Don Quixote Part 1, Prologue - Chapter 12
The author confesses the indecision he experienced in writing the preface for he felt that his book was devoid of all those elements that marked similar books as great. The book's lack of annotations, aphorisms, and sonnets made him so dejected that he considered leaving the story of Don Quixote untold until he unburdened his mind by discussing the matter with a friend. His friend made light of the concerns that Cervantes experienced, and suggested some simple measures to supply the lack of elements he thought so necessary in a book like Don Quixote. He argued that since Don Quixote’s central aim was as a satire of the numerous books on chivalry that proliferated their world, the subject ought to be presented in simple language and without artifice.
Quixada, Quesada, or Quesana is a hidalgo (Spanish gentleman) of fifty years from a small village of La Mancha. He spends all of his time reading and discussing books of chivalry that detail the adventures of famous knights like Amadis of Gaul. He had many a time thought to write one himself, but the idea of being a knight-errant appealed to him more deeply. He resolves to set out on an adventure much like those that he had read about in his books of chivalry and begins to collect all the necessities for the life of a knight. The armor he scours and polishes had belonged to his grandfather, but it yet had some life left in it despite the many patches of rust that marred it. He owned a leather shield, as well as a lance, but had no name for himself, and at length chose Don Quixote of La Mancha. He knew that all Knights needed to love a lady, and so decided to be a knight in service of a girl from a neighboring village he had loved in his youth, her he renamed, Lady Dulcinea del Toboso. Don Quixote, the knight-errant, now sets out for an adventure just as the sun begins to rise, and rides forth on his frail hack, Rocinante.
Don Quixote decides that he must be knighted at the first opportunity for he cannot continue as a knight without being raised to that station first. He is disappointed with his lack of adventure and spends the whole day fantasizing about the chronicles that would be written on his first sally. Half crazed by the heat and hunger, Don Quixote arrives at an inn but perceives it as a castle, and its innkeeper as a Castellan. The innkeeper plays along with his guest’s madness and agrees to knight him. Don Quixote performs the ceremonial watching of his armor before being knighted and in the process injures several muleteers as they try to water their animals from the trough in which he has kept his armor. The innkeeper perceives that the knight's madness would end in harm and so quickly knights him without much fanfare. Don Quixote journeys back to his village intending to supply himself with a squire and the other accouterments that the innkeeper had mentioned.
On his return, he encounters a man beating his servant, and in an attempt to rescue the boy from the unfair beatings renders him worse off by angering his master who pretends to accede to the knight's judgment of their dispute. Don Quixote finds himself cudgeled quite soundly by some tradesmen when they mock his claims of Dulcinea’s beauty and he charges at them only to have his old horse stumble. He sprawls in the dirt while one of the servants beats him with his lance as he tries, again and again, to rise without success.
Don Quixote imagines that he is in one of the Chivalry books that he has read, and so begins to recite the ballad of a defeated knight. One of his neighbors happens to be traveling on that road and finds the injured Don Quixote lying on the ground. He helps him return home despite Don Quixote’s ramblings about fictional characters from old stories of knights. They arrive at Don Quixote’s home to find his housekeeper and niece distressed over his absence. The neighbor hears them complaining to the priest and the barber, who are both friends of Don Quixote, of the chivalry books that Don Quixote had been reading night and day. The injured knight is taken to bed where he begins to recuperate his health while his friends, the priest and the barber, along with the housekeeper and his niece, decide to burn all his chivalry books. They keep a few books but burn most of both the chivalry as well as the poetry books. Finally, they wall off the room and plaster it with the hope that he shall abandon his adventures without the stimulation of the books.
Don Quixote recovers and is convinced that a magician has stolen all his books and made the room disappear. He begins to talk with his neighbor, Sancho Panza, a farm laborer and persuades him to be his squire. He manages to convince Sancho Panza with promises of granting him an island to govern and even the possibility of making him a king. The two set out in secret without bidding anyone farewell, and first come across windmills. Don Quixote imagines them to be giants and charges at them, only to be hurled back by their sails. Sancho Panza attempts to dissuade him several times to no result. Don Quixote tells Sancho that the giants had been turned into windmills by the same magician who had stolen his library.
They then encounter a couple of friars riding in front of a carriage. Don Quixote imagines them to be magicians, and he charges them with a lance that he had recently fashioned. One of the friars escapes over the countryside while the other falls from his mule for fear of being struck. Sancho Panza tries to disrobe the man, believing it to be his right to loot for his knight but is soundly beaten by the men that accompany the carriage. Don Quixote is attacked by a sword-wielding Biscayan as he is conversing with the bewildered lady in the carriage. The account of the fight is halted by the author, and another takes up the task of relating the tale. He claims that he found the rest of the history written on some pamphlets in Arabic authored by a Cide Hamete Benengeli, and gained the help of a Morsicoe in translating it.
The Biscayan dealt Don Quixote a severe blow that destroyed his helmet and injured his ear, but the valiant knight stayed his seat. He retaliated with a blow of greater force that resulted in unseating his adversary, yet Don Quixote spared the man’s life on the condition that he present himself to Lady Dulcinea Del Toboso, who would then decide his fate. Don Quixote and Sancho Panza depart the scene and enter the woods, while Sancho Panza expresses his hope that Don Quixote would now bestow upon him an island that he had won from that hard fight. The knight assures his squire that there would be many rewards for him in the future, not the least of which would be a miraculous balsam that healed the most severe wounds.
Sancho Panza is worried that they will be accosted by the Holy Brotherhood for causing violence on the roads, but Don Quixote reassures him that Knights-errant need not fear such authorities. They shelter at night with a group of goatherds who supply the pair with some substantial fare, which had been lacking in their nourishment. The goatherds treat them with much dignity which elicits from Don Quixote a long-winded thanks as he reminisces about the ‘golden’ age of Knights-errant. Their dinner is followed with entertainment in the form of a song, and then another shepherd arrives with the news of the death of Grisostomo, a former student of the University of Salamanca that had recently taken to shepherding. The newly arrived Shepherd tells Don Quixote and the rest of the assembly about the love that Grisostomo had borne for a beautiful and rich shepherdess, Marcella. Grisostomo, like many other suitors of the beautiful woman, had been rebuffed from courting her. He had consequently taken his own life leaving behind detailed instructions about how his remains should be handled so that his love for Marcella may be communicated to her even in his death. The kind shepherds treat Don Quixote’s wound with rosemary and retire with the resolution to attend the burial of Grisostomo the following day. Don Quixote stays awake the rest of the night, thinking of his lady Dulcinea in much the same way as the many rejected lovers of Marcella spent their nights thinking of her.
Analysis
The novel presents itself as a parody of chivalry novels at its surface but leads the reader to question the core concepts of truth, sanity, and social class. The narrative style of the novel can be divided into three distinct variations, the first narrative style features Cervantes himself as the narrator. This section begins at the start of the book and continues until Don Quixote engages with the Biscayan after which point the narration is presented from the viewpoint of a 'moor' scholar. Some scholars believe that Cervantes had initially begun the tale of Don Quixote with the intent of creating a short tale since he sometimes refers to the story as such, but the idea captivated him so deeply that he decided to expand it into a book. In this first section, Cervantes repeatedly disrupts the narration to remind the reader that the tale being described is historically accurate as he parodies chivalry books.
There are several ingeniously humorous aspects of the book which include but are not limited to the many ridiculous dialogues between Sancho Panza and his master. The preface to the first part discusses the dilemma that the author had experienced in publishing the volume due to its lack of sonnets, Latin, among other things, yet the book is filled with all elements that the author had claimed it lacked.
