SPAN 300: Cervantes' Don Quixote
Lecture 04 - Don Quixote, Part I: Chapters XI-XX. Gonzalez Echevarria starts out by commenting on what he calls the two overarching plots of the Quixote: the story about the writing of the novel, and the story about the mad hidalgo. The first is based upon several levels of narratives that distance Cervantes from his own creation. He does so as the painter Diego Velazquez in Las Meninas which shows multiple incomplete perspectives of the same work, portrays the work behind the scenes of creation, it includes the viewer in the painting as well as the author, as another character, not in a central position, but in an oblique one. With their techniques, both Cervantes and Velazquez present the limitations of human knowledge. The madness of Don Quixote is present in the two episodes that Gonzalez Echevarria comments upon afterward. The episode with the goatherds connects the ideal world (inside the hidalgo's mind) and the real world of the goatherds. Their human kindness becomes a human quality in the novel displayed by many regardless of social origin. The story of Marcela and Grisostomo follows. Here Cervantes portrays their socio-economic world while at the same time he defends their free will above everything else. (from oyc.yale.edu)
| Lecture 04 - Don Quixote, Part I: Chapters XI-XX |
| Time | Lecture Chapters |
| [00:00:00] | 1. Exaggerated Mimicry, Virtual Texts and Ironic Distancing |
| [00:09:41] | 2. Cervantes and Velazquez: Self-Reflection and the Limits of Knowledge |
| [00:31:19] | 3. Introduction to The Holy Brotherhood; The Goatherds and Human Kindness |
| [00:41:34] | 4. Marcela and Grisostomo, Social Position and Free Will |
| References |
| Lecture 4 - Don Quixote, Part I: Chapters XI-XX Instructor: Professor Roberto Gonzalez Echevarria. Transcript [html]. Audio [mp3]. Download Video [mov]. |
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