Discover Don Quijote de la Mancha, Part II - chapters 42 - 44 - donquijote.ufm.edu/en

Capítulos 42 - 44

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Discover Don Quijote de la Mancha

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Part IIChapters 42 - 44

Index

Lesson 31: Don Quijote’s princely advice 6

Lesson 30: Sancho prepares to rule his isle 4

Lesson 33: Sancho Panza’s refrains 10

Lesson 35: Don Quijote refuses the Duchess’s offer 14

Lesson 34: The intrusion of Cide Hamete Benengeli 12

Lesson 36: Altisidora’s ballad 16

Lesson 32: Don Quijote’s second round of princely advice 8

Chapters 42 - 44 review 19

Course activities 20

“He acquires most who requires nothing but commands respect.”

—Erasmus,

The Education of a Christian Prince

4 Discover Don Quijote de la Mancha


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Sancho prepares to rule his isleC hapters forty-two and forty-three contain two sets of princely advice that DQ delivers to SP before he departs to govern

his island at the beginning of chapter forty-four. Cervantes begins this sequence by acknowledging that the cosmic ride on Clavileño in the previous episode was meant to convey a classical theme, namely, political humility. SP spells this out when

the Duke tells him to prepare to rule his island: “After I descended from the heavens, and after from those high peaks I gazed upon the earth and found it so tiny, the burning desire I once had in me to be a governor has been tempered, because what glory is there in ruling a mustard seed? And what dignity or empire is there in governing over half a dozen men the size of hazelnuts? For it seemed to me that there were no others anywhere on earth.” SP refers again to Cicero’s Dream of Scipio, a fundamental text for Cervantes throughout his career. And the humor of his final request again involves the Duke in the lesson of humility: “If it would please your grace to grant me the smallest part of Heaven, even if no more than half a league, I would accept it more willingly than the best isle on earth.” There are grave implications here, given that the Spanish Empire now spanned the globe and that Spain had attempted to conquer England as recently as 1588.

The Duke now focuses on political corruption. First, SP insists again that his intentions are pure: “and this is not out of any appetite I might have to step out of my hut and compete with my superiors but, rather, out of the desire that I have to savor what it feels like to be a governor.” The Duke, however, anticipating Lord Acton, asserts that power is tempting: “Once you try it, Sancho... you will be licking your fingers to be a governor, for it is a very sweet thing to command and be obeyed.” The idea that kings are deluded by their own divinity has ancient origins, and it was popular in Counter Reformation advice manuals as well as medieval Spanish authors like Don Juan Manuel and Juan de Mena (cf. El conde Lucanor and Laberinto de Fortuna). The Duke reviews the importance of dressing like a king, echoing the “all the world’s a stage” motif we saw in DQ 2.11-12 as well as the letters and arms debate of DQ 1.38: “you will

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go dressed partly as an academic and partly as a captain, because, on the isle I’m giving you, arms are as necessary as letters and letters as necessary as arms.” SP’s response echoes the Christian morality of Erasmian humanists: “it’s enough for me to keep the Cristus in my memory for me to be a good governor.”

At this point, for the second time, DQ takes SP in private into a chamber, now in order to give him princely advice. As in DQ 1.11, the hidalgo forces SP to sit next to him. We note two things. First, DQ is envious: “against the law of reasonable outcomes, you find yourself granted your desires... in the blink of an eye, you find yourself governor of an isle, as if it were of no consequence.” Second, DQ sees hubris as SP’s principal problem: “I say all of this, oh Sancho, so that you will not attribute the mercy done to you to your own merits.” Finally, he formulates his advice in terms of seamanship, a metaphor which we saw throughout part one, especially in “The Captive’s Tale”: “heed, oh son of mine, this your Cato, who wishes to counsel you, and to be your north star and your guide pointing your way and leading you to a safe port on this stormy sea onto which you are about to set sail: offices and political appointments are nothing but a deep sea of confusions.”

“I say all of this, oh Sancho, so that you will not attribute the

mercy done to you to your own merits.”



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Don Quijote’s princely advice

M ultiple sources inform the advice that follows, among them Isocrates, Aesop, and Erasmus. The main theme is that SP should remain humble by remembering his base origins. The hidalgo wants to repress the squire’s ethnic pride. DQ’s first advice is Christian. Above all else, SP should fear God, “because there is wisdom in fearing Him.” His second advice

is Socratic and Platonic. Sancho must know himself: “you must look to yourself, procuring to know yourself, which is the most difficult knowledge imaginable.”

Cervantes’s deeply humanist sense of merit, as opposed to noble right, dominates this passage, counterpoising two interrelated topics: humility and lineage. SP: “not all who govern are from royal lines.” DQ: “Make a spectacle, Sancho, of your humble lineage... and seek to be humble and virtuous rather than noble and sinful.” This hints at the converso theme: “there is no reason to be envious of those who have fathers and grandfathers who are princes and nobles, because blood is inherited but virtue is achieved, and virtue alone is worth more than blood.” SP should ignore anyone who accuses him of blood impurity. If he acts well, he will be free from “malicious rumor, from whom no social order escapes.” Similarly, DQ recalls the ethnic significance of ham in early modern Spain. Just as a peacock is shamed by his feet, so SP’s humble origins as a pig farmer will keep him from vanity and arrogance: “your memory of having herded pigs on your land will be the ugly feet beneath the peacock’s tail of your insane foolishness.”

Next comes interesting advice on women. Some of this sounds harsh to modern readers, but like Erasmus and Vives, DQ strongly affirms the notion that SP should educate his wife: “teach her, instruct her, and smooth away her natural crudeness.” At the same time, Cervantes always represents the other perspective. Thus, DQ tells SP to beware of beautiful women. The rest of this first round of advice concerns avoiding corruption, remaining objective, and favoring mercy and compassion over pure justice and legal rigor. The general theme of corruption appears again in DQ’s advice on how to handle women in his subtle allusion to the “juicio de residencia,” which translates as something like “inquiry into vacating office.” This refers to a mandatory trial of all public officials that was conducted at the end of their terms in office –an absolutely wonderful tradition of early modern Spanish governance!

We also get a good sense of the eternal difficulties posed by the slippery slope of magnanimity, on the one hand, and the dangerous harshness of impartiality, on the other. SP should not be an arbitrary judge: “Never be guided by ‘legal relativism.’” He should be kind to the less fortunate, but not biased toward them: “Let the tears of the poor find in you more mercy, but not more justice, than the arguments of the rich.” At the same time, DQ repeatedly says to avoid bribes: “Be sure to seek the truth amidst the promises and bribes of the rich as well as the sobs and pleas of the poor” and “If you happen to bend the staff of justice, let it be swayed not by gifts but, rather, by mercy.” Chapter forty-two ends with a transition from the soul of a prince to his body: “What I have told you so far are documents designed to adorn your soul; listen now to those that will serve to adorn your body” (cf. Kantorowicz). At first glance, DQ’s use of “documents” seems to mean “instructions” in a general sense, instead of specifically written information. In the coming chapters, however, we shall see that the lack of a written record of political rules is a serious problem for SP.

“DQ tells SP to beware of

beautiful women”



A t the beginning of chapter forty-three, the narrator reminds us that DQ’s insanity is limited to the matter of chivalry; otherwise, he is “a very wise person” and “he proved capable of clear and unimpeded understanding.” This makes for the fundamental contradiction of hypocrisy in DQ’s character: “such that at every step his actions discredited his

judgement and his judgement discredited his actions.” Only at this point in the novel do we understand: DQ’s insane hypocrisy is the essential problem of politics and ruling. How can a ruler ever make her actions coincide with her philosophy? How can a ruler maintain her principles in the face of so many conflicts of interest?

Now comes the second round of advice from DQ. According to the narrator SP listens to DQ’s “advice” with great interest. The narrator’s simile is strange and once again relates politics to gender: “like someone who thought to remember them and consult them when bringing her government to a successful delivery.” Now DQ’s mode of advice becomes personal. He tells SP “how you ought to govern your person and your household.” Note the irony here, for DQ has been inept at caring for his person and at running his household since DQ 1.1. This second round of advice is ironic because DQ criticizes his own caste: “trim your fingernails,” for example, refers to the hidalgo caste’s tendency to keep long fingernails as a display of their disdain for manual labor. DQ’s second point is also subversively anti-imperial, recalling the anti-Habsburg tone of DQ 2.8. DQ tells SP to dress well because this will reflect a well-measured personality. And who is the classical example of a negligent dresser? One of history’s great tyrants, “Julius Caesar.” Here DQ echoes Cicero, antiquity’s greatest republican political philosopher. DQ then turns to the care and composition of SP’s retinue and offers an innovative piece of advice: “if you have to clothe six pages, clothe three and then clothe three beggars, and thus you will have sufficient pages for both Heaven and earth.” This “new mode of regalia” is a modern version of Saint Martin giving half his cloak to a beggar. So the first three instances of advice in this chapter emphasize humility over displays of power and prestige.

Don Quijote’s second round of princely advice

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Next, DQ tells SP to speak slowly, eat moderately, and control his intake of wine. He should avoid stuffing his cheeks with food and belching. Note how beautifully this passage unfolds. When SP does not understand the meaning of erutar, “to burp,” DQ offers a lesson on the organic nature of language, explaining that the vulgar regoldar has been replaced by the erudite Latinism erutar. But the knight’s next advice acknowledges that language evolves from below as well as from above: “you should not mix into your speeches that crowd of proverbs that you often use.” SP’s response that he cannot control his refrains echoes the ironic relation between table manners and language already present in DQ’s lesson on burping: “so many jump into my mouth whenever I speak that they struggle with each other to get out.” Cervantes appreciated the creative beauty of both high and low registers of discourse.

Next, DQ recommends that when mounting a horse, SP should use stirrups and sit up straight, unlike the way he rides his “gray.” Nor should he sleep too much, which indicates laziness. Two formal pieces of advice remain, the first of which is the most important of all. Once again, DQ underscores the importance of never discussing lineage. It’s the one piece of advice repeated in both chapters forty-two and forty-three: “This last advice which I now wish to give you, even though it might not serve to adorn your body, I hope that you will lodge it deep in your memory, for I believe that it will be no less beneficial to you than those that I have given you so far; and it is this: never enter into disputes over lineages.” Finally, the hidalgo repeats with specificity that the squirely governor should dress appropriately, wearing full-length breeches and never pantaloons.

A serious problem arises at the end of DQ’s advice. For a second time, he uses the curious term “documents.” However, our hero emphasizes the contingent, casuistic nature of his advice to prince SP: “time will pass, and depending on your situation, these will be my documents, so long as you take care to keep me informed regarding the state in which you find yourself.” So SP will have to report his circumstances back to DQ in order for the knight to continue to guide him in his rule. But this undercuts the whole purpose of DQ giving his squire advice in the first place. Even worse, SP cannot remember all of DQ’s recommendations: “seeing as I cannot remember any of them, how are they to be of any use to me?” and “I can no more remember them than I can remember last year’s clouds.” SP proposes that DQ write down his advice: “it will be necessary to give them to me in writing, and then, given that I don’t know how to read or write, I will give them to my confessor so that he can include them and remind me of them whenever it’s necessary.” Note how elegantly this anticipates our modern sense of a written formal constitution as well as the division of executive and judiciary powers.

“never enter into disputes over lineages”



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A t this point DQ is horrified: “Oh, sinner that I am!... and how poorly it reflects on governors that they should not know how to read or write!” The discussion returns to the topic of SP’s tendency to abuse refrains, but notice how political philosophy lingers. SP’s refrains endorse the Machiavellian idea that “might makes right.” He repeatedly says it makes no

difference whether he can read or write because he will have power: “having the scepter and the command, I’ll do whatever I wish,” “the stupidities of the rich man are esteemed truisms in the world,” and “you’re only worth the amount that you have, my grandmother used to say.” Similarly, DQ insists that the squire’s reliance on refrains will bring about a popular revolution: “these proverbs are going to get you hanged, they will either cause your vassals to remove you from power or else bring about a revolt of the Townships.” This refers to the Comuneros Revolt of 1520-21 at the beginning of the reign of Spain’s first Habsburg king, Carlos V. We can even read a veiled reference to the issue of private property when SP insists that refrains are all he has in the world: “What the devil does it matter to you if I make use of my riches, when I have no other, nor any other wealth, just proverbs and more proverbs?”

Cervantes’s irony continues when SP claims that four refrains have just occurred to him and then lists six. Some of these seem hilarious and off point, such as “there’s no real way to respond to ‘get out of my house’ and ‘what do you want with my wife?’” (cf. Althusser’s concept of “interpellation”); others are contradictory, such as the allusion to Matthew 7.3 –“he who sees the speck in another’s eye should see the beam in his own”–, which emphasizes humility, and “a fool knows more in his own house than a wise man does in that of another,” which endorses SP’s ignorant use of political power. DQ is again horrified: “no proper building is erected on a foundation of foolishness.” He is also mortified –“if you govern poorly, yours will be the blame and mine the shame”– and sees no good outcome to SP’s governorship: “you are going to turn that isle upside down.”

Sancho Panza’s refrains



In the end, however, SP recovers DQ’s respect by returning to the themes of humanist equality and Christian humility: “when sleeping we are all equal, the nobles and the underlings, the poor and the rich” and “I would rather go to Heaven as Sancho than to Hell as a governor.” DQ is overjoyed: “if only for these last words of wisdom that you have spoken, I judge you worthy of the governorships of a thousand isles.” A final point here. Given the fact that Thomas Hobbes was one of the first serious readers of Cervantes’s novel, it is likely that one of the most striking metaphors in the Englishman’s political and materialistic critique of metaphysical thinking was inspired by this passage. Hobbes mocked superstitious belief in spirits by noting that clerics cannot explain how a man’s soul can be entirely contained by his little finger and yet not occur in greater abundance in the rest of his body. SP’s concern for his soul suggests this problem: “I care more about the darkened sliver of the fingernail of my soul than I do about my entire body.”

“you are going to turn that isle upside down”



C hapter forty-four opens with an incredible metatextual paradox. Having relied on the Russian-doll structure formed by the multiple frames of his multiple narrators throughout the novel, Cervantes innovates further, just as he does with so many other narrative conventions (cf. SP’s interior dialogue about his lost ass in DQ 2.10). Here we learn that some readers say that

“in the actual original of this history” at the beginning of this chapter one reads that the translator was not faithful to Cide Hamete’s text, having translated incorrectly the Moorish author’s complaint against himself regarding the subject he chose to write about. Think about this. How in the world can we take this seriously, or for that matter even understand it? How can the original text state that its translation was erroneous? Making things even more complicated, our narrator reports that what some have said the original text stated was itself not properly rendered. What a mess!

As elsewhere in DQ 2, this mindboggling narrative construct coincides with Cervantes’s irate response to the fact that certain readers of DQ 1 have objected to certain aspects of his text. Cide Hamete complains that traditional narrative conventions prohibit him from making use of “digressions and graver and more captivating episodes.” He feels that being limited “to writing about a single topic and speaking through the mouths of so few characters” makes for “an unbearable task,” and he further points out that he had tried to avoid this problem in part one by including the interpolated tales of “The Curious Impertinent” and the “The Captive Captain.” Then he complains that many readers ignored these novels out of annoyance or haste, thereby missing “the grace and artifice that they contain.” Finally, Cide Hamete brags that since he has the “ability, capacity, and knowledge to treat the entire universe,” readers should not underestimate his work. Rather, they should, ironically, praise him “not for what he writes but, rather, for what he has left unwritten.” Beneath this joke, Cervantes is telling us that we should pay attention, that his text is far more subtle and sophisticated than it appears.

The intrusion of Cide Hamete Benengeli

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So the Duke and Duchess send SP to his island, assigning their majordomo as his guide. Note that we can doubt that this is an island: “they sent Sancho with much accompaniment to the place that for him was to be an isle.” Underscoring Cide Hamete’s point about paying attention, our governor perceives something: “as soon as Sancho saw the majordomo, he imagined that he had the same face as Lady Trifaldi.” When he points this out to DQ, the hidalgo not only rejects the possibility –“for if that were so, it would imply a very great contradiction”–, he rejects SP’s effort to decipher reality: “this is not the time for verifying such things, for that would mean losing ourselves in intricate labyrinths.” DQ even paraphrases the Lord’s Prayer: “it is necessary to pray fervently to Our Lord that He free the two of us from evil enchanters and wicked wizards.” Note also how SP and DQ change places linguistically. The squire-governor says he’ll be vigilant “to see if any other indication might confirm or disproveth (desfaga) my suspicion,” using the medieval ‘F,’ but the hidalgo deploys the modern ‘H’: “Thus you must do (Así lo has de hacer), Sancho.”

“ability, capacity, and knowledge to treat the

entire universe,”



S ancho Panza’s formal departure is marked by three topics. First, attention to his dress, which accords with his new social status: “dressed like a scholar, and over that a broad, tawny camel’s hair overcoat.” Second, attention to SP’s similarly over-adorned ass: “the gray was fitted out with a silk harness and new trappings.” The squire monitors and values his ass

more than the emperor of Germany (a sarcastic swipe at the Spanish Habsburgs): “Now and again, Sancho looked back at his ass, in whose company he felt so pleased that he would not have changed places with the Emperor of Germany.” Third, attention to the emotional exchange between knight and squire: “he received the blessing of his master, who gave it to him with tears in his eyes while Sancho received it with sobs in his voice.” This is a meaningful moment in DQ 2, and Cervantes now divides his narrative between the stories of his two protagonists.

The chapter concludes with one of the Duchess’s maidens comically serenading DQ from a garden below his window. There is a long preamble to this scene. DQ is saddened by his squire’s absence –“hardly had Sancho departed when Don Quijote felt alone”–, and the Duchess senses this, offering him the services of “four of my duennas, as beautiful as flowers.” The implication is erotic, and the humor of the episode derives from DQ’s efforts to remain demure, as if he were a virginal damsel and the women of the palace were his aggressive suitors: “to me they will not be like flowers but thorns piercing my soul.” DQ refuses the Duchess’s offer out of loyalty to Dulcinea, and she respects his wishes, expressing hope that SP will perform his lashes of disenchantment: “may the heavens kindly infuse the heart of Sancho Panza, our governor, with a desire to conclude quickly with his lashings, so that the world might again enjoy the beauty of such a noble woman.”

Don Quijote refuses the Duchess’s offer

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Three more topics surface before DQ is serenaded. First, there are curious scatological references. The Duchess provides her guest with chamber pots –“the necessary vessels”– so that he can retire in private. And when DQ undresses for bed, the narrator oddly emphasizes that he does not fart, specifically that he does no unleash “whispers nor other things that might discredit the purity of his principles.” What does all this indecency mean? At the very least, it is hilarious preparation for the failed love story about to unfold. It might also have political implications.

Second, recalling the major trope of DQ 1, the Duchess observes that DQ must be tired from his recent “thrashing” or “milling.” He responds that his ride atop Clavileño was actually quite smooth and he wonders why Malambruno wanted to destroy such a fine horse: “I cannot fathom what could have moved Mambruno to destroy so speedy and gentle a mount and burn him just like that.” This recalls the importance of SP’s ass, but the Duchess also echoes the Trojan horse theme, observing that Clavileño’s ashes and Malambrino’s letter have eternalized “the courage of the great Don Quijote of La Mancha.”

Third, Cervantes exposes DQ’s extreme mortification due to a run in his stockings, which he has no way of mending. This passage has generic and thematic implications. It links the knight’s fall from Clavileño in the epic-chivalric mode to the hidalgo’s focus on his material poverty in the picaresque-bourgeois mode. Note also that money and green textiles, two major themes in part two, are at the heart of this scene: “he got... a run of about two dozen stitches in one of his stockings, which was left like latticework. This affected the good gentleman greatly, and he would have given an ounce of silver to have a bit of green silk (I say green silk because his stockings were green).”



A t this point Cide Hamete Benengeli intrudes for the second time in this chapter. This time he complains about poverty. It’s an amazing passage, and Hamete’s words are again problematic, ironic, and sophisticated. The Moorish author doesn’t complain about the existence of poverty per se but, rather, the weird tendency among Christians to embrace poverty as a virtue. In

particular, he questions the logic of the great medieval Spanish poet Juan de Mena: “Oh poverty, poverty! I do not know the reason that great Cordovan poet was moved to call you ‘sacred and unwelcome gift!’” Hamete reveals that he is very familiar with Christian doctrine: “even though I am a Moor, I know very well, due to the company I have kept with Christians, that holiness consists of charity, humility, faith, obedience, and poverty.” He even quotes Saint Paul. Nevertheless, Hamete distinguishes between spiritual and material poverty, and he argues that a puritanical obsession with the latter is unhealthy: “but, even with all that, I say that a man has to have an awful lot of God in him to be content with his poverty.” But the heaviest irony comes when the Moor adopts the point of view of ethnocentric Spaniards: “why do you wish to crush the hidalgos and the wellborn more than other people?” Then Benengeli makes a clear allusion to the portrait of the pathetic hidalgo in El Lazarillo de Tormes: “Miserable is the gentleman who goes about flashing signs of his honor, while eating poorly and behind closed doors, playing the hypocrite behind the toothpick with which he ventures into the street after having not eaten anything that would oblige him to clean his teeth.” The Moorish author’s criticism of the cult of poverty now fuses with a mockery of the Spanish obsession with honor and public appearances. Amazingly, the narrator tells us that all the ideas of Benengeli actually occurred to DQ himself when he tore his stocking. Finally, we have DQ’s curious focus on “a pair of high riding boots” which SP has left behind. The knight finds consolation in SP’s boots because they are high enough to cover his stocking’s new sign of his poverty. Remember this interest in footwear!

Altisidora’s ballad

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Now Cervantes parodies the kind of love scene popularized by sentimental and chivalric novels as well as the Spanish ballad tradition. In the garden below DQ’s window, one of the Duchess’s maidens, Altisidora, converses with her friend Emerencia. Their names are comical touches in yet another trick played on our knight. The narrator tells us that DQ embraces this new fantasy: “in order to signal that he was there, he faked a sneeze.” Altisidora complains of her unrequited love for “this new Aeneas, who has arrived in these parts only to humiliate me.” In other words, Altisidora constructs an allegory in which DQ is Aeneas and she is Dido. This mockery of Virgil is an anti-imperialistic gesture in Spanish literature that Cervantes inherits from Garcilaso. Note also how the basic roles of the chivalric lovers have been inverted: Altisidora plays a harp and sings in the garden while DQ listens from his window.

Altisodora’s ballad is overwrought, as pathetic as the Spanish creeks she says mark the extent of Dulcinea’s fame. Her praise for DQ is absurd: “the most valiant knight / that La Mancha ever produced, / more chaste and blessed / than finest Arabian gold.” She comically compares her own suffering to that of Job –“you inflict the wounds and denieth / me the remedy that can heal them”– and Mary Magdalene: “I should like to rub your feet, / for that’s enough for this humble servant.” She is envious of Dulcinea: “Dulcinea does very well, / a robust and healthy lass, / to boast of having tamed / a tigress and a fierce beast.” Note how DQ’s gender has changed and note the persistence of felines in DQ 2. The market economy is also a topic as Altisidora says that she would give her best skirt to be like Dulcinea: “I would even give a skirt, / bright with the finest trim.” Race and ethnicity are topics when the maiden brags that her own complexion is “somewhat on the brown side” and confesses she has been won over by the arrows of love in DQ’s Arabic aljaba or “quiver.” The most politically radical moment in Altisidora’s ballad occurs when she says she would give DQ “La sola,” a famous pearl owned by the Spanish Habsburgs, and then calls him “Manchegan Nero of the world” for having set her on fire. This juxtaposition does not flatter empire.

DQ’s reaction reveals his hilarious confidence in his own ability to attract so many women: “giving a great sigh, he said to himself: ‘I have to be such an unfortunate knight errant that there is no damsel who does not fall in love with me at first sight!’” Lamenting that he is pursued by the likes of Altisidora and Maritornes, and with sexual overtones, he vows to maintain “this my incomparable firmness.” He expresses his loyalty to Dulcinea via an allusion to the windmill of DQ 1: “for Dulcinea alone I am soft as dough and sugar paste, and for all the rest I am made of flint.” He then slams the window and goes to bed like a frustrated teenage girl.

“in order to signal that he was there, he faked a sneeze”



Chapter 42 - 44 review

In chapters forty-two and forty-three DQ articulates two sets of princely advice for our squire-governor. The first set emphasizes humility and merit versus prestige and lineage. DQ also advocates educating women while remaining aware of their capacity for guile, and then dedicates a long passage to the difficulty of how to avoid corruption and remain principled while still displaying magnanimity toward the less fortunate. The second set of advice emphasizes modest behavior and dress and the proper treatment of servants, but it also echoes the futility of discussing lineage. DQ’s advice ends with concern about the fact that SP cannot read or write, but the squire’s final expression of humility redeems him in the eyes of his master. Chapter forty-four is dominated by Benengeli’s two intrusions. The first is a masterfully labyrinthical metatextual mockery of readers who have been critical of Cervantes’s textual innovations. The second, evolving out of DQ’s shame regarding a run in his stocking, is an ingenious critique of the Christian obsession with poverty in combination with an attack on the hypocrisy of the idle hidalgo caste. Finally, we have the hilarious song by Altisidora which parodies the love dynamics of the ballad tradition in Spain. Cervantes inverts the gender roles of the lovers, making DQ play the part of a demure damsel and Altisidora that of an aggressive seducer. Most importantly, Cervantes has now subtly torn his narrative in half. In the chapters that follow, he will move back and forth between SP on his island and DQ at the ducal palace. Notice above all his beautifully informal way of inviting his readers to join him in this new double narrative: “we are summoned by the great Sancho Panza, who wishes to begin his famous governorship.” This increasingly friendly, personal narrative voice is yet another stylistic aspect of DQ that makes Cervantes the first modern novelist.

Let’s review



Ilustración por Christopher Roelofs

Course activitiesPart IIChapters 42 - 44

Instructions:

Here, you will find an illustrationby Christopher Roelofs representingchapter 44 of the second part of DonQuijote de la Mancha by Miguel deCervantes.

Ask interesting questions, formulaterelevant comments, and, more thananything, respond to some of yourclassmates’ contributions:

Which characters appearin the image?

What is the symbolic significance of the shown elements, actions,and forms?

1

2

UFM New Media productionUniversidad Francisco Marroquín

Project Management Stephanie FallaText Author Eric Clifford GrafCopy Editing Ainara Herrán Andrea M. Castelluccio Pedagogical Coordinator Lisa QuanIlustrations Gabriella Noriega Sergio Miranda Christopher RoelofsLayout Dagoberto GrajedaWebsite donquijote.ufm.edu/enDirection Calle Manuel F. Ayau (6ta Calle final), zona 10 Guatemala, Guatemala 01010Phone number (+502) 2338-7849

Guatemala, January 2017

This project has been possible thanks to a donationwe have received from John Templeton Foundation.

The opinions expressed by the author is his responsibility and donot necessarily reflect the John Templeton Foundation point ofview.

Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0.(CC BY-NC-SA 3.0) Copying, distribution and public communication is allowed,providing that the acknowledgement of the work is maintained and it is not used for business. If it is transformed or a secondary work is generated, it can only be distributed with an identical license.

CREDITS

http://donquijote.ufm.edu/en

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