A gentleman of La Mancha goes mad from reading books of chivalry and leaves home three times, the first two in 1605 and the third in 1615, to live what he read. From the second on, he takes Sancho Panza, a farmhand from the neighborhood, whom he promises an insula. Among inns, beatings and other people's stories, his madness is tested by those who love him and by those who mock him, and the Second Part, in which everyone has already read the First, ends with the gentleman defeated, sensible, and dead in bed as Alonso Quijano, the Good.
Part One, Prologue and Chapters I to X: The Gentleman and the Windmills
In the prologue, the author says he is the book's stepfather. A gentleman of about fifty reads until his brain dries up, takes the name Don Quixote de la Mancha, gives his nag the name Rocinante and a farm girl, Aldonza Lorenzo, the name Dulcinea del Toboso (chapter I). He goes out alone, takes an inn for a castle and is made a knight by the innkeeper (chapter II, chapter III), frees the shepherd Andrés from a beating, after which he is beaten even more, and is knocked down by merchants from Toledo (chapter IV). Brought home by a neighbor (chapter V), he watches the priest and the barber condemn almost all of his library to the bonfire (chapter VI). He sets out again, with Sancho and the promise of an insula (chapter VII), charges windmills that he sees as giants (chapter VIII), and the narrator, who interrupts the duel with a Biscayan for want of a source, finds in Toledo the notebooks of the Arab historian Cide Hamete Benengeli (chapter IX). Sancho hears the recipe for Fierabras's balsam (chapter X).
Part One, Chapters XI to XVIII: Marcela and the Inn
The goatherds take in the two of them, and the gentleman delivers a speech on the Golden Age before a handful of acorns (chapter XI). With them he goes to the burial of Grisóstomo, a student who died of love for Marcela (chapter XII, chapter XIII), and he hears Marcela defend herself: she was born free, and whoever is loved for beauty is not obliged to love in return (chapter XIV). Rocinante attacks the mares of some Galician muleteers, and the two of them get beaten (chapter XV). In an inn that he sees as a castle, the servant girl Maritornes, the balsam and the blanket in which Sancho is tossed into the air make for a night of blows (chapter XVI, chapter XVII). On the road, two clouds of dust are armies to him and flocks of sheep to Sancho (chapter XVIII).
Part One, Chapters XIX to XXIV: The Galley Slaves and the Sierra
At night the gentleman charges a procession of hooded men carrying a corpse, and Sancho, seeing the face without teeth, dubs him Knight of the Sorrowful Countenance (chapter XIX). The din that terrifies them in the dark comes from six fulling-mill hammers (chapter XX), and a barber's basin becomes Mambrino's helmet (chapter XXI). Don Quixote frees a chain of galley slaves, among them Ginés de Pasamonte, and is stoned by the freed men (chapter XXII). Fleeing the Holy Brotherhood, the two enter the Sierra Morena and find a valise (chapter XXIII); a ragged man, Cardenio, tells part of his story and, when Queen Madasima is mentioned, stones the gentleman (chapter XXIV).
Part One, Chapters XXV to XXXI: The Penance and Micomicona
In the sierra, Don Quixote decides to imitate Amadis and performs the penance of Beltenebros without cause, by method, and tells Sancho that his lady is Aldonza Lorenzo (chapter XXV). He has Sancho carry a letter to Dulcinea, which the squire never delivers (chapter XXVI). The priest and the barber, who are looking for him, disguise themselves and come upon Cardenio, who tells the whole story (chapter XXVII), and Dorothea, betrayed by Don Fernando (chapter XXVIII), who agrees to play the princess Micomicona to take the gentleman home (chapter XXIX). He leaves the sierra to defend her kingdom (chapter XXX), and Sancho invents the visit to Dulcinea that he never made (chapter XXXI).
Part One, Chapters XXXII to XXXVII: The Curious Impertinent
At the inn, the innkeeper keeps books of chivalry and a manuscript, and the priest reads aloud the novella of Anselmo, who asks his best friend, Lothario, to test the virtue of Camilla, his wife (chapter XXXII, chapter XXXIII). Camilla yields (chapter XXXIV). The gentleman, meanwhile, dreams a battle with a giant and punctures wineskins, and the novella ends with the death of all three (chapter XXXV). Don Fernando and Luscinda arrive, and the truth told before everyone makes Don Fernando yield Dorothea (chapter XXXVI); a captive also arrives, with a Moorish woman who says she is Christian (chapter XXXVII).
Part One, Chapters XXXVIII to XLIII: The Arms and the Captive
Don Quixote discourses on arms and letters and is heard with pity (chapter XXXVIII). The captive tells his life: the father who divided his inheritance among three sons and three paths, Lepanto, the captivity in Algiers (chapter XXXIX), Zoraida's letter, which she writes to a Christian she has never seen (chapter XL), and the escape by boat to Spain (chapter XLI). A magistrate who arrives at the inn is his brother (chapter XLII). The magistrate's daughter, Doña Clara, recognizes the young mule-boy who has followed her, and at night Maritornes and the innkeeper's daughter leave the gentleman hanging by the wrist (chapter XLIII).
Part One, Chapters XLIV to LII: The Cage and the Canon
The inn ends in a brawl over a packsaddle that the gentleman says is a horse's harness and a basin that he says is a helmet (chapter XLIV). Don Fernando settles it by vote, while the constables of the Holy Brotherhood arrive with a warrant for arrest (chapter XLV). The priest pacifies them and, with the others, builds the cage in which the gentleman is taken, accepting the enchantment (chapter XLVI). On the road, the canon of Toledo discusses the books of chivalry with him, and Sancho tries to prove that his master is not enchanted (chapter XLVII, chapter XLVIII, chapter XLIX, chapter L). A goatherd tells the story of Leandra (chapter LI); a procession of penitents knocks the gentleman down, and he returns to the village, where the book promises a third sally and leaves epitaphs (chapter LII).
Part Two, Prologue and Chapters I to X: The Printed Book
The prologue answers Avellaneda's false Quixote without giving him a name and promises that the gentleman is "dead and buried." The priest and the barber test the cure, and the gentleman contradicts himself within minutes (chapter I). The bachelor Sansón Carrasco brings the news that the story is already in print, with its errors, among them the donkey that reappears without explanation (chapter III, chapter IV). Sancho speaks with his wife, Teresa, and haggles over wages with his master (chapter V, chapter VII); the two set out for the third time (chapter VII, chapter VIII), and in Toboso, not knowing where the lady lives, Sancho shows his master three farm girls on horseback and says that one of them is Dulcinea, enchanted (chapter IX, chapter X).
Part Two, Chapters XI to XXI: Mirrors, Lions, and Camacho
A cart of strolling players, the Cortes of Death, crosses the road and nearly ends in a barrage of stones (chapter XI). In the wood, the Knight of the Wood, or of the Mirrors, and his squire talk with the two of them (chapter XII, chapter XIII); the gentleman defeats him and sees in the face of the vanquished that of the bachelor Carrasco, which he attributes to enchanters. The narrator later explains that it was indeed the bachelor, determined to make him stay at home (chapter XIV, chapter XV). Don Diego de Miranda, the sensible gentleman of the Green Gown, takes him for mad (chapter XVI); the gentleman orders the cage of two lions opened, and the lion turns its back on him (chapter XVII); at Don Diego's house, the father and the poet son, Don Lorenzo, reach the diagnosis of a madman with lucid intervals (chapter XVIII). At Camacho's wedding, poor Basilio feigns death to marry Quiteria, and the gentleman sides with the lovers (chapter XIX, chapter XX, chapter XXI).
Part Two, Chapters XXII to XXXI: Montesinos and the Altarpiece
The gentleman descends into the cave of Montesinos, and for Sancho and his cousin what he recounts as three days of vision was one hour (chapter XXII, chapter XXIII); the narrator, Cide Hamete, says he does not vouch for the story (chapter XXIV). The puppeteer Master Pedro and the divining monkey give Quixote news partly false and partly plausible (chapter XXV). The gentleman smashes the altarpiece to pieces with blows, as if the puppets were Moors, and Master Pedro is Ginés de Pasamonte (chapter XXVI, chapter XXVII). After the squadron of brays, which gives Sancho a blow with a cudgel (chapter XXVII), the defense of the retreat (chapter XXVIII), the enchanted boat, which is simply a boat (chapter XXIX), and the beautiful huntress (chapter XXX), they are taken to the castle of the dukes (chapter XXXI).
Part Two, Chapters XXXII to XLI: The Duke and Duchess and Clavileño
The dukes have read the First Part and stage, one by one, the adventures it taught them to admire. The gentleman answers the ecclesiastic who scorns him (chapter XXXII), Sancho confesses to the duchess that he invented the enchantment of Dulcinea and hears that the one deceived was he (chapter XXXIII), and Merlin, during a hunt, imposes on Sancho three thousand three hundred lashes to disenchant Dulcinea (chapter XXXIV, chapter XXXV). The Dolorous Duenna, who is the countess Trifaldi, asks for help against the giant Malambruno (chapter XXXVI, chapter XXXVIII, chapter XXXIX), and the two of them, blindfolded on a wooden horse, Clavileño, believe they are flying (chapter XL, chapter XLI).
Part Two, Chapters XLII to LIII: The Governorship of the Island
The gentleman gives Sancho, who is going to govern, sensible advice on justice, mercy and humility (chapter XLII, chapter XLIII). Sancho takes possession of the Insula Barataria, which is a village of the dukes, and judges the first cases with wisdom (chapter XLV). He goes hungry on the orders of a comic doctor (chapter XLVII) and hands down the verdicts of the patrol and of the bridge (chapter XLIX, chapter LI). In the castle, Don Quixote is startled by cats and cowbells (chapter XLVI), hears from Doña Rodríguez the plea for justice for her seduced daughter, and is beaten in the dark (chapter XLVIII), and ends up accepting the case (chapter LII). Sancho later resigns after a false attack on the island, and says he entered it naked and leaves it naked (chapter LIII).
Part Two, Chapters LIV to LXII: Ricote, Roque, and Barcelona
On the way back, Sancho meets his neighbor Ricote, a Morisco expelled from Spain, and refuses to profit from his misfortune (chapter LIV). He falls into a ditch (chapter LV), and the duel arranged by the dukes falls apart when the lackey Tosilos gives up (chapter LVI). The two leave the castle, and the gentleman praises freedom (chapter LVII, chapter LVIII). At an inn he hears the book by Avellaneda read aloud and changes course for Barcelona (chapter LIX). The bandit Roque Guinart receives him among thieves who divide the plunder with strictness (chapter LX), and Barcelona acclaims him as the true one, until the enchanted head and the print shop where the rival book is being set (chapter LXI, chapter LXII).
Part Two, Chapters LXIII to LXXIV: The Defeat and Death
In the galleys of Barcelona, the captured skipper turns out to be a woman, Ana Félix, daughter of Ricote (chapter LXIII). On the beach, the Knight of the White Moon unhorses the gentleman, who confesses Dulcinea's beauty and promises a year without arms (chapter LXIV). The winner is Sansón Carrasco, who wants to cure him (chapter LXV). On the way back, the gentleman puts the defeat down to misfortune (chapter LXVI) and proposes becoming a shepherd (chapter LXVII). The pigs trample him (chapter LXVIII), the dukes stage the funeral of Altisidora, for whose resurrection Sancho pays in slaps and pinches (chapter LXIX), and she recounts the hell she saw (chapter LXX). Then come the self-lashings against the trees (chapter LXXI) and Don Álvaro Tarfe, who testifies before an alcalde (chapter LXXII). In the village, the omens (chapter LXXIII), the fever, the wits that return, the will, and the death of Alonso Quijano close the book (chapter LXXIV).