Mirror, Mirror
HUM 2052: Civilization II
Spring 2015
Dr. Perdigao
January 26-30, 2015
Merello’s Don Quixote’s Melancholy and Don Quixote
http://www.spanishpaintersfromspain.com/
Octavio Ocampo’s Visions of Don Quixote
http://www.visionsfineart.com/ocampo/visions_of_quixote.html
The author outside of the text
Octavio Ocampo’s Friendship of Don Quixote
http://www.visionsfineart.com/ocampo/friendship_of_don_quixote.html
Miguel de Cervantes (1547-1616)
• Little known about his early life
• Enlisted in Spanish Navy infantry—Battle of Lepanto (1571), was wounded
• On return to Spain, ship captured by Barbary pirates (1575), ransomed
• Published pastoral romance Galatea (1585)
• Imprisonment result of problems with accounting
• Believed to have written Don Quixote in prison in Seville
• Published in 1605
• False sequel leads him to write a sequel, published in 1615
Contextualizing Quixote
• Epic, tragedy, pastoral romance as conventional genres; DQ crosses
boundaries as modern text, satirizing conventions of chivalric romance
• All epics as quests—DQ as new form of the epic
• Deciding to live by the standards of that world in modern and realistic context,
revitalizing the chivalric code in modern times
• Chivalry as an ideal
• Picaresque novel: corrupt society, hero from lower class
• Dichotomies: appearance and reality; reality and illusion; reason and
imagination; reason and madness (2219-2220)
• “Who am I?”
Madness or Creativity?
• Stagnancy of his existence
• Age 50—midlife crisis
• Is he crazy from reading novels or does he read to prevent going crazy?
• Creates another reality to place himself within
• Question of generation and regeneration
• Genesis, Adamic creation, with naming of self, horse, love
• Windmill jousts: his inner needs to impose concerns on external reality
Perspectives
• Madness compels him to life—not out
• Through madness, he goes sane
• New life is richer than his present existence
• Don Quixote’s “real” existence; Quijada or Quesada, Quejana (2226);
Aldonza Lorenzo: Dulcinea (2229)
• The book’s existence—preceding this text, as original text (in romance
tradition)
• “O happy age and happy century . . . in which my famous exploits shall be
published, exploits worthy of being engraved in bronze, sculptured in marble,
and depicted in paintings for the benefit of posterity. O wise magician,
whoever you be, to whom shall fall the task of chronicling this extraordinary
history of mine! I beg of you not to forget my good Rocinante, eternal
companion of my wayfarings and my wanderings” (2230).
Precursor to postmodernism?
• Part II—comment on the existence of the self
• Hall of mirrors within the text, like Velasquez’s painting
• “I know who I am . . . and who I may be, if I choose” (2244)
• Self-referential world
• Prologue about not writing a prologue
“Merely Players?”
• Illusion
conjuring image
• Allusion
referring to something
• Elusion
escaping
• All is play-acting
• Enchantment: disenchantment
• Illusion: disillusion
• How does one reach reality—through illusion?
• What is real?
• Quixotic:
• http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/quixotic
Staging the Scene
• Episodes
Innkeeper
Andres/Juan Haldudo
Housekeeper, niece, curate, barber: problem with books
Sancho Panza, promise
Windmills
Friars, Biscayan
Chapters 8-9: loses historical account, missing pieces
Cid Hamete Benengeli
Grisóstomo, Marcela
Sheep
Ginés de Pasamonte
Metatexts
• “The Ballad that Antonio Sang” (2263-2264) as metafictional text
• Shattered his illusions (2273)—tale told by Ambrosio—“end the tragedy”
• Grisóstomo’s story as parallel: “Grisóstomo’s Song” (2275-2277)
• As pastoral in Part I—with songs telling DQ’s story in another context
• Idea of faith, service to God questioned, place of knight-errantry in Christian
context called into question (2271)
• “. . . But there is one thing among others that gives me a very bad impression
of the knights-errant, and that is the fact that when they are about to enter upon
some great and perilous adventure in which they are in danger of losing their
lives, they never at that moment think of commending themselves to God as
every good Christian is obliged to do under similar circumstances, but, rather,
command themselves to their ladies with as much fervor and devotion as if
their mistresses were God himself; all of which to me smacks somewhat of
paganism” (2271).
• Idealization of beloved, Marcela’s response
Metatexts
• The Life of Ginés de Pasamonte—unfinished text—as life (2290)—“that it
will cast into the shade Lazarillo de Tormes and all others of that sort that
have been or will be written” (2289), 15th century picaresque novel
• God as judge, disavows laws of state (2290-91), frees prisoners and renames
himself Knight of the Mournful Countenance (2291)—asks them to find
Dulcinea and tell her the story; Ginés de Pasamonte tells him it is impossible
but that they will say Credos and Hail Marys; Pasamonte thinks he is insane
and robs him
• Goatherd hears DQ and recognizes the type of stories from books (2293)
• Turns against Catholic faith (2295)
• Homecoming story by the end of Part I