Read Don Quixote

We begin with the first six chapters of the novel, which include the hero’s first trip. Cervantes introduces us to a gentleman from La Mancha with a reference to Bartolo (a character who goes crazy by abusing his reading of romance novels in the Entremés de los romances, the author of which may himself be D. Miguel). The same thing happens, but in chivalric novels, which were a successful genre throughout the 16th century.

In the first part, he introduces the hero with a parody technique. Take the example of the hero of chivalric novels and transform him with humor and a certain evil: if he is young and attractive, this one will be older and less wealthy; If the other has castles, this one lives in a town whose name is not even given; If the other had the love of a beautiful girl, his unreal lover would only be a peasant; If he has a strong horse, he’ll have a Rocinante. They all have one purpose: to ridicule books of chivalry for their lack of logical use. However, the “Streisand effect” emerged and Don Quixote increased the reading rate of these books.

As a modern trait, Cervantes uses an omniscient narrator who allows characters to move through uncertainties, such as not remembering the location of La Mancha, and in a linear and orderly thematic progression through time. He tells us who he is, his property, where he lives, what his physique is like, his love of books of chivalry, and how “from little sleep and much reading his brain became so dry that he lost his mind.” (p.42). And from there, through the madness, he decides to become a knight errant and will search for his weapons, his horse, his name, Don Quixote, and the virgin Dulcinea with whom he fell in love. He leaves his home as a knight errant, and we understand the workings of his brain: “And as for our adventurer, everything he thought or saw or imagined seemed to be done, and was set in the style of what he had read, when the wind came to his mind that it was a castle with four towers and turrets of shining silver ” (p.52). Don Quixote does not invent, he transforms.

Although he lived in the Baroque period, Cervantes’ prose style is orderly and clear in the style of the Renaissance, as was his education. What stands out is the use of simple figures of thought, simile, personification and above all irony, which other characters always use against him due to his appearance, actions or language. Thus, the reader falls in love with this madman, an always wounded hero, for whom everything must go wrong from the very beginning. This is the hook for many more adventures to begin: becoming a knight, meeting the whipping boy, returning home with regret and examining his books, a clear example of censorship in the taste of the Renaissance Cervantes; All this shows us a masterfully constructed world. The reader still does not know everything that will be found in the many remaining pages.

So why should you read the first six chapters of this novel? Although there is no need to discuss why, if you have never read it, it is time to get down to it; And if you have read it, read it again, because there is no other novel that has such different readings depending on who you read it to and when. I’m at work again. We will continue to inform.