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Exploration of metafiction in Don Quixote, Part II, focusing on themes like history and fiction, the character of Don Quixote, and the interplay between performance and reality. The text delves into the self-conscious allusions to literary conventions and narrative techniques, highlighting the complex relationship between fiction and reality within the work.
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Metafiction in Don Quixote, Part II Dr. Bretton Rodriguez
Don Quixote, Part I - Approaches - Historical - Romantic - Themes - Reading and Experience - History and Fiction - Real and Ideal - Honor and Shame
Metafiction - Fiction in which the author self-consciously alludes to the artificiality or literariness of a work by parodying or departing from novelistic conventions and traditional narrative techniques. (OED) - Common Characteristics: - Questions the relationship between fiction and reality - Ironic - Self-reflective - Author intrudes in the text
Metafiction in Don Quixote, Part I - Multiple Authors - Miguel de Cervantes - Cide Hamete Benengeli - Anonymous Translator - Cervantes in the Text - “The Captive’s Tale” - Don Quixote’s Library - Discussion of the Literature - La Galatea
Between Part I and Part II: 1605-1615 - Imprisonment (1605) - Expulsion of the Moriscos (1609) - Thomas Shelton’s English Translation (1612) - Avellaneda’s Part Two (1614)
Avellaneda’s Don Quixote Alonso Fernández de Avellaneda, Part II Miguel de Cervantes, Part I
Don Quixote, Part II - Third Journey - Don Quixote and Sancho Panza Tone - Philosophical - Reflexive Genre - Chivalric Romance - Novelesque Response to Current Events - Expulsion of Morisos - Literary Criticism - Avellaneda’s Part Two - - -
Metafiction in Don Quixote, Part II - Response to Avellaneda’s Part II - Multiple Authors - Discussion of Don Quixote, Part I - Composition - Characters - Criticism - Performance
Senor, I won’t fight; let out masters fight, and welcome to it, and let us drink and live, for time is bound to take our lives, and we don’t have to go around looking for reasons to end our lives before their time and season, when they’re ripe and ready to fall. (p.567)
Themes - History and Fiction - How do we read history? - Don Quixote as the subject of history - What is the responsibility of the historian?
“They also could have kept quiet about them for the sake of fairness.” said Don Quixote, “because the actions that do not change or alter the truth of the history do not need to be written if they belittle the hero. By my faith Aeneas was not as pious as Virgil depicts him, or Ulysses as prudent as Homer describes him.” “That is true,” replied Sanson, “but it is one thing to write as a poet and another to write as a historian: the poet can recount or sing about things not as they were, but as they should have been, and the historian must write about them not as they should have been, but as they were, without adding or subtracting anything from the truth.” (p.499)
As far as I can tell, Senor Bachelor, in order to write histories and books of any kind, one must have great judgment and mature understanding. To say witty things and to write cleverly requires great intelligences: the most perceptive character in a play is the fool, because the man who wishes to seem simply cannot possibly be a simpleton, History is like a sacred thing; it must be truthful, and wherever truth is, there God is, but despite this, there are some who write and toss off books as if they were fritters.” (p.502)
Themes 1. History and Fiction 2. Don Quixote as a Character - Don Quixote of Part I - Avellaneda’s Don Quixote - Carrasco’s Don Quixote
“What do you mean?” replied the Knight of the Wood. “By the heaven above us, I fought with Don Quixote, and I conquered and defeated him; he is a man of tall stature, a dry face, long, lanky limbs, graying hair, an aquiline, somewhat hooked nose, and a large, black, drooping mustache. He does battle under the name The Knight of the Sorrowful Face, and for a squire he has a peasant named Sancho Panza …
“Be calm, Senor Knight,” said Don Quixote, “and hear what I wish to tell you. You should know that this Don Quixote whom you have mentioned is the dearest friend I have in the world; I could even say that I value him as I do my own person, and by the description you have given me, which is detailed and accurate, I can only think that he is indeed the one you have conquered. On the other hand, I see with my eyes and touch with my hands the impossibility of his being the one, and yet there are many enchanters who are his enemies.” (p.565)
Themes 1. History and Fiction 2. Don Quixote as a Character 3. Performance and Reality - Puppet Show - Duke and the Duchess - Roque Guinart (Barcelona) - Sansón Carrasco
And so, the history tells us that …Sanson, as a knight errant, would meet him [Don Quixote] on the road and engage in combat with him, for there was no lack of reasons to fight, and he would vanquish him, on the assumption that this would be an easy thing to do, and it would be agreed and accepted that the vanquished would be at the mercy of the victor, and when Don Quixote had been vanquished, the bachelor-knight would order him to return to his village and his house and not leave again for two years, or until he had commanded otherwise. (p.574)
Themes 1. History and Fiction 2. Don Quixote as a Character 3. Performance and Reality 4. Humor - - Funny? Cruel?