Don Quixote, Part I

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Don Quixote, Part I

• CNE/ENG 120
• 11/22/04

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Don Quixote

• Author Miguel de Cervantes
• Culture Spanish
• Date early 17th c. CE
• Genre satirical novel
• Names/terms to know Don Quixote, Sancho Panza,
  Dulcinea, Sansón Carrasco, Marcela, Grisóstomo,
  pastoralism

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Background

• Son of a poor doctor, did not have a humanist
  education
  
• Cervantes adventurous life
• Fought in religious wars
• Captured by pirates
• Spent 5 years as a slave
• Held government jobs.
• 1604 Don Quixote Part 1 published
• 1615 published DQ II.

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Don Quixote

• Cervantes combines several genres into one.
• His initial purpose to satirize the romances of
  chivalry, to create a parody of a literary type
  characterized by supernatural deeds of valor,
  implausible complicated adventures, duels, and
  enchantments.
• The novel was popular immediately.

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Medieval Chivalry

• The literature that had expressed the medieval
  spirit of chivalry and romance had degenerated by
  Cervantes time.
  
• His method of showing the inherent silliness of
  chivalric romances to show what extraordinary
  consequences they would lead a man insanely
  infatuated with them, once this man set out to
  live now according to their patterns of action
  and belief.

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Erasmus, The Praise of Folly

• In 1509, Erasmus wrote his mock encomium (praise)
  of Folly.
  
• He argues that a certain amount of self-deception
  enables society to function. If we didnt have
  it, we wouldnt marry or have children.
  
• In his view, the world is like a stage - people
  are not always what they seem (how they act). We
  all have public and private faces that may not
  match.

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Don Quixotes Mask

• Our hero, Don Quixote, dons the mask of a
  chivalric knight to make his life more
  interesting and bearable.
  
• We can see the influence of Greek comedy on this
  novel a crazy idea is proposed, and the rest of
  the work concerns its working out in the real
  world.
• The humor lies in the contrast between Don
  Quixotes ideals and the real world around him.

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• The reality Don Quixote is not a knight but an
  impoverished country landowner.
  
• His ideals love as service, adventurousness,
  loyalty to valor and generosity. Tries to seek
  out wrongs and right them, to help those in need,
  to be full of valor in honor of his Lady (courtly
  love).
• Like Greek heroes, he wants his great deeds to be
  sung.
  
• Don Quixote a wandering hero
• His insanity caused by reading too many books
  about chivalry (literature corrupts)

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Doré, DQ in his Library
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French Jesuit Francois de la Noue

• Warned against the dangerous influence of
  chivalric books on the young - claimed they were
  as harmful to the young as Machiavelli was to the
  old.

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The Ideal vs. the Real

• Don Quixote seeks to remake the world according
  to his own desired reality.
  
• His Lady Dulcinea. Who is she, really?
• His squire Sancho Panza. Who is he, really?
• The real world Don Quixote confronts is rather
  nasty. What usually happens when he tries to do
  good deeds?

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First Nine Chapters

• Some scholars think these chapters represent the
  kernel of a story originally meant to be just a
  novella.
  
• The story breaks off soon after DQ has taken off
  again with Sancho Panza as his squire, fresh from
  their windmill encounter.

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Pastoral Parody

• In addition to chivalric romances, Cervantes
  parodies the pastoral novel, with the section
  about Marcela, the shepherdess who is unmoved by
  her shepherd admirers.

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Book 1, Chapter 1

• Don Quixote conceives of his idea, acquires his
  equipment and horse.
  
• The arming scene is one that goes back to Greek
  epic.
  
• The usual order of things is knight is inspired
  by lady to perform deeds of honor.
  
• DQ sets himself up as wandering knight, needs to
  find a lady. Invents Dulcinea.

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Book 1, Chapter 2

• DQ sneaks off to begin his quest, tells no one.
• Needs to be knighted
• Wants to win kleos (to be sung about, gain fame
  for his deeds). In fact, he begins the song about
  himself.
  
• Ends his day at an inn (castle) seeks a knight
  to knight him (innkeeper), interacts with ladies
  (prostitutes).

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Book 1, Chapter 3

• DQ asks the innkeeper to knight him, spends the
  night in a field, in vigil.
  
• First heroic action mule drivers remove his
  armor, DQ assaults him (over the insult to his
  honor). Here Cervantes shows the ugly side of
  chivalry - the violence inherent in it.
• Repeatedly we see DQ turning into a bloodthirsty
  maniac whenever he perceives an insult to his (or
  Dulcineas) honor.
  
• Innkeeper rescues, knights, sends home DQ.

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DQ Knighted
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Book 1, Chapter 4

• On the way home, DQ sees his first wrong to be
  righted.
  
• Does he really make the situation of the beaten
  boy any better?
  
• DQ sees merchants on the road, imagines himself
  on the brink of an adventure challenges them,
  charges, gets beaten up.

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Book 1, Chapter 5

• DQ unable to get up, thinks of chivalric
  stories.
  
• Farmer friend finds him, takes him home.
• Family is distressed by his absence and his
  illness.
  

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Book 1, Chapter 6

• As DQ sleeps, the curate and barber burn his
  library.

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Book 1, Chapter 7

• Family and friends convince DQ that his enchanter
  enemy destroyed the library.
  
• DQ acquires a squire and money for his quests.

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Book 1, Chapter 8

• Reality vs. Fantasy
• The windmill adventure.
• What does DQ think the windmills are?
• How does he explain the fact that Sancho sees
  only windmills?
  
• DQ and Sancho Panza run into friars and a Basque
  lady, traveling separately.
  
• What does he imagine they are?

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Doré, DQ and the Windmill
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Picasso, DQ and the Windmill
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Book 1, Chapter 9

• The narrator plays with his readers, interrupting
  the story, claiming that he could not discover
  what had happened in DQs duel with the Basque.
  
• How does the narrator learn what happened next?

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Book 1, Chapter 10

• Upon seeing DQ win the battle with the Basque,
  Sancho Panza requests his island reward. DQ urges
  patience.
  
• Sancho fears retribution for the fight from the
  Holy Brotherhood. DQ fears nothing, since he is a
  knight errant.
  
• Wounded in his ear, DQ tells Sancho about magic
  healing potions Sancho would rather have the
  recipe than an island.

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Book 1, Chapters 11 - 12

• Having taken shelter with goatherds, the two
  spend the night.
  
• Dinner with the goatherds.
• The goatherds share some gossip the death of
  Grisostomo (the famous student-shepherd).
  
• Why did he die?
• What social class had Grisostomo really been?
• What science had he practiced?

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Introduction to Pastoralism

• Invented by the Hellenistic Greek poet Theocritus
  c. 250 BC.
  
• It is a literary conceit pastor is Latin for
  shepherd, bucolos is Greek for shepherd
  
• pastoral bucolic
• Characters in the poems are presented as
  connected in some way to the simple, pure world
  of shepherding.

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Escapism

• At its root, pastoralism is about escapism.
• Pastoral arises in troubled times, in
  sophisticated environments when societal norms
  are being shaken up.
  
• It is a release from worries and the
  unpleasantness of real life.
  
• The pastoral impulse today science fiction
  (early bright future Star Trek shows), films
  like Dances With Wolves The Thin Red Line.

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Dying for Love

• In Theocritus poems, we see the goatherd Daphnis
  dying for love of a girl (moral love is cruel to
  lovers beloveds can be cruel).
  
• Reality check the sort of people the poet
  pretends to be could never do what he does - he
  is highly educated with sophisticated tastes.
  
• So characters in pastoralism are phony - they
  are posers.

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Marcela and Grisostomo

• The famous student-shepherd Grisóstomo died this
  morning, and its rumored he died for that
  fiendish Marcela, rich Guillermos daughter, that
  girl who wanders about all those godforsaken
  places dressed up as a shepherdess.
• (I.e., he committed suicide like Daphnis and
  countless other pastoral suffering heroes.)
  
• So begins the story of two fake posers, rich
  Marcela, and college-student Grisóstomo, who have
  taken to posing as shepherds. They have fallen
  into the pastoral mode, and could have been taken
  from the poetry of Theocritus.

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Cervantes Pastoralism

• Cervantes never lets us forget the
  conventionality of the pastoral pose. Grisostomo
  is a shepherd, but he composes poetry (and plays
  the shepherd precisely) because he is an educated
  man!
• Marcela is the daughter of a rich merchant
  Cervantes tells a contrived story about what
  drove her out into the wild to impersonate a
  shepherdess. She spurns all suitors.

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Uncooperative Marcela

• Marcela appears suddenly at Grisostomos funeral,
  to refute the pastoral image he has foisted upon
  her (and to refuse to play the role of femme
  fatale)
• Her speech is a model of a rhetorical defense
  (funny again when imagined to have come from the
  mouth of a shepherdess!), a sophisticated speech
  with all sorts of learned arguments refuting the
  indifferent-woman-as-killer image.
• In fact, she pops the bubble of the pretensions
  of pastoralism beautifully
  

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Marcelas Defense

• If Grisostomo was killed by his own impatience
  and uncontrolled passion, why should anyone blame
  my modest and circumspect behavior for that? If
  I keep my purity in the company of the trees, why
  should anyone want me to lose it in the company
  of men? I have wealth of my own, and I dont
  covet anyone elses I live in freedom and I
  dont like to be constrained I neither love nor
  hate anyone . . . The innocent company of the
  village shepherdesses and the care of my goats
  keep me happy.

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Touché

• And as she said this she turned and disappeared
  into the thick of a nearby forest without waiting
  for an answer, leaving everyone astonished as
  much at her intelligence as at her beauty.

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Royal Pastoralism

• Marie Antoinette was queen of France up to the
  French revolution in 1789 she was beheaded a
  few years later.
  
• She lived in an incredibly complex and
  sophisticated web of court rituals she played
  at pastoral escape in her laiterie, her dairy
  farm, a little toy village on her husbands great
  palace estate at Versailles. Servants did the
  real work, as M-A ran around with her friends
  dressed as simple folk.
• The idea of posing is very strong in her
  example
  

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Marie Antoinettes Escape
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Formal Gardens Versailles
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Inside Versailles
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Marie Antoinette
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Close up of Versailles Pastoral Escape
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The Milking Shed