of
Sancho Panza.” A group of rascals
(pícaros), who also frequent a
certain market in Seville (the South again), take revenge on SP, “as if inspired
and moved by a common spirit.” It’s another hilarious scene, but we’ve already
laughed a lot. So let’s finish chapter seventeen by noting how Cervantes
indicates a moral that is both Christian and bourgeois: after being tossed in a
blanket, when SP requests that Maritornes bring him wine instead of water, the
narrator informs us that “she did so out of very good will, and she paid for it with
her own money, because, in fact, it can be said of her that, although she was of
the profession, she still had certain signs and shades of a Christian woman.” And
here Cervantes’s carnivalesque reveals an important detail about SP’s departure:
“the landlord kept his saddlebags, in payment for what was owed.” And one last
insult to DQ: the landlord wants to lock the door because he fears the hidalgo
might return, but, according to the narrator, “the blanketeers would not agree
to it, for... they deemed him not worth two farthings of worry.”
The episode ends with the
famous and unforgettable
“blanketing of Sancho Panza.”
LESSON 3

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LESSON 4
Thebattleofthesheep
C
hapter eighteen relates the famous “Battle of the Sheep.” It is
similar to the “Adventure of the Windmills,” but instead of Dante,
the allusion is to the ancient epic hero Ajax. According to one
version of his tragic end, this fierce Greek warrior went mad and committed
suicide after killing a herd of sheep that he mistook for his rivals. But before
giving us DQ as a parody of Ajax, Cervantes reports a brief debate between
master and squire about what happened at the inn. DQ is convinced that those
who blanketed SP were “ghosts and otherworldly people.” SP disagrees and believes things are bound to get worse and that it would
be better to return home and attend to the harvest and their households. DQ reiterates his militant attitude: “what pleasure can
equal that of winning a battle and that of triumphing over one’s enemy?” SP notes that so far experience has not provided them with
such pleasures and that even in his battle against the Basque, the knight came away missing “half an ear.”
This debate is cut short when our heroes see coming
their way “a large and thick cloud of dust” raised by
“two large herds of sheep and goats.” DQ declares that
they are two armies “of various and countless nations”
and he informs SP that they must “aid and assist the
feeble and the less favored.” DQ, perhaps like us,
tends to root for underdogs. DQ’s description of the
various warriors is an hilarious parody of the chivalric
style: we have Emperor Alifanfarón, Pentapolín of the
Sleeveless Arm, and Micocolembo (a raunchy name);
then come Laurcalco, Lord of the Silver Bridge, and
Brandabarbarán, Lord of the Three Arabias. Of course,
SP is only worried about finding a place to hide his ass.
“what pleasure can equal that
of winning a battle and that of
triumphing over one’s enemy?”

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And the real problem, as always, concerns the identity of DQ. With whom and against whom is he going to fight? On the one hand,
he invents a romantic story: Alefanfarón “is in love with Pentapolín’s daughter, who is a very beauteous and also graceful lady,” which
sounds suspiciously like the fantasies of our crazy hidalgo. However, Alefanfarón “is a raging pagan” and is unwilling to renounce
“the law of his false prophet Mohammed.” Again, Cervantes challenges our view of DQ. Is he a militant defender of the Christian faith
or is he a kind of star-crossed, transcultural lover? Nor should we be surprised to find that everything hinges on the geography of
Spain. On one side, we have Turks, Arabs, and Africans. On the other side, we have “Gothic bloodlines” associated with the European
ancestry of the heroes of the Reconquista, men who drink from “the crystal streams” of the rivers of Spain: the Betis, the Tagus, the
Genil, the Pisuerga, and the Guadiana.
SP has doubts: “Perhaps this is all sorcery, like last night’s
phantoms”; but DQ is resolved: “I alone am enough to bring
victory to the party to whom I grant my assistance.” In the end, the
confrontation between DQ and the “squadron of sheep” is more
like one between a maddened Ajax and a young David in his fight
against Goliath. DQ attacks the sheep: “he set about lancing them
with great courage and swagger, as if he were truly charging at
his mortal enemies,” and so the shepherds and farmers “unfurled
their slings and began to greet his ears with stones.” DQ ends up
losing “three or four teeth and molars from his mouth.” However,
against all empirical evidence, he insists that a wizard “has turned
those enemy squadrons into herds of sheep.” He even tells SP:
“mount your ass and follow them slyly and you will see how,
once they have moved a bit away from here, they will turn back
into their original beings.” But before SP can do that, DQ asks his
squire to see how many teeth he is missing. The result is another
hilarious, grotesque scene.
This is because DQ took a swig of his balm during the battle.
Thus, “at the moment that Sancho leaned in to examine his
mouth, he hurled upward, as if discharging a shotgun, everything
in his stomach, and blew all of it right into the face and beard of
LESSON 4

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the compassionate squire.” At first, SP believes this to be blood: “‘Mother of God!...
What has happened? No doubt this poor sinner is mortally wounded, for he vomits
blood from his mouth.’ But upon closer examination, he realized from the color,
the taste, and the smell that it was not blood but the balm from the flask which he
had seen him drink; and he was so taken by disgust that his stomach turned and
he vomited all of his guts all over his master, and the two of them were like a pair
of pearls.” This is surely the locus classicus, the first case in the history of Western
Literature, in which two characters actually vomit on each other. I have to admit
this part kills me every time I read it, but my mother would not approve.
After all this, SP learns that the saddlebags of his ass are missing, and with this the narrator makes the first mention of the
controversial issue of the squire’s salary: “He made up his mind to leave his master and return to his land, even if this meant forfeiting
his wages and all hopes of governing the promised island.” While SP remains “leaning over his ass with his hand on his cheek,” DQ
launches into another of his moralizing speeches: “Know ye, Sancho, that one man is not worth more than another.” Ironically,
at the end of a rather violent episode, for DQ
thinks that the seven animals he killed were his
enemies, our hero explicitly refers to Matthew
5.45: “God... makes His sun shine on the good
and the evil and His rain fall on the unjust and
the just.” SP observes sardonically that DQ should
have been a preacher and not a knight, which
should remind us of the passage from Matthew
5.44 cited by Cervantes’s mysterious friend in the
prologue: “diligite inimicos vestros,” that is, “love
your enemies.” DQ, indefatigable, observes that
“knights-errant there were in centuries past who
would stop to give a sermon or make a speech
in the middle of a field of battle as if they were
graduates of the University of Paris.” There is a
certain moral here on the paradox of religious
militancy.
“‘Mother of God!... What
has happened? No doubt
this poor sinner is mortally
wounded, for he vomits
blood from his mouth.’”
LESSON 4

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Let’s review: In these four chapters we have gone from
Rocinante’s parody of his master’s sexuality to anticipations of
the frantic burlesque of The Pink Panther and the infamous vomit
scene from Family Guy (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_
SKdN1xQBjk). All of this is accompanied by moralizing mockeries
of the extremes of Spanish imperialism and the excessively anti-
bourgeois mentality of certain nobles around 1600. The scholar
Harold Bloom once claimed that Shakespeare invented the
human. With all due respect, Shakespeare was a genius no doubt,
but he comes nowhere near the human ingenuity of Cervantes.
LESSON 4

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- Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan
“...when a man compoundeth the image
of his own person with the image of
the actions of another man, as when a
man imagines himself a Hercules or an
Alexander (which happeneth often to
them that are much taken with reading of
romances), it is a compound imagination,
and properly but a fiction of the mind.”

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Theadventureofthedeadbody
C
hapter nineteen extends the metaphysical implications of chapter
eighteen’s claims by DQ that the men who tossed SP in a blanket were
actually phantoms. Moreover, the issue now incorporates the famous
mysticism of the late sixteenth century Spain. And it’s not surprising that we find here
further allusions to the Inquisition, an institution that was always suspicious of the
radical visions of mystic poets like St. Teresa of Avila and St. John of the Cross.
At the beginning of “The Adventure of the Dead Body,” which echoes the figure of
Grisóstomo, SP speculates that their recent misfortunes are due to the fact that DQ has
not complied with his promise “not to eat over a tablecloth nor lie with the queen...
until you win that helmet of Malandrino, or whatever the Moor is
called, for I do not remember well.” DQ notes that SP also bears
his share of responsibility –“I understand that you are not fully
excluded from among the accomplices”– but he still swears to
perform the promised penance. Then SP insists that this time
his master should keep his word, because, if not, “maybe those
phantoms will once again feel like having their way with me, and
even with your grace, if they see you being so obstinate.” This
language would have reminded the baroque reader of the jargon
used by the Inquisition, which called“accomplices”(participantes)
anyone who continued relations with the excommunicated and
“obstinate” (pertinaz) anyone who persisted in his heterodoxy.
Next, the narrator tells us that a particularly dark night closes
in. This is the first of a series of allusions to the philosophy of
St. John of the Cross, whose poem “Dark Night” signaled the
LESSON 5
“not to eat over a tablecloth
nor lie with the queen...
until you win that helmet
of Malandrino, or whatever
the Moor is called, for I do
not remember well.”

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mystical, counterintuitive way by which the soul reaches God. When DQ and SP see a mass of
lights approaching, the squire believes that the phantoms are back, but this is a procession
of “shirted men” carrying a corpse from Baeza to Segovia (the north-south trajectory of
both the novel and the life and death of Saint Juan). According to his chivalric novels, DQ
interprets the dead man as having suffered some grievance which requires vengeance, and
so when the procession ignores him, he becomes “enraged” and attacks. The first man DQ
knocks off his mule, a religious student, is unlucky, for his beast falls on top of him, leaving him with “a broken leg.” Thanks to the
aggression of DQ, the shirted men “thought that this was not a man, but a devil straight out of hell,” and similarly, our hidalgo later
admits that he thought they were “the very Satans of hell.”
Once the mutual confusion is clarified, SP, who had hilariously gone about claiming the spoils of victory, comes to help the young
priest back onto his mule. As the bachelor departs, SP declares the heroism of his master: “If by chance those gentlemen wish to
know the name of the brave man that defeated them, your worship should tell them it is the famous Don Quijote of La Mancha,
also known as the Knight of the Sorrowful Face.” Of course, this new nickname fascinates DQ and when he asks SP how he came
up with it, he responds that “your worship has the most pathetic face that I have seen of late,” and he attributes it to “hunger and
missing molars.” DQ laughs. But cutting across this laughter, the bachelor suddenly returns and excommunicates our hero. He uses
Latin to emphasize the authority of the Roman Catholic Church: “I forgot to mention that your worship is advised that you are now
excommunicated for having laid violent hands on a sacred thing, iuxta illud, ‘Si quis suadente diabolo,’ etcetera.” Revealingly, DQ
takes this as a badge of honor: “I recall what happened to the Cid Ruy Díaz, when he broke the chair of that king’s ambassador in front
of his Holiness the Pope, for which he excommunicated him, and on that day the great Rodrigo de Vivar showed himself to be a very
virtuous and valiant knight.” DQ not only identifies with the Cid, but with the Cid who was officially excommunicated by the Church.
Is Cervantes mocking the Church or the epic hero of Spain? Perhaps both.
LESSON 5
“thought that this was
not a man, but a devil
straight out of hell,”
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LESSON 6
ThetaleofLopeRuiz
A
t the end of the episode, DQ wants to investigate whether the dead
body “consisted of bones or not,” but SP does not allow it, deploying
a refrain: “leave the dead to the tomb and the living to the loaf.” And
the narrator ends with another anticlerical gesture: “lying on the green grass,
with hunger as their sauce, they ate lunch, dinner, breakfast, and supper all at
once, satisfying their stomachs with more than one of the stores of meat that the
dead man’s priests –who rarely submit themselves to hunger– had brought on
their supply mule.”
Chapter twenty reestablishes “the darkness of the night” with two additions:
now our heroes suffer “a terrible thirst” and after walking a little there comes “to their ears a great sound of rushing water,” which
pleased them, except that it is punctuated by “a rhythmic pounding, with a certain clanking of irons and chains.” SP is frightened
again and does not want to continue, but DQ insists: “I was born by the will of Heaven in this our age of iron to revive the one of gold.”
The crazy hidalgo goes on about bringing back the Knights of the Round Table, the Twelve Peers of France, and other chivalric heroes.
Finally, he compares the rushing water to that which falls from the High Mountains of the Moon, that is, the birthplace of the Nile
River in Ethiopia, and proclaims that although the pounding noises “are enough to instill fear, dread, and terror in the bosom of Mars
himself,” he is still willing to undertake the adventure.
He tells SP to tighten “Rocinante’s straps a little” and
that if he doesn’t return in three days that he should go
to El Toboso to inform Dulcinea that “her captive knight
died” in her service.
SP resorts to all kinds of arguments against his
master’s plan. He begs him to “soften that hard heart”
and not to leave him alone, even adopting chivalric
jargon:“By the One True God, sir, I beg thee not to wrong
«la escuridad de la noche» con
dos añadiduras: ahora nuestros
héroes están fatigados de «una
terrible sed» y después de haber
andado un poco llega «a sus
oídos un grande ruido de agua»
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me thus.” But seeing DQ’s resolve, he opts to secretly bind the legs of Rocinante using
the halter of his ass. When DQ discovers that Rocinante cannot move, he resigns
himself to wait for dawn.
Meanwhile, in one of the most intimate interactions between SP and his master,
“he put one hand on the front saddlebow and the other on the rear, so that he was
braced against the left thigh of his master, not daring to move one finger’s breadth
away from him.” SP distracts his master with a story. “The Tale of Lope Ruiz” is sexually
suggestive. It is also one of the funniest stories inserted in the novel. The contrast
between SP’s constant circumlocutions and the growing impatience of DQ is hilarious:
“‘I say, then,’continued Sancho, ‘that somewhere in Extremadura there was a goat pastor, by which
I mean a man who kept goats, and this shepherd or goatherd, I say, of my story, was named Lope
Ruiz; and this Lope Ruiz was rather in love with a shepherdess named Torralba; and this shepherdess
named Torralba was the daughter of a wealthy farmer; and this wealthy farmer...’ ‘If this is how you
are going to tell your story, Sancho,’ said Don Quijote, ‘twice repeating everything you say, then you
will not finish in two days’ time.’” Obviously. SP continues with other increasingly amusing details.
Torralba “was a stout girl, wild and a bit mannish because
she had something of a mustache; and I can almost see
her now.” In these details, we see allusions to familiar
themes, sometimes even transcendental ones. For
example, Torralba is reminiscent of Maritornes, and the
reason Lope Ruiz decides to flee her is that “she caused
him a certain amount of jealousy.” This should remind us
of Antonio, Grisóstomo, and even the mule driver at the
second inn. But here we have the opposite of the other
cases because, rather than pursue his beloved, Lope Ruiz
“wanted to distance himself from that land and go where
his eyes would never see her again.” The result is ironic,
but perfectly predictable: now Torralba does indeed fall
for Lope Ruiz, and she pursues him.
LESSON 6
“he put one hand on the
front saddlebow and the
other on the rear, so that
he was braced against the
left thigh of his master, not
daring to move one finger’s
breadth away from him.”

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Two more details give this funny story political overtones: first, Lope Ruiz attempts to cross into Portugal (a kingdom conquered
by Philip II in 1580), and second, SP’s subconscious manifests itself, as Torralba carries “saddlebags around her neck,” echoing the
squire’s involuntary payment to the second innkeeper. In the end, the story is recognizable to any parent of a child who refuses to go
to sleep. Lope Ruiz hopes to cross the Guadiana River with his flock of goats, but “at that time it was swollen and nearly bursting its
banks,” so he has to arrange for a fisherman to take each goat, one by one, to the other side. SP tells DQ to count every goat, “because
if you forget one, the story ends.” When the hidalgo interrupts and cannot tell how many goats have crossed the river, the tale is,
according to SP, “as finished as my mother.”
Is the story of Lope Ruiz just a fable for children or does it contain psychosexual details? At the
very least we can assert that for Cervantes, as for Freud, one of his most sophisticated readers, a story
is always much more than just a story. In fact, DQ himself offers a diagnosis of SP’s odd tale: “perhaps
those incessant poundings have your mind in a
troubled state.”SP does not care:“there is nothing
left to say, for your miscount ends my account of
the chain of goats.” Meanwhile, the clanking of
chains continues and SP is still so afraid “that he
dared not part one black fingernail’s breadth from
his master.” Hold on. Might SP’s account, which
asks us to count, be about the art of storytelling
itself—i.e., about how or why we recount tales?
LESSON 6
Lope Ruiz hopes to cross the
Guadiana River with his flock
of goats, but “at that time
it was swollen and nearly
bursting its banks,”

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LESSON 7
SanchoPanza’ssalary
R
eturning to the main story, when SP finds himself “obliged and in
need of doing what no other could do for him,” he pulls down his
breeches until “they became like manacles” and he does what he
has to do. Like the vomit scenes of chapters seventeen and eighteen, here SP’s
faces, the noises he makes, the smell as well as DQ’s reaction are comical. When
SP’s flatulence reaches DQ’s nostrils, “he came to their rescue by pinching them
between two fingers, and with a twangy tone he said: ‘It seems to me, Sancho,
that you are very much afraid.’”
Now let’s look at the contentious outcome of the adventure. Notice how,
after many recent uncomfortable, physical exchanges between master and
servant, their professional relationship becomes an issue. At dawn SP has to
unleash Rocinante. When DQ learns that Rocinante is free to move, he prepares
for the adventure. First, he reiterates everything SP should tell Dulcinea, but
then the narrator adds something very interesting: “as for what pertained to
the payment of his services, he was not to worry, because before he had left
home he had arranged his will, in which he would find himself fully satisfied
in regards to his salary, which would be prorated according to the amount of
time served.” So DQ clearly has in mind a prorated daily salary for SP.
SP protests again, but eventually he decides to accompany his master,
“taking, as was his custom, by the halter, his ass, that perpetual companion
of his prosperous and adverse fortunes.” Curiously, the second narrator tells
us that the original author (supposedly Cide Hamete) notes that the concern
that SP has for the welfare of his master suggests that the squire “must be well
born and at the very least of Old Christian stock,” namely that he must not have
Sancho Panza finds himself
“obliged and in need of doing
what no other could do for him,”

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Moors and Jews as ancestors. I say curiously because this emphasis on blood purity contrasts with SP’s scatological filth. What’s more,
all respect and concern between knight and squire cease when we finally discover that the source of all the noise, “which had them
in such suspense and fear all night,” are six fulling hammers, a type of hydraulic machine used to clean and thicken wool. Note that
these machines were introduced to Europe via Islamic Spain.
The subsequent exchange between DQ and SP is at first rather touching: “Sancho looked at him and saw that he had his head
bent over his chest with signs of great shame. Don Quijote looked at Sancho, too, and saw that his cheeks were swollen as his
mouth fought to restrain his laughter, although with obvious signs of wanting to let go, and in the end, at the sight of Sancho, his
melancholy gave way and he could not help but laugh.” Another important case of laughter. Notice, however, that this laughter turns
violent in a way related to social hierarchy. When SP mocks DQ, imitating his chivalric jargon –“I am he for whom are reserved great
perils, mighty deeds, and valiant feats”–, his master’s reaction, according to the narrator, poses a threat to SP’s wages. DQ “became
so enraged and angry that he raised his pike and delivered two such blows that if he had received them on his head instead of his
back, his master would have been released of the obligation of paying his salary, unless it was to his heirs.”
Legalistic, contractual, and labor issues would seem to be the point of the episode’s
conclusion. At the very least, this is a fantastic description of the disintegration of traditional
feudal relations throughout the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. What replaces those more
organic relations is a new system of relatively impersonal payments according to the bourgeois
marketplace. Notice how Cervantes stresses that everything depends on the point of view of
the character, and there are even some inconsistencies here. DQ insists on a certain respectful
formalism, i.e., SP should not make fun of his master, “for not all people have enough understanding
such that they can look beyond such lapses in etiquette.”
But DQ is also trying to reassert traditional socioeconomic
relations, although not completely: “From everything I’ve
told you, Sancho, you should infer that it is necessary to
maintain a distinction between servant and lord, between
squire and knight... The favors and benefits that I have
promised you will arrive in due time; and if they do not, at
least your salary will not be lost, as I have already stated.”
Note that it is DQ who first brings up the issue of wages.
“From everything I’ve told
you, Sancho, you should
infer that it is necessary
to maintain a distinction
between servant and lord,
between squire and knight.”
LESSON 7

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For his part, at first SP seems willing to forgive what just happened and accept their feudal relationship once again. Soon, however,
it is clear that he is still trying to assess the value of his services: “usually, highborn gentlemen, after overly harsh words to a servant,
then give him a pair of breeches, although I don’t know what they give him after giving him a beating.” Notice the wonderfully artistic
context of all this: Cervantes relates a discussion between SP and DQ regarding breeches and beatings, while in the background
fulling hammers are pounding away in the most violent step of textile production. In other words, their dialogue regarding salary is
synchronized with the first inklings of the industrial revolution. And it seems that the more SP thinks about his situation, the more
doubts he has: “All that your worship says is fair enough... but I would like to know, in case the favors never actually arrive and we are
forced to consider wages, just how much a squire made from a knight-errant in those days, and if they were paid on a monthly basis
or daily, like bricklayers.” DQ, clinging to his old worldview, rejects the idea: “I do not think... that such squires ever received wages
but favors,” adding that “after parents, masters must be respected as if they were forefathers.”This is very strange. DQ already said he
had arranged for SP’s prorated salary in his will. Now he argues that squires were never paid according to salaries. Is he crazy? Is he
forgetful? Is he acting? Or is he perhaps negotiating?
Let’s review: The encounter with the dead body and the matter of whether
or not metaphysical phantoms, devils, and Satans exist gives way to an endless
story of jealousy between a shepherd and a somewhat mannish shepherdess, a
story that is told in the context of a degree of bodily intimacy between master
and servant that is to say the least uncomfortable, difficult to contemplate.
This all ends, however, in a mundane and detailed discussion
about the appropriate compensation for a medieval squire
in the pre-industrial world of machines and mass production.
Sometimes it’s hard to laugh at Cervantes’s jokes and at the same
time marvel at the complexity of his narrative. It’s like watching
a thermodynamic Rube Goldberg machine go through its many
processes. Incidentally, this is the second mill in the novel, and
it will not be the last. Oh, and we almost forgot to point out the
curious comment made by Cide Hamete regarding SP’s ethnic
and religious purity. I guess the unavoidable question here is
whether or not all these elements are just randomly related by
Cervantes’s meandering, but essentially purposeless, creativity.
You probably already know what I think. What do you think?
LESSON 7
donquijote.ufm.edu

donquijote.ufm.edu
- Murray Rothbard, Anatomy of the State
“In the long run, the robber destroys
his own subsistence by dwindling or
eliminating the source of his own supply.
But not only that; even in the short-run,
the predator is acting contrary to his
own true nature as a man.”

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Mambrino’shelmet
C
hapter twenty narrates “The Adventure Mambrino’s Helmet,” followed by
discussions between DQ and SP regarding their respective chivalric fantasies
and certain social values that Cervantes will question repeatedly over the
course of the novel. First, we note that it starts to rain, perhaps alluding to the thirst that
our heroes were seeking to satisfy at the end of chapter nineteen. But it is also important for
the plot of the episode, because DQ now sees “a man on horseback who wore on his head
something that glittered like gold” and he insists that “this is the helmet of Mambrino.”The
narrator tells us that the rider is simply a barber who, returning from a nearby village, “in
which a sick man needed a bleeding, and another needed his beard trimmed,” had placed
on his head his “brass basin” in order to keep dry from the rain.
It is important to note that the philosophical context of this
adventure hinges on an exchange of views between DQ and SP
regarding the value of empirical evidence. Maybe this is just a silly
detail, because, as we know, DQ is crazy and often misinterprets reality.
Either way, it is curious that DQ emphasizes that his interpretation of
the barber accords with “experience itself, the mother of all sciences.”
As usual, SP has doubts and is unwilling to disregard what his senses
tell him: “it’s just a man on a gray ass like mine, who wears something
shiny on his head.” Where I am going with this is that the terms of
the debate between DQ and SP seem to allude to a scientific issue:
namely, the discovery of blood circulation in the late sixteenth
century. A Spaniard, Miguel Servetus, described pulmonary aspiration
around 1550 and then an Englishman, William Harvey, described the
cardiovascular system in 1615. What is wonderful and deeply ironic
LESSON 8
“a man on horseback
who wore on his head
something that glittered
like gold” and he insists
that “this is the helmet
of Mambrino.”

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about the episode of Mambrino’s helmet is the fact that Cervantes examines the services of barbers, who at that time, in addition to
shaving beards, also provided bleedings for the sick in their capacity as primitive surgeons. By the way, Cervantes’s own father was
a barber surgeon.
If our author casts doubt on the barber’s profession, he does something similar
regarding that of his hero, who is now transformed into a phantom, like those that
DQ claimed had tossed SP in a blanket in chapter seventeen: “The barber, who, never
imagining or fearing such a thing, suddenly saw that phantom bearing down on him,
had no way of avoiding the thrust of that spear other than to fall off his ass.” When he
contemplates the supposed helmet, SP also undermines the logic of our hero: “By God,
this is a good basin and if it’s worth a maravedí it’s worth a piece of eight.” DQ says it’s a
sallet helmet (remember the two helmets he made in chapter one), and when he hears
this, SP “could not control his laughter” and remains unconvinced: “it looks exactly like
a barber’s basin.” Laughter again, not only indicating a funny scene but underscoring
the differing perspectives of different characters.
Note that if the new science of anatomy challenges the medical function of barbers, the episode also highlights the subjective
significance of material things. DQ insists that, as for the helmet, the barber “did not know how to recognize or appreciate its value,”
reminding us of one of the economic principles of the School of Salamanca; that is, the value of things is not intrinsic to them but
only a function of our relative desires for them. In any case, DQ also clings to the idea that if Mambrino’s helmet now appears to
be a barber’s basin, that is because a metamorphosis has occurred. Moreover, this metamorphosis soon connects to the amorous
complexities of the novel. This is because, while discussing the helmet, DQ makes a double mythological allusion to Vulcan and Mars:
“But whatever it is, because I recognize it and am unaffected by its transmutation, I will have it repaired at the first village where
there is a blacksmith, so that it will supersede by far and away even the one made and forged by the god of blacksmiths for the god
of battles.” Informed readers will grasp a reference to a mythological love triangle and will remember Vulcan’s jealousy when he
discovered Mars lying with Venus.
Some critics insist that Cervantes is a Renaissance author rather than a Baroque one, because they do not find in
his texts the complexity of authors like Góngora or Quevedo. I think they are mistaken, deceived by the comic levity
of DQ. “The Adventure of Mambrino’s Helmet” is an excellent example of Baroque artwork. And the literary density
of the episode only increases exponentially when the moral issue of Christian behavior enters the equation.
LESSON 8
“The barber, who, never
imagining or fearing such
a thing, suddenly saw that
phantom bearing down on
him, had no way of avoiding
the thrust of that spear other
than to fall off his ass.”

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LESSON 9
Mutatiocaparum
W
hile DQ praises the magic helmet –“it will be enough to defend me against any stones”–, SP reiterates his desire to
avoid confrontation, mocking his master’s jargon and reminding him of his blanketing: “because I plan with all my
five senses to avoid being injured (ferido) or injuring (ferir) anyone else... all you can do is shrug your shoulders, hold
your breath, close your eyes, and let yourself go wherever luck and the blanket may take you.” DQ understands his squire’s point
and turns to Christian morality to argue back: “You are a bad Christian, Sancho... because you never forget an insult once it is done
you.” Surprisingly, and for the first time in the novel, our hidalgo now admits that his
earlier explanation of the blanketing of SP was a lie, because instead of talking about
phantoms and enchantments, he says that “it was all fun and jest, and if I had not
understood it in that way, then I would have returned and avenged you by doing more
damage than that done by the Greeks for the abduction of Helen.” And DQ cannot pass
up this opportunity to praise his Dulcinea, saying she is more beautiful than the most
beautiful woman of ancient history. Like the previous reference to Vulcan and Mars,
there are here ominous notes of jealousy, revenge, and epic violence. By contrast, the
Christian morality just cited by DQ proposes turning the other cheek to
aggression.
At this point, the ass theme that we have seen on previous occasions resurfaces, recalling an animal that is often
interpreted as a metaphor for Christianity. SP wants to know what to do with the barber’s mount, “which appears to
be a gray ass.” He is excited: “And by my beard, this dappled gray is a good one!” DQ considers it wrongful to force the
defeated to walk and tells SP to leave“that horse or ass or whatever you claim it is”; but, ironically, SP observes that“the
laws of chivalry are quite restrictive, since they do not
allow one ass be exchanged for another,” thus implying
that said laws should be relaxed to allow the swapping
of donkeys. In the end, he convinces DQ to let him switch
their trappings, which he justifies by his rather extreme
“it was all fun and jest, and
if I had not understood it in
that way, then I would have
returned and avenged you
by doing more damage than
that done by the Greeks for
the abduction of Helen.”

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need: “if they were for my own person I would not need them more.” We already
know that SP is capable of tricking DQ, and Cervantes highlights the issue of
moral behavior by alluding to the change of robes performed by cardinals of the
Catholic Church every Easter. In other words, this is more than a simple exchange
of gear. Referring to SP, the narrator states that “on the basis of this permission, he
executed a mutatio caparum and decked out his beast with a thousand niceties,
leaving him improved by a third and a fifth.”
Our heroes then eat and drink and return to the king’s highway. SP asks his
master for permission to talk to him about their plans for the future. DQ, surely
remembering the prolonged story of Lope Ruiz, gives him permission to speak,
but with a stipulation: “Be brief, for no speech is pleasant if it is long.” SP argues it
would be better if they were “to serve some emperor or other great prince who’s
involved in some war, and in whose service your worship might show the value
of his person.” DQ agrees, but says that first he needs to win a reputation, and
so, in the meantime, “it is necessary to wander the world in a kind of probation,
seeking adventures, so that by concluding some of them one acquires name and
fame.” Displaying substantial hypocrisy, DQ now permits himself an extensive
summation of a typical chivalric fantasy, according to which, the hero reaches
the palace of a king, where, already received and praised by all the boys in the
city, he then proceeds to “the chamber of my lady the queen, where the knight
will find her with her daughter the princess, who is one of the most beauteous
and perfect damsels, which one would be hard pressed to find across a large part
of the known regions of the world.”
Here we have a typical Petrarchan description of love at first sight between a
knight and the princess of an imaginary realm. This is, in a nutshell, DQ’s militant
love fantasy: “It will happen then, straightaway, that she will set her eyes on the
knight, and he set his on hers, and each will seem more divine than human to the
other, and, without knowing how or why, they will be captured and entangled
in the intricate webs of love, and sorely distressed in their hearts because they
LESSON 9
“on the basis of this permission,
he executed a mutatio caparum
and decked out his beast with a
thousand niceties, leaving him
improved by a third and a fifth.”

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know not how they shall speaketh to one another in order to disclose
their desires and feelings.” On the one hand, this recalls DQ’s imaginary
interactions with a number of women, from the prostitutes at the first
inn to the daughter of the second innkeeper and Maritornes, and by
extension Aldonza Lorenzo and perhaps even his own niece. On the
other hand, this also works as a plot device designed to anticipate the
intricate stories which will be told by the Sierra Morena lovers with
whom we are about to entangle ourselves from chapter twenty-three
until the end of the 1605 novel.
Getting back to DQ’s story, there soon arrives at court “an ugly little
dwarf, with a beauteous maiden who between two giants comes after
the dwarf, and who relates an adventure designed by an exceedingly
old wizard, and whosoever should resolve it shall be deemed the
greatest knight in the world.” We are not told what this adventure is,
but it is a magical test for the hero knight, like having to draw a sword
out from a stone, perhaps. Of course, the “visitor knight” succeeds at the test, “adding greatly to his fame and making the princess
extremely happy.” In the end, her father the king “wages a very bitter war with another as powerful as himself” and the hero serves
him in battle. Before the battle, DQ narrates the stereotypically tender scene of the parting of our two lovers, which takes place at
“the barred window of a garden” thanks to the intervention of a lady-in-waiting or go-between who serves the princess.
There is a lot here, but one theme that emerges from DQ’s story is the intricate issue of lineage. The princess confesses to her
maid that she is anxious from “not knowing who this knight is and whether his lineage is of kings or not.” Then “her maid assures her
that such courtesy, kindness, and courage as that of her knight can only be found in a noble and royal subject.”This is a thick parody,
but we have just hit on one of the major issues of Cervantes’s
era. Should we assess individuals in a humanistic way, according
to their demonstrable talents? Or are they always representatives
of their social caste? Cervantes emphasizes this topic through
the ambiguous and mysterious way in which DQ ends his hero
fantasy: “he returns to court, he sees his lady at the usual place,
it is agreed he is to ask her father for her hand in payment for his
LESSON 9
“It will happen then, straightaway, that
she will set her eyes on the knight,
and he set his on hers, and each will
seem more divine than human to the
other, and, without knowing how
or why, they will be captured and
entangled in the intricate webs of love,
and sorely distressed in their hearts
because they know not how they shall
speaketh to one another in order to
disclose their desires and feelings.”

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services; the king does not wish to give her to him because he knows not who he is; but despite all this, either because he abducts
her or by some other means, the princess comes to be his wife, and her father comes to see this as his great fortune, because it so
happens that this knight is the son of a valiant king who rules over I know not what kingdom because I think it’s probably not on
the map.” Then the princess’s father dies and “the knight, in a word, becomes king,” and his final gesture is to marry his squire to the
lady-in-waiting who acted as the go-between in his love affair.
LESSON 9
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LESSON 10
Thetheoryofthetwolineages
D
on Quijote has given us a perfect short version of the typical
plot of a romance of chivalry, but observe how Cervantes
allows his characters to reflect on the fantasy in relation to
Spanish society around 1600. Of course, SP simply loves the outcome,
but now DQ is gripped by doubts. At first he clings to the meritocratic
theme, insisting that “knights-errant rise and have risen to be kings and
emperors,” adding that the only thing left to do is to find out “which
king, either Christian or pagan, is involved in a war and has a beautiful
daughter.” By the way, notice how accurately this echoes what DQ narrated before the battle of the sheep, where Alefanfarón was in
love with the daughter of Pentapolín, but her father did not want to marry her to such a “raging pagan.” Does this mean DQ, who now
seems to identify with Alefanfarón, is a raging pagan?
Listen closely to DQ’s concerns: “I do not know how it could be proved that I am of royal lineage... Therefore, because of this lack,
I am afraid that I shall lose what my arm justly deserves.” It’s no coincidence that in the midst of these doubts, Cervantes gives us one
of the the most precise descriptions of DQ’s social status: “I am an hidalgo of verified lineage, with proprietary rights to an ancestral
estate, and entitled to a payment of five hundred sueldos.”This description indicates that DQ did not purchase his title but inherited
it by legitimate descent. But does he boast too much about his status? Is he exaggerating? Hiding something? Apparently so, for he
himself has to add that “it might happen that the sage who shall write my history can clarify my ancestry and pedigree such that I
shall find myself descended, five or six times removed, from a king.” We have to wonder what DQ’s ancestry hides such that some
wizard needs to clarify it.
Now comes DQ’s famous speech on the “two kinds of lineages”: “some draw and derive their ancestry from kings and princes,
which is gradually undone over time, and ends in a point like an upside down pyramid; others begin as lowly people who then rise up
by degrees until they become great lords.” Here we see a major reason for the popularity of the romances of chivalry throughout the
sixteenth century: what prevails in these narratives is the talent and determination of the individual rather than the measure of his
“I do not know how it could be
proved that I am of royal lineage...
Therefore, because of this lack, I am
afraid that I shall lose what my arm
justly deserves.”

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social status. But there’s one more important aspect to this fantastical
social system: in the event that DQ’s nobility cannot be confirmed, “the
princess will love me so much despite her father that he, even if he
knows full well that I am the son of a water-carrier, will accept me as
her lord and husband; and if not, that’s where seizing her and carrying
her off to wherever I want comes into play.” A water-carrier (azacán) was
an extremely low profession (cf. the penultimate role of the pícaro in El
Lazarillo), so on the one hand, DQ seems to vindicate the lower class.
But caution is in order. Women are important throughout DQ. Will the
princess really want to be abducted if her father does not agree to marry
her to our knight? Remember Marcela. There are times when a woman
does not want a hero no matter how much he believes he deserves her.
The conclusion of chapter twenty-one is mostly comic but
it also displays “intratextuality,” that is, it makes references to
other episodes of the novel we’re reading. First, notice how SP,
concerned about his right to marry the princess’s lady-in-waiting,
once again emphasizes the issues of lineage and blood purity:
“for I am an Old Christian, and that’s enough for me to be made
a count.” On the other hand, since we know SP has a wife, what
opinion will she have regarding this union between SP and the
princess’s maid? And when SP imagines himself wearing “a ducal
robe,” DQ’s response is ironic: “You will look fine... but it will be
necessary for you to shave your beard often, because yours is
so thick, tangled, and unkempt, that if you don’t take a blade to
it at least every other day, then they will see you for what you
are from as far away as you can fire a blunderbuss.” These words
bring to mind the battle of the sheep, after which DQ vomited
into the beard of SP “with the force of a shotgun,” but also the
“Adventure of Mambrino’s Helmet,” when DQ attacked a barber
on his way back from a bleeding and a shave. Moreover, while the
“You will look fine... but it will be
necessary for you to shave your beard
often, because yours is so thick,
tangled, and unkempt, that if you
don’t take a blade to it at least every
other day, then they will see you for
what you are from as far away as you
can fire a blunderbuss.”
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conversation of our heroes seems to extend the beard theme in absurd and hyperbolic ways, Cervantes refers us once again to the
wages of our squire. SP responds that once he is a count, he plans to “hire a barber and keep him as an employee in my household,”
adding that “if need be, I will make him walk behind me like a duke’s groom.”This imaginary relationship, which echoes that between
our knight and his faithful squire, is ratified by DQ –“You’ll be the first count to have a barber in his entourage”–, but it’s problematic
given the hidalgo’s recent violence toward both SP and a barber.
Finally, notice DQ’s last comment in this chapter: “it requires more confidence to let a man shave you than to let him saddle
your horse.” Besides indicating the bourgeois world in which our medieval knight now moves, this statement underscores how
dangerous it is to let someone shave you. What is Cervantes doing with all these barbers in his novel? We have the barber friend
of Alonso Quijano, the barber who wears Mambrino’s helmet, and now this fantasy barber at count SP’s court. I really do not know,
but it would be interesting to compare the symbolism of the barber in the greatest novel of all time with something similar found
in certain Hollywood movies. For example, there are interesting shaving scenes, such as those starring Clint Eastwood in Pale Rider
and Robert de Niro in The Untouchables, which explore the razor-thin line between barbers and anti-heroes like the angry cowboy
or the Mafioso.
To sum up: as in almost all the episodes of Cervantes’s novel, the one involving Mambrino’s helmet is deceptively simple. If, on
the one hand, experience is “the mother of all sciences,” on the other, it seems to require actual research in order to verify its true
meaning. One man’s medical cure might be superstitious nonsense to another. And if we direct science to investigate moral behavior,
things get even more complicated. After a certain historical moment, we must condemn the barber whose function it is to bleed his
patients, even if he does not know that he is harming them. And what do we do about a knight who attacks innocent people who
are not necessarily so innocent? And another question, does a poor squire who brags about his superior bloodline and who so easily
forgets about his obligations to his wife deserve to be elevated to the status of a count-duke? Sometimes moral evaluations are as
dubious as the difference between a razor blade that is sharp enough for shaving and one which is not.
LESSON 10
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- Juan de Mariana, The King and the Education of the King
“It is, however, a salutary reflection
that princes should be persuaded that
if they oppress the state, if they become
unbearable on account of their vices and
foulness, that their position is such that
they can be killed not only justly but to
the praise and glory of future generations.”

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LESSON 11
Thegalleyslaves
C
hapter twenty-two, the galley slaves episode, is fiercely debated by critics. It’s easy to see why. For starters, the justice
of the sixteenth century will inevitably seem exaggerated and cruel to modern readers. But does Cervantes share our
values? Moreover, the fact that the mad hidalgo releases the king’s prisoners tempts us to consider that Cervantes used
the episode to criticize political authority. But could he possibly have been antimonarchical? What about law and order? Much like
DQ’s golden age speech in chapter eleven, the galley slaves episode can seem subversive and conservative at the same time. I will
admit that through the years I have changed my mind several times regarding how to interpret this episode. As Cervantes would say,
you, idle reader, can decide for yourself.
So another fundamental episode begins with an allusion to Cide Hamete Benengeli. This time the second narrator calls him
“Arabic and Manchegan author.” Consider how complicated this is: how can one be both Arabic and Manchegan? This might be
simply absurd comedy, but remember that in the early seventeenth century, Spain is about to finally expel the last remnants of its
Moorish population. And quite a few Moriscos populated La Mancha. So the intercultural irony of an “Arabic and Manchegan author”
does not allow us to separate the question of King Philip III’s justice toward common criminals from justice toward a besieged group
of people in one of the first modern cases of ethnic cleansing.
Let’s attend to the details of the episode. When the heroes see twelve men “strung together
like beads by their necks on a great iron chain, and all in handcuffs,” SP does not hesitate to say
what they are: “This is a chain of galley slaves, people forced by the king, on their way to the
galleys.” Now being sentenced to the galleys was harsh punishment, practically equivalent to
the death penalty, because besides the fact that most of the slaves could not swim and wore
heavy chains to boot, they had no way to defend themselves. In addition, since rowing was the
way to steer and propel warships, the slaves were the main target of enemy fire.
“strung like beads
by their necks on a
great iron chain, and
all in handcuffs”
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It should be emphasized that DQ’s reaction to SP’s comment cuts directly to the political power of the king: “What do you mean
by ‘forced people’? Is it possible that the king uses force against anyone?” It’s hard not to hear in this comment a critique of the
Habsburgs, who used the judicial system of Castile to get the money and soldiers necessary to conduct their foreign wars. Also,
according to the traditional laws of the various kingdoms of Spain, the monarch’s powers were very limited. DQ’s stance figuratively
indicts the King for abuse of power: “here it is proper to exercise my office: to right wrongs and to aid and assist the wretched.”
After this brief exposition on royal power and the galleys to which the prisoners are destined, DQ interrogates each regarding
“the cause of his misfortune.” What is striking at first is the contrast between the relatively slight crimes these men have committed
and the harshness of their torture and their sentences. Cervantes highlights this contrast with charged puns and misunderstandings
during their interview with DQ. For example, the first prisoner says he is going to the galleys “for love” and DQ replies: “Well, if men
are sent to the galleys for being lovers, I should have been rowing in them a long time ago.” The prisoner clarifies that he fell in love
figuratively, having been enamored of “a laundry basket crammed with white linen.” For this theft he was sentenced to one hundred
lashes and three years in the galleys. Similarly, the second prisoner is guilty of being “a musician and singer” and DQ is confused
again. It turns out he is a “cattle thief” and “to sing” (cantar) means that he confessed during torture.
The third prisoner says he’s going for five years to the
galleys “for not having ten ducats.” DQ again does not follow
and offers “twenty very willingly... to deliver you from this
sad burden.” Here Cervantes gives us a short lesson on the
“marginal utility”of goods: the prisoner’s response indicates that
money is only worth something in a context in which it is useful:
“That seems to me... like having money in the middle of the gulf
while starving to death because there is nowhere to buy what is
necessary.” He adds that with the money he could have avoided
his current situation because the judicial system is corrupt:
“if once upon a time I had those twenty ducats that your
worship now offers me, I could have used them to grease
the scribe’s pen and fuel the ingenuity of my attorney,
such that today you would see me in the middle of
the Plaza de Zocodover of Toledo instead of on this
road.” We never discover the crime of this third
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prisoner. Thus, there is considerable irony in the first three cases due to the fact that DQ has committed equally serious offenses:
twice he has not paid innkeepers, he has killed seven innocent sheep, and he just stole a basin from a barber.
Now we hear the saddest case of all: “a man of venerable features, with a white
beard that reached below his chest; hearing himself asked the reason for his
presence, he began to weep and would not say a word.” Another prisoner explains
to DQ that the old man goes to the galleys “for being a go-between,” or as we say in
Spanish an “alcahuete,” a facilitator of sexual encounters. He also gives indications
of being a “sorcerer.” Recalling the essential role of the lady-in-waiting in DQ’s
knightly narrative of the previous chapter, it’s easy to understand why our hidalgo
now vociferously defends the role of the go-between. He says that the old man
should not go to the galleys but, rather, should be made “to direct them as their
admiral. Because the office of a go-between is not just any profession but, rather, an office for
the discreet, and one that is vital for maintaining a well-ordered republic.” Furthermore, DQ,
who gradually assumes the role of a judge, says that seeing this venerable man “in such distress
for being a go-between” makes him pardon “the additional charge of being a sorcerer,” and he
even argues in a quasi-scientific way that “no magic in the world can move and force our will as
some simpletons believe, for our will is free and no herb or conjuring can force it.” Notice the
predominance of the verb “to force” with which the chapter began. Does the power of the king
derive from a kind of superstition? At the end of DQ’s long speech defending go-betweens, SP
is so moved that he “took out a four-real coin from inside his shirt and gave it as alms” to the
poor old man. The appearance and movement of money in DQ are radically important. I wager
Cervantes is telling us that he respects the profession in question.
The next prisoner DQ addresses recalls for us the pre-Freudian themes found
throughout Cervantes’s texts. The prisoner has had sex with his cousins and
then with two other women who are sisters, making “his family relations grow
so labyrinthical that the devil himself cannot figure them out.” Interestingly, this
seems to be the most educated man of the group: “he wore the gown of a student,
and one of the guards said he was a tremendous talker and very subtle with Latin.”
LESSON 11
“no magic in the world can
move and force our will as
some simpletons believe, for
our will is free and no herb
or conjuring can force it.”

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LESSON 12
GinésdePasamonte
N
ow we meet one of the most enigmatic figures in the novel, the famous Ginés de Pasamonte, who will appear in several
future episodes. The first thing we notice is the importance Cervantes attaches this character: he describes him as “very
good-looking, about thirty years old,” except that he’s slightly cross-eyed. Also, he comes “bound differently from the
rest,” with chains everywhere, making him into a symbolic figure, perhaps some sort of projection of the spirit of our crazy hidalgo.
He even seems to be a kind of scapegoat, expiating the sins of the other criminals, because one of the guards says that “he alone had
committed more crimes than all the others combined, and that he was so daring and such a remarkable villain, that although they
escorted him like that, they did not feel safe in his presence and feared he would surely escape.”
Ginés de Pasamonte has been the subject of fervent debates among Cervantes
specialists, also called “cervantistas.” The novel’s most chained figure seems to be a
jab at a real historical character, Jerónimo de Pasamonte, a rival of Cervantes who
wrote an autobiographical account in which he boasted of his exploits at the Battle
of Lepanto against the Turks in 1571. Some critics even believe that Pasamonte
authored the apocryphal continuation to DQ published in 1614 under the pseudonym
of Alonso Fernández de Avellaneda. Now, Cervantes was also at Lepanto, where he
lost the use of his left arm, and he was apparently offended, first by Pasamonte’s
inflated account of his heroism and later by his spurious continuation of DQ.
But rather than reduce the origins of the modern novel to a rivalry between two
veterans of Lepanto, let’s consider Ginés de Pasamonte as a complex and important
figure in his own right. Above all, we must recognize that Pasamonte is the novel’s
most representative example of the pícaro, a liminal character, somewhere between
a thief and a beggar, who can be defined as an anti-heroic protagonist of a certain
genre of autobiographical narratives already typical of Spanish literature in the
late sixteenth century. Without going into too much detail, just remember that
the modern, romanticized figure of the anti-hero has become commonplace in
television series like Breaking Bad or films like Match Point.

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Now, the officer responsible for transporting the convicts confirms that
Pasamonte has written the story of his life and that he left “the book in jail
pawned for two hundred reales.” When DQ is shocked by this value –“Is it that
good?”– Pasamonte expressly cites the first example of the picaresque novel:
“It is so good... that it’s bad news for Lazarillo de Tormes and all the other
books of that genre that have ever been or will be written.” During this section
of the novel, Cervantes clearly had in mind the themes and techniques of the
picaresque. An obvious question arises. What moral, social, or literary value
did this type of novel have for Cervantes? All cervantistas we think we know,
but it’s doubtful that the issue will be resolved anytime soon.
Next comes an interesting joke about the pícaro. When DQ asks if he has
finished his book entitled The Life of Ginés de Pasamonte, the galley-slave
author responds ironically: “How can I be finished... if my life hasn’t finished?”
This might also be another of Cervantes’s many autobiographical gestures.
Like Pasamonte, Cervantes was a generic innovator. Likewise, he was a
maritime soldier and was a prisoner several times, in both Algeria and Spain.
Also suggestive: Pasamonte is already familiar with life in the galleys –“I
know what hardtack tastes like and I have felt the whip”–, and when he says
that under such circumstances he has had to compose his book by memory
–“I know it by heart”–, this just might be a clue regarding Cervantes’s own
method.
Even more interesting is the anti-authoritarian turn that the novel takes
at this very moment. Pasamonte irreverently claims he has already been
in the galleys: “To serve God and the king, I’ve already rowed four years.”
And when the officer calls him a “scoundrel” (bellaco), he responds with
an oddly formal, even legalistic, expression of anger, insinuating that the
officer has himself behaved in some criminal manner: “those gentlemen
did not give you that staff so that you could mistreat us poor wretches
here in chains but, rather, to guide us and deliver us to where his Majesty
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commands. If not, by the life of... Enough, just be advised that one day those dark stains (manchas) at the inn might come into the
light.” We never find out what Pasamonte is talking about. Which “stains” could these be? And at which “inn” did they occur? As far
as readers are concerned, the characters most guilty of behaving unlawfully at inns are precisely DQ and SP. As for stains, well DQ is
literally “of the Stain” (de la Mancha).
To continue: “The officer raised his stick high to strike Pasamonte” and suddenly DQ
launches into a defense of the poor victims of misapplied justice. Not only does he suggest
that there has been some “twisted ruling by a judge” and that both torture and corruption
have influenced the prisoners’ trials, DQ eventually appeals to transcendental morality: “I
find it cruel and unusual to make slaves out of men whom God and nature made free.”The
officer rejects this criticism and even insults DQ, transforming the helmet of Mambrino
not back into a barber’s basin (bacía) but into a chamber pot (bacín): “Be off with you, sir,
and good luck on the road ahead, and straighten out that bedpan on your head and don’t
go about sticking your nose where it’s not wanted.” That does it! DQ now charges the
officer and before long the galley slaves are free and the guards have run away.
The narrator tells us it is SP who understands what this means:“those who fled were now obligated to notify the Holy Brotherhood,
which would sound the alarm and come looking for the criminals.” Therefore, the squire begs his master to hide in the nearby sierra.
Incarnating the sabotage that has just been done to formal justice is the commissary officer, whom the escaped slaves have left
“stripped” and “naked.” But, as is his custom, DQ insists that the freed slaves go to El Toboso, appear before Dulcinea, and tell her
all the details of the adventure. Pasamonte will not consent to this, and, thinking like SP, he says that they have to split up, “each
man for himself, trying to burrow into the bowels of the earth so as not to be found by the Holy Brotherhood.” Pasamonte makes an
interesting biblical allusion here to the exodus of the Jews from Egypt, interesting because we are about to enter the Sierra Morena,
a mountain range which separates the Christian world of La Mancha from Moorish Andalucía and also because Pasamonte expressly
associates Egypt with El Toboso and not Córdoba or Granada.
The episode ends when the slaves shower stones on our heroes, leaving them thrashed and on the ground again. A fascinating
detail is that one of the convicts, the student of Latin, “went at” DQ “and took the basin from his head and gave him three or
four blows with it about his shoulders and smashed it as many times on the ground until he shattered it.” So there you have the
helmet of Mambrino: caput, finished, done for, smashed to pieces. By contrast, the final description of SP’s ass echoes the beautiful
contemplative mysticism at the end of St. John of the Cross’s Spiritual Canticle: “with its head bowed, pensive, now and again
twitching its ears, thinking that the storm of stones had not yet passed and must still be falling around him.”
LESSON 12
“Be off with you, sir, and
good luck on the road
ahead, and straighten
out that bedpan on your
head and don’t go about
sticking your nose where
it’s not wanted.”

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To summarize:The final episode before entering the Sierra Morena, within which will take place the rest of the novel, is characterized
by anti-authoritarian touches, a tone that is critical of the judicial system of Spain circa 1600, a series of energetic references to
the picaresque genre, and more ethnic and cultural allusions which continue to stress the problematic identity of our hero: Cide
Hamete Benengeli is the “Arabic and Manchegan author,” El Toboso is referred to as Egypt, and perhaps more than anything else,
Cervantes probes the deep moral contradictions that underwrite the maritime warfare conducted by the Habsburgs against Islam in
the Mediterranean Sea. In fact, thanks to the liberation of the galley slaves, DQ and SP are now essentially rebels fleeing the law of
His Majesty the King. But we must be careful: the mere fact that DQ, and perhaps even Cervantes himself, believe that we should not
condemn this group of criminals in chains to the galleys does not necessarily mean that our author, always proud of his role at the
battle of Lepanto, was in disagreement with the struggle against Islam, especially the Turks. The only thing we know for sure is that
the irony of Cervantes takes no prisoners.
LESSON 12

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- Anónimo, The Life of Lazarillo de Tormes
“By now I had become a rather strapping lad, and upon entering the main
cathedral one day, one of her chaplains took me into his service, placing
in my possession an ass, four jars, and a whip, and so I began to deliver
water about the city. This was the first step that I ever took toward
achieving the good life, because my mouth was well fed. Every day I paid
my master thirty maravedís, on workdays I kept for myself everything I
earned beyond that, and on Saturdays all that I earned was mine.”

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TheheroesintheSierraMorena
C
hapter twenty-three relates our heroes’entry into the Sierra Morena, where they find an abandoned travel bag and come
across another mysterious figure, a young wild man lost in those same mountains. Given the ambivalent encounter with
the slaves in the previous chapter, what stands out in chapter twenty three’s exposition is the ethnic specificity of SP’s
sarcastic response to his master’s vow that he will let the previous adventure “serve as a lesson from here forward.” SP is fed up with
DQ’s inconsistent logic: “Your worship is as likely to learn a lesson... as I am to be a Turk.” The only thing on the squire’s mind is the
Holy Brotherhood, but the allusion to Turks places a final touch on the naval campaign hidden at the heart of the previous chapter. If
we have been reading carefully, by now we should have some sense of Cervantes’s fundamental novelistic technique: the continuous
linking and looping effect that he establishes between different chapters. This technique echoes that of the Byzantine novel of Late
Antiquity as well as the pastoral novel of the Renaissance.
DQ rejects SP’s idea that they flee, saying he is not a coward and so he plans on
“waiting here, alone, not only for the Holy Brotherhood that you mention and fear, but
for the brothers of the Twelve Tribes of Israel, for the seven Maccabees and Castor and
Pollux, and for that matter all the brothers and brotherhoods in the whole world.” This
fraternal confusion makes for good comedy, but it is
also symbolic of the ancient mythological theme of
reciprocal violence as well as the utter futility of any
character in southern Spain in the late sixteenth
century trying to map out an ethnically pure lineage. Adding to the confusion of all these
classical and biblical myths, the narrator now tells us that our heroes “entered a nearby part
of the Sierra Morena” and that SP’s intention was “to cross completely through it and exit
by way of Viso or Almodóvar del Campo.” Since these two towns are way north of where
the characters are, the plan makes no sense, and the genealogical labyrinth has now been
enhanced and compounded by a topographical one.
LESSON 13
“As soon as Don Quijote
entered the mountains, his
heart gladdened, for these
regions seemed ideal for
the adventures he sought”

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Notice also how the asinine topic resurfaces at the entrance to the Sierra Morena. To convince his master to hide, SP appeals to
his “governing wisdom,” that is, to commonsense, and then he guides them both, riding “atop his ass” and deeming it “a miracle” they
had not lost “the supplies transported on his ass.” A little later we witness a curious transposition: “As soon as Don Quijote entered
the mountains, his heart gladdened, for these regions seemed ideal for the adventures he sought”; meanwhile, SP “came after his
master, seated sidesaddle on his ass like a woman, selecting snacks from a satchel and depositing them in his belly; and so long as
he could travel in this manner, he couldn’t care less about finding adventures.”
Notice how, figuratively speaking, SP changes from a sensible man who leads his master to safety into a distracted and self-
indulgent maiden who follows her knight atop her palfrey. This is complemented by an explicit pun on SP’s surname, because “Panza”
means “belly,” which he is presently stuffing. Cervantes is calling us to attend to SP’s ass. Moreover, it is time to confront one of the
deepest philological problems of the novel, namely, what happens to SP’s ass? In the first edition of DQ, SP’s ass disappears without
explanation in the middle of chapter twenty-five. The squire then more or less walks on foot until the beginning of chapter forty-six,
when, according to the narrator, the second innkeeper, also inexplicably, swears that neither “Rocinante nor Sancho’s donkey would
leave the inn unless and until he was paid every last farthing.” In the second edition of 1605, Cervantes inserted an explanation of
SP’s stolen donkey, just before the phrase that describes DQ as happy when he “entered those mountains.”
The passage inserted into chapter twenty-three offers us a lot of
information and we would be fools to overlook it. First, the narrator tells us
that SP is confident that the provisions obtained from the adventure of the
dead body will last long enough for them to escape the Holy Brotherhood.
Our heroes arrive “in the middle of the bowels of the Sierra Morena” and sleep.
That night Ginés de Pasamonte steals SP’s ass. At daybreak, SP learns of his
loss and “started making the most painful and plaintive cries in the world.” SP’s
exaggerated cries indicates the value he places on his gray ass, but the passage
is also quite specific: “O beloved son, born in my own house, joy of my children,
delight of my wife, envy of my neighbors, relief of my burdens, and, finally,
sustainer of half of my own person, because with the twenty-six maravedís you
earned for me every day I covered half my expenses!” In other words, thanks
to the transport services that SP provided with his donkey, he could cover half
of his household expenses. This economic precision is complemented by DQ’s
reaction, who promises to give SP “a bill of exchange to grant him three” of the
five donkeys that the hidalgo has at home. From now on, then, the lost value
of SP’s ass is potentially returned to him three times over.
“started making the most
painful and plaintive cries
in the world.”
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OK, idle reader, you have a decision before you. To what extent are the “errors” of the novel simple lapses by the author or printer?
Certain typographical mistakes were unavoidable in the production of a text as long and complicated as DQ at the beginning of the
seventeenth century. But other “slips” require more attention, and I suspect this is the case with what we might call SP’s “intermittent”
asses. For starters, Cervantes clearly had something substantial in mind when he deployed various, and often problematic, donkeys
and mules elsewhere in his novel. What I see is a case of conscious symbolism built around the ass, and perhaps Cervantes constructed
some of this symbolism after the printing of the first edition, but that does not excuse us from thinking about said symbolism. What
do I mean by this? Even if there are specific errors involved in the representation of SP’s asses, Cervantes understood that, since the
ass was already a major symbol for the meaning of his novel, any asinine errors had the fortunate and uncanny effect of emphasizing
and adding even more meaning to the novel’s multiple asses.
LESSON 13
“What I see is a case of
conscious symbolism
built around the ass”

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LESSON 14
Theabandonedvalise
B
efore proceeding with our gloss of chapter twenty-three, we should contemplate a number of
asses to which Cervantes may allude throughout his novel: we have Buridan’s “philosophical ass
of moral indecision” (cf. DQ 1.22), Plato’s “ass of democratic tyranny” (cf. DQ 1.45, 2.27, 2.61),
Silenus’s “ass of the cult of laughter” (cf. DQ 1.15, 2.25), the myth of “King Midas with the ears of an ass” (cf.
DQ 1.23), Apuleius’s “ass of sexual and moral metamorphosis” (cf. DQ 1.35, 2.10), the Bible’s “sacrificial and
anti-imperial ass” on which Christ enters Jerusalem (cf. DQ 1.5), the legendary “ass of Mary and Joseph” (cf.
DQ 1.37), Plautus’s satire “The Comedy of Asses” (cf. DQ 1.26), and even Euclid’s “bridge of asses” as a defining
instance of geometrical and mathematical reasoning (cf. DQ 1.32-33). Which of these nine or more donkeys
do you see in DQ? I confess that I believe that Cervantes’s novel displays a combination of all of them.
If you think about it, DQ investigates the philosophical and political dilemmas posed by the perplexing
ethnic identity of a Spanish hero around 1605. Cervantes seems to have had in mind some combination of
self-directed laughter designed to signal both anti-militant humility and a culture relatively more respectful
toward women. Similarly, at the end of the 1605 novel, the heavy references to the Christian ass allow
Cervantes to question the expulsion of the Moriscos that was about to be ordered by Philip III. And thanks
to the influence of Apuleius’s original picaresque, the ass
references in DQ are cosmically intertwined. Finally, I would
argue that the ass seems related to the marketplace, i.e.,
contractual relations based on the exchange of money
for services instead of the traditional organic relations
at the heart of the medieval caste system. We might call
this “the economic ass of Salamanca,” because it appears
in connection with the Spanish picaresque novel, which
for its part was heavily influenced by the neo-Aristotelian
philosophy of the University of Salamanca around the
middle of the sixteenth century.
Cervantes seems to have had
in mind some combination
of self-directed laughter
designed to signal both
anti-militant humility and
a culture relatively more
respectful toward women.

Discover Don Quijote de la Mancha, chapters 15 through 28 - donquijote.ufm.edu/en

Discover Don Quijote de la Mancha, chapters 15 through 28 - donquijote.ufm.edu/en

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Discover Don Quijote de la Mancha, chapters 15 through 28 - donquijote.ufm.edu/en