What It Is
The chivalry books that Don Quixote reads until he loses his mind, the library of more than a hundred volumes that the priest and the barber largely condemn to the fire, and the code of conduct from which the gentleman takes everything he does: what a knight owes a lady, what he gives a squire, how he defends himself, how he disguises a defeat. The text names Amadís of Gaul as the father of the genre, Palmerín of England, Tirant lo Blanch, Don Belianís, and a dozen others, and in doing so makes the book within the book a character. They are the cause of the madness, the norm by which the gentleman measures the world, the proof he invokes when someone contradicts him (since everything is printed with the king's license), the language others use to deceive him in order to cure him, and finally what he renounces on his deathbed. Behind almost every adventure there is a chivalry book the gentleman quotes or imitates.
Where It Appears
The prologue already says what the book is for. The author says his only aim is to bring down the ill-founded machine of these chivalric books, loathed by many and praised by many more.
llevad la mira puesta a derribar la máquina mal fundada destos caballerescos libros, aborrecidos de tantos y alabados de muchos más, aim to bring down the ill-founded machine of these chivalric books, loathed by so many and praised by many more.
In chapter I of Part One, the narrator explains the madness through reading: he so steeped himself in it that the nights passed reading from light to light and the days from murk to murk, and from little sleep and much reading his brain dried up.
En resolución, él se enfrascó tanto en su letura, que se le pasaban las noches leyendo de claro en claro, y los días de turbio en turbio; y así, del poco dormir y del mucho leer, se le secó el celebro, de manera que vino a perder el juicio, in short, he so immersed himself in his reading that the nights passed reading from light to light, and the days from murk to murk; and so, from little sleep and much reading, his brain dried up, so that he came to lose his wits.
Still in chapter I of Part One, the gentleman's taste runs to Feliciano de Silva, whose "tangled reasons" delight him, such as the reason of unreason that is done to his reason. In chapter II of Part One, the first sally is that of a knight who reads aloud the page of the future chronicler, with mythological dawns and paired adjectives. Erich Auerbach reads this sally as a perfect parody of the courtly knight's sally.
Don Quixote's first sally [...] is a perfect parody of Calogrenant's sally, precisely because Don Quixote does not find a world prepared on purpose for his trial, but just any world.
The scrutiny takes place in chapter VI of Part One, with the gentleman still asleep. The first book the barber hands over is Amadís of Gaul, and the priest presents it as the father of the sect.
Parece cosa de misterio ésta; porque, según he oído decir, este libro fue el primero de caballerías que se imprimió en España, y todos los demás han tomado principio y origen déste, this seems a mysterious thing, for, as I have heard said, this book was the first of chivalry to be printed in Spain, and all the others have taken their beginning and origin from it.
The priest condemns to the fire those he finds arrogant or dry, and spares Tirant lo Blanch for a reason that has nothing to do with chivalry.
Dígoos verdad, señor compadre, que, por su estilo, es éste el mejor libro del mundo: aquí comen los caballeros, y duermen, y mueren en sus camas, y hacen testamento antes de su muerte, con estas cosas de que todos los demás libros deste género carecen, I tell you truly, good friend, that by its style this is the best book in the world: here knights eat, and sleep, and die in their beds, and make their wills before they die, with all the things that every other book of this kind lacks.
When the barber opens the Galatea, the priest pauses: the author is his friend, knows more about misfortunes than about verses, and the book proposes something and concludes nothing.
Muchos años ha que es grande amigo mío ese Cervantes, y sé que es más versado en desdichas que en versos. Su libro tiene algo de buena invención; propone algo, y no concluye nada, for many years that Cervantes has been a great friend of mine, and I know he is more versed in misfortunes than in verses. His book has something of good invention; it proposes something and concludes nothing.
That night the housekeeper burns the books in the yard and in the house, and the room is walled up. The gentleman hears that a sage carried them off, and chapter VII of Part One gives that sage the name Frestón.
The gentleman makes the first of the books the rule of his penance. In chapter XXV of Part One, in the Sierra Morena, he tells Sancho why he goes mad on purpose: Amadís is the north, the star, and the sun of valiant and loving knights, whom all who serve under the banner of love and chivalry should imitate.
Amadís fue el norte, el lucero, el sol de los valientes y enamorados caballeros, a quien debemos de imitar todos aquellos que debajo de la bandera de amor y de la caballería militamos, Amadís was the north, the morning star, the sun of valiant and loving knights, whom we should all imitate who serve under the banner of love and chivalry.
In chapter XXXII of Part One, at the inn, the innkeeper defends his three volumes and some handwritten papers against the priest and the barber, who talk of taking them to the fire.
¡Como si yo no supiese cuántas son cinco y adónde me aprieta el zapato! [...] estando impreso con licencia de los señores del Consejo Real, como si ellos fueran gente que habían de dejar imprimir tanta mentira junta, as if I did not know how many are five and where my shoe pinches! [...] being printed with the license of the lords of the Royal Council, as if they were people who would let so much lying be printed all together.
The priest, who had proposed burning two of them, ends by giving them the place of a permitted pastime in well-ordered republics.
así como se consiente en las repúblicas bien concertadas que haya juegos de ajedrez, de pelota y de trucos, para entretener a algunos que ni tienen, ni deben, ni pueden trabajar, así se consiente imprimir y que haya tales libros, just as well-ordered republics permit games of chess, pelota, and billiards to entertain those who have no work, should not work, and cannot work, so printing such books, and their existence, is permitted.
In chapter XLVII of Part One, the canon of Toledo, who has read the beginning of almost all of them and finished none, puts into proper form what they lack.
No he visto ningún libro de caballerías que haga un cuerpo de fábula entero con todos sus miembros, de manera que el medio corresponda al principio, y el fin al principio y al medio [...] y por esto dignos de ser desterrados de la república cristiana, como a gente inútil, I have seen no book of chivalry that makes a whole body of fable with all its members, so that the middle corresponds to the beginning, and the end to the beginning and the middle [...] and for this reason they deserve to be banished from the Christian commonwealth, like useless people.
In chapter XLIX of Part One, he says that, while he does not think they are lies and frivolity, they give him some contentment, and that when he realizes what they are, he hurls the best of them against the wall.
De mí sé decir que, cuando los leo, en tanto que no pongo la imaginación en pensar que son todos mentira y liviandad, me dan algún contento; pero, cuando caigo en la cuenta de lo que son, doy con el mejor dellos en la pared, as for me, I can say that when I read them, so long as I do not set my imagination to thinking they are all lies and frivolity, they give me some contentment; but when I realize what they are, I dash the best of them against the wall.
The gentleman answers with the infanta Floripes, Fierabras, and the bridge of Mantible, which seem to him as true as daylight.
¿qué ingenio puede haber en el mundo que pueda persuadir a otro que no fue verdad lo de la infanta Floripes y Guy de Borgoña, y lo de Fierabrás con la puente de Mantible, que sucedió en el tiempo de Carlomagno; que voto a tal que es tanta verdad como es ahora de día, what wit can there be in the world that could persuade another that the story of the infanta Floripes and Guy of Burgundy, and that of Fierabras with the bridge of Mantible, which happened in the time of Charlemagne, was not true? By my oath, it is as true as it is now daylight.
In chapter L of Part One, he takes the defense to the point where general taste and the king's license seem to him to prove the truth.
¡Bueno está eso! -respondió don Quijote-. Los libros que están impresos con licencia de los reyes y con aprobación de aquellos a quien se remitieron, y que con gusto general son leídos y celebrados de los grandes y de los chicos, de los pobres y de los ricos, de los letrados e ignorantes, de los plebeyos y caballeros, finalmente, de todo género de personas, de cualquier estado y condición que sean, ¿habían de ser mentira? [...] y más llevando tanta apariencia de verdad, pues nos cuentan el padre, la madre, la patria, los parientes, la edad, el lugar y las hazañas, punto por punto y día por día, que el tal caballero hizo, o caballeros hicieron, that is well said, replied Don Quixote. Books printed with the license of kings and with the approval of those to whom they were submitted, and which are read and celebrated with general delight by the great and the small, the poor and the rich, the learned and the ignorant, the common folk and the knights, in short, by every kind of person, of whatever state or condition they may be, were they to be lies? [...] and all the more so as they carry such an appearance of truth, for they tell us of the father, the mother, the homeland, the kin, the age, the place, and the deeds, point by point and day by day, of the knight who did them, or the knights who did.
In chapter LII of Part One, the First Part closes with a request from the author of the story that repeats the defense from another side: that readers give it the same credit that discerning people give to books of chivalry, which are so highly valued in the world.
El cual autor no pide a los que la leyeren, en premio del inmenso trabajo que le costó inquerir y buscar todos los archivos manchegos, por sacarla a luz, sino que le den el mesmo crédito que suelen dar los discretos a los libros de caballerías, que tan validos andan en el mundo, the said author asks of those who read it, as a reward for the immense labor it cost him to inquire into and search all the Manchegan archives to bring it to light, nothing more than that they give it the same credit that the discerning customarily give to books of chivalry, which are so highly valued in the world.
In Part Two, in chapter I of Part Two, the gentleman defends before the priest and the barber that he saw Amadís with his own eyes: a tall man of body, white of face, handsomely bearded, though his beard is black, of a gaze between mild and stern, sparing of words, slow to anger and quick to set the anger aside.
estoy por decir que con mis propios ojos vi a Amadís de Gaula, que era un hombre alto de cuerpo, blanco de rostro, bien puesto de barba, aunque negra, de vista entre blanda y rigurosa, corto de razones, tardo en airarse y presto en deponer la ira, I am inclined to say that with my own eyes I saw Amadís of Gaul, who was a tall man of body, white of face, well bearded, though his beard was black, with a gaze between gentle and stern, sparing of words, slow to anger and quick to set anger aside.
And in chapter LXXIV of Part Two, on his deathbed, the renunciation begins with the name: he is no longer Don Quixote but Alonso Quijano, whose ways earned him the name of the Good, enemy of Amadís and of his whole lineage.
Dadme albricias, buenos señores, de que ya yo no soy don Quijote de la Mancha, sino Alonso Quijano, a quien mis costumbres me dieron renombre de Bueno. Ya soy enemigo de Amadís de Gaula y de toda la infinita caterva de su linaje, give me your congratulations, good sirs, that I am no longer Don Quixote de la Mancha, but Alonso Quijano, to whom my ways gave the name of the Good. I am now an enemy of Amadís of Gaul and of the whole endless host of his lineage.
What It Means
The books are the ground against which everything else in the novel is measured. The gentleman's madness is not born of nothing: it is born of a reading that the book itself shows, judges, and stages, and the prologue says its aim is to bring it down. What keeps the reading from being only satire is that the book condemns and saves at once: the priest burns what he finds arrogant and spares what seems plausible, the canon asks for form and verisimilitude but confesses that he enjoys reading them, and the gentleman himself defends them with arguments that are not those of a fool. Within the novel, the chivalry books are a library everyone knows, and that is why they serve as a common language even for those who want to cure the gentleman.
The renunciation in chapter LXXIV of Part Two can be read in two ways that the text does not separate. In one, the gentleman recovers his reason and abjures the books because he understands that what he lived was an error, and this gives the novel the ending the prologue announced. In the other, he renounces the name and lineage of Amadís, and what remains is the man whose ways earned him the name of the Good, and the text does not say where those ways came from. What supports both readings is that the renunciation is spoken in the formula of a convert, and that the name he chooses is not the one the books gave him, but the one his ways gave him.
Relationships
- The work: Don Quixote.
- Standard themes: Madness, Language and narration, Appearance and reality.
- Themes in the work: Madness, Language and narration, Appearance and reality.
- Characters: Don Quixote.
- Nearby symbols: the cage, set up with the language of the books, and the inn, where the innkeeper keeps his own.