DON QUIXOTE SOME THINGS TO THINK ABOUT 1

DON QUIXOTE (SOME THINGS TO THINK ABOUT)

(1. ) APRIL 23, 1616

2. Some Definitions • Hidalgo • Quixotic • Picaro / Picaresque • Fool …

• 1. One who is deficient in judgment, sense, or understanding. • 2. One who acts unwisely on a given occasion: I was a fool to have quit my job. • 3. One who has been tricked or made to appear ridiculous; a dupe: They made a fool of me by pretending I had won. • 4. Informal A person with a talent or enthusiasm for a certain activity: a dancing fool; a fool for skiing. • 5. A member of a royal or noble household who provided entertainment, as with jokes or antics; a jester. • 6. One who subverts convention or orthodoxy or varies from social conformity in order to reveal spiritual or moral truth: a holy fool. • 7. A dessert made of stewed or puréed fruit mixed with cream or custard and served cold. • 8. Archaic A mentally deficient person; an idiot.

3. Erasmus: The Praise of Folly (1509) According to Erasmus’s satirical orations, Folly is critical to the survival of society: A certain amount of self-deception enables society to function. If we didn’t have it, we wouldn’t marry, have children, go to war, create art, etc. ; moreover, we could not deal with reality.

• To be foolish is to happy; to be happy is to be foolish. • Wisdom without folly leads to suicide: life is harsh and unbearable. True wisdom, and our very survival, requires folly. • A harmless madness is not a bad thing.

An example of Erasmus’s reasoning: “Whoever Intends to have Children must have Recourse to Folly”: “But tell me, I beseech you, what man is that would submit his neck to the noose of wedlock, if, as wise men should, he did but first truly weigh the convenience of the thing? Or what woman is there would ever go to it did she seriously consider either the peril of child-bearing or the trouble of bringing them up? So then, if you owe your beings to wedlock, you owe that wedlock to this my follower, Madness; and what you owe to me I have already told you. “

Towards a theology of folly: • "If anyone among ye, " says he, "seem to be wise, let him be a fool that he may be wise. " And in Luke, Jesus called those two disciples with whom he joined himself upon the way, "fools. " Nor can I give you any reason why it should seem so strange when Saint Paul imputes a kind of folly even to God himself. "The foolishness of God, " says he, "is wiser than men. “ • We were not meant to eat of the Tree of Knowledge. In Paradise, we were fools!

• “And what is all this life but a kind of comedy, wherein men walk up and down in one another's disguises and act their respective parts, till the property-man brings them back to the attiring house? ” – We are all actors, playing roles. People are not always what they seem. Our public and private masks do not always match.

…Consider Milan Kundera on Don Quixote and love: “The question concerns us all: If, from our childhood on, the examples of love were not there inviting us to copy them, would we know what ‘loving’ means? ”

4. Sancho Panza vs. Don Quixote • Realism vs. Idealism • Stupidity vs. Insanity • Cervantes creates not only one of the most lasting literary figures, but two of them! Don Quixote is not possible without Sancho. • Inspiration to artists (Picasso, etc. )

5. Speaking of Realism…

• “What murmuring is that, Sancho? ” “I don’t know, sir…. It must be some new business, because adventures and misadventures never come singly. ” (page 160) • CHAPTER XLIX, Which concerns the intelligent conversation that Sancho Panza had with his master Don Quixote (page 448)

Page 558: Final (for now) thoughts on Don Quixote & Sancho Panza: “With every day that passes by, dear Sancho, ” said Don Quixote, “you lose some foolishness and gain some sense. ” “Yes, some of your good sense is bound to stick on to me, ” Sancho replied. “Soil that left to itself would be poor and sterile gives good yields when you manure it and you till it. What I’m trying to say is that being with you is the manure that’s been spread over the barren soil of my poor wits, and the tilling is all this time I’ve been with you, serving you, so I’m hoping to give wonderful yields that won’t be unworthy to be piled up beside the paths of good breeding that you’ve trodden over this feeble understanding of mine. ”

6. More Definitions • The “novel” • ADJ. , c. 1420: “fresh, new, recent” (novus, nouveau) • NOUN, 1566: “new story, ” originally applied to short stories or collections of short stories • Until the mid-1600 s, long works of narrative fiction were known as “ROMANCES, ” because that genre so dominated fiction for so long. Finally, the term “the novel” replaced “romance” to describe such works.

• “Prose” • Kundera: two meanings: – Nonversified language – The concrete, the everyday, corporeal nature of life (“prosaic”) – “But prose is not merely the difficult or vulgar side of life, it is also a certain beauty, till then neglected: the beauty of modest sentiments, for instance the fondness tinged with familiarity that Sancho feels toward Don Quixote. ”

7. The Author • • “O sage enchanter…” (30 -31) “That fellow Cervantes…” (58) “Your history’s been put into a book…!” (501) The author as historian: “The translator says that he considers this chapter to be apocryphal, because they are beyond Sancho’s capabilities. ” (519)

METAFICTION (defined by Wikipedia): Metafiction is a type of fiction that self-consciously addresses the devices of fiction, exposing the fictional illusion. It is the literary term describing fictional writing that selfconsciously and systematically draws attention to its status as an artifact in posing questions about the relationship between fiction and reality, usually, irony and selfreflection. It can be compared to presentational theatre, which does not let the audience forget it is viewing a play; metafiction does not let the reader forget he or she is reading a fictional work.

Reminder: The critical importance of TONE: What is the author’s tone? Is he always serious? Is his tongue in cheek? Does his tone ever shift? Your reading of this narrator’s tone seriously dictates the way in which you interpret the novel. Things are further complicated as you question Cervantes’ own attitude towards his narrator.

8. The priest and the barber • “Their role is hard to interpret!” – Don Quixote’s “best friends”? – They “serve as the villain”? – “Foils for Don Quixote and Sancho”? – Attempt to “brainwash Don Quixote”? – Attempt to “support” or “save” Don Quixote? – “Hypocrites”? – “Stealing from him”! – They “represent the intolerance and ignorance of society” or “the intolerance of the Catholic Church”?

-- Don Quixote’s “conscience” -- “Represent the author’s view on Don Quixote” -- “They are the world that has moved on past chivalry. ” -- They are “strictly realists” -- They represent “society’s views” – “the clergy” and “the commoners” -- “The priest is … the intelligent, progressive force of society leading the common plebian barber to the path of knowledge or truth. ” -- They represent “literary critics” -- “Parents censoring a rebellious teenager”

-- “a last hope for Don Quixote to regain his mental faculties” -- comic relief: “the whole book is a comedy, but these characters go on a hilarious back and forth” -- “supposedly Don Quixote’s friends”; “contradictioary … typical human friends”; “show the ignorance and loving mistkaes people often make when trying to ‘fix’ a friend”; they “take advantage of him” -- “represent the societal forces against Don Quixote” -- “symbols of the Spain Cervantes lived and worked in” -- humor “even the priest and the barber cannot resist the allure of knight books” -- “…in doing so they become the character Freston. The priest and the barber turn into an enchanter and inadvertently make Don Quixote’s insanity worst. [They] have sealed the fate of Don Quixote, condemning him to madness for the rest of his ludicrous days. ”