Discover Don Quijote de la Mancha, Part II - chapters 48 - 74 - donquijote.ufm.edu/en

Discover Don Quijote de la Mancha
donquijote.ufm.edu/en
Lesson 20: Another“locus amoenus” 60
Lesson 21: Roque Guinart 62
Chapter 59 - 61 review 70
Lesson 22: Claudia Jerónima 64
Lesson 23: Roque’s distributive justice 66
Chapters 48 - 49
Lesson 6:“We have ourselves a little governorship!” 16
Lesson 7: Sancho solves a paradox 21
Chapters 50 - 53
Lesson 8: “The Constitutions of the Great Governor Sancho Panza” 23
Lesson 11: Sancho resigns 29
Lesson 9: Don Quijote proposes a duel 25
Lesson 10: Teresa Panza’s second letter 27
Chapters 58 - 62
Lesson 17: Altisidora’s complaint 48
Lesson 18: Liberty and five saints, that’s right, FIVE (5) 51
Lesson 19: The false Arcadia and the ferocious bulls 54
Lesson 24: “This is Don Quijote of La Mancha.” 72
Chapters 54 - 57
Lesson 13: “Freedom of conscience” 37
Lesson 12: Ricote 34
Lesson 15: The battle between Don Quijote and Tosilos 42
Lesson 14: Sancho and his ass fall into a cave 39
Part II
Chapters 48 - 74
Index
Lesson 1: The encounter between Don Quijote and Doña Rodríguez 5
Lesson 2: Doña Rodríguez’s tale 7
Lesson 3: Doña Rodríguez asks Don Quijote for help 9
Lesson 4: Sancho solves three cases 11
Lesson 5: Making the rounds at night 13
Lesson 16: Don Quijote and Sancho are escorted to the ducal palace 46

Lesson 29: Don Quijote’s final defeat 86
Lesson 35: Los cerdos en Don Quijote 102
Lesson 36: Sancho, martirio de nuevo 105
Chapters 63 - 65 Chapters 70 - 74
Chapters 66 - 69
Lesson 25: Don Quijote and the enchanted head 75 Lesson 37: «¡Viva es Altisidora! ¡Altisidora vive!» 108
Lesson 30: The conclusion to the story of Ana Félix and Don Gregorio 88
Lesson 26: The printing house and“the men of the Inquisition” 77
Lesson 39: La negociación final entre don Quijote y Sancho Panza 116
Lesson 32: Tosilos, mailman 93
Lesson 28: Ana Félix 81
Lesson 41: Don Quijote se vuelve lúgubre y supersticioso 121
Lesson 42: «Alonso Quijano el Bueno» 123
Lesson 34: La parodia pastoril 100
Lesson 38: La cura para el mal de amores es el trabajo honesto 110
Lesson 31: Ricote’s speech on the Expulsion 91
Lesson 27: More galley slaves 79
Lesson 40: La séptima posada 118
Lesson 33: Arcadia de nuevo 98
Parte II
Chapters 48 - 74
Course activities 127

“...and light itself
is not more
persistentthanthe
stream of feminine
discourse.”
—Edwin Abbot, Flatland

5
LESSON01
The encounter between
Don Quijote and Doña
Rodríguez
C
hapter forty-eight of DQ 2 relates an absurd, but intense, nocturnal encounter between two of the novel’s oldest characters:
DQ and Doña Rodríguez. On one level, we note the growing presence of women. As in the Sierra Morena of DQ 1, women’s
actions and desires predominate in Aragón, serving as preludes to the roles of Teresa, Altisidora, Ana Félix, and Claudia
Jerónima in the last half of DQ 2. On a second level, the chaos that ensues and hints of an ethnic clash between Christians and Moors
recall DQ’s violent encounter with Maritornes in DQ 1. On a third level, note the symbolic sexual dyad formed by Doña Rodríguez and
DQ. Like ancient lovers passing in the night, they frighten each other –each is described as a “phantom”–, but then they come to terms
and take each other’s hands in a platonic, private wedding ceremony that causes our Moorish author to comment: “Here, Cid Hamete
opens a parenthesis and swears by Muhammad that in order to see the two of them going hand in hand from door to bed he
would have given the best of his two djellabas.”
Rodríguez seeks DQ’s help and visits his room unannounced. As her key opens his door, his first thought, as in the Maritornes
episode, is that “the enamored damsel has come to assault his chastity.” He makes a Neoplatonic oath to Dulcinea: “the most
beautiful woman on earth... the one whom I have engraved and impressed at the center of my heart.” He also recalls the theme of
metamorphosis that always accompanies Dulcinea, proclaiming his love regardless of her actual condition, whether she be the Tobosan
peasant of DQ 2.10, one of Garcilaso’s nymphs, or the woman in the Cave of Montesinos of DQ 2.35: “whether you are, my lady,
transformed into a vulgar peasant girl, or a nymph from the golden Tagus weaving together cloths of gold and silk, or whether
Merlin or Montesinos have you where they desire.” Cervantes’s technique of narrative simultaneity underscores the link between
Dulcinea’s uncertain status and Rodríguez’s strange visit: “The ending of these words and the opening of the door happened all at
once.”
Chapter48

Next we have an amazing image of DQ standing up in his bed, staring down at Rodríguez “from his watchtower.” He crosses himself
in fear. As she approaches, she is also startled, dropping her candle and leaving them in the dark. When Rodríguez tries to flee, DQ asks
her to identify herself, insinuating that she is a spirit from Purgatory, another major theme in DQ 2: “If you are a soul doing penance,
tell me so.” He claims his profession of knight-errantry still requires him to save her: “even to do right by the souls in Purgatory.”
Hilariously, he makes her promise that she is not a go-between. In response, Rodríguez claims that she is not so old, that she still has her
soul in her body and all of her teeth. She also mentions “this land of Aragón,” so that this weird encounter is related to the geography
of Spain.
The episode’s sexual implications grow. When Rodríguez leaves to retrieve another candle, DQ doubts his chastity, reasoning that
the devil might be trying to tempt him. Thanks to the narrator’s access to DQ’s inner thoughts, we learn that he is a virgin: “And who
knows whether this isolation, this occasion, or this silence will awaken in me desires that lie dormant, and, at the end of my
years, cause me to fall where I have never even stumbled?” DQ leaps out of bed to shut the door, but Rodríguez returns. Now it is
her turn to suspect something sexual: “Are we safe, Sir Knight? For I do not take it as a very chaste sign that your grace has gotten
out of bed.” DQ asks her the same thing: “I should be asking the same thing, madam... and, thus, I ask if I am to be safe from being
assaulted and violated.” He points to the impropriety of the situation: “because I am not made of marble, nor you of bronze, nor
is it now ten in the morning... and in a room more enclosed and secret than must have been the cave in which the treacherous
and daring Aeneas took his pleasure of the beautiful and compassionate Dido.” It’s another cave. And note how DQ has again
become feminized, and how Cervantes has inverted the same encounter between Aeneas and Dido previously alluded to by Altisidora.
This is so hilarious and odd that Cide Hamete makes a sarcastic comment. For those of us who are older, though, there is something
heartbreaking here.
“Are we safe, Sir Knight?
For I do not take it as a very
chaste sign that your grace
has gotten out of bed.”

7
LESSON02
Doña Rodríguez’s tale
T
he story Rodríguez tells has three parts: her youth, the death of her husband, and the seduction of her daughter by the
son of one of the Duke’s vassals. Her narrative reviews the major themes of the novel. The north-south theme of ethnic and
religious conflict reappears. We are in Aragón, and thanks to Cide Hamete’s Moorish intervention, we now return to the
medieval holdout of Visigothic Christians in the far north. Like Ruy Díaz de Viedma in DQ 1.39, Rodríguez was born in the region of “the
Mountains of León,” associated with the purest Spanish nobility, as she says, “the Asturias of Oviedo, and from lineage.” There also
resurfaces the difficult transition from feudalism to early market capitalism found in SP’s quest for a salary from DQ. Rodríguez’s parents
took her to modern Madrid “to do needlework as a maidservant to a principal lady.” So she was a worker with enough skills to make
money, but also a servant at the mercy of her mistress’s generosity: “I remained an orphan and dependent on the miserable salary
and the meager favors that are typically given to such palace servants.”
The story of Rodríguez’s marriage and the death of her husband contains picaresque themes. Her husband was a “squire” at the
palace where she served, but she says he was also honorable: “somewhat advanced in years, bearded and impressive, and, above
all, an hidalgo as noble as the king, for he was from the mountainous region.” As elsewhere in DQ, this constant insistence on
Christian purity makes us doubt it. Rodríguez carried on a secret love affair with this man, but when her mistress found out, she forced
them to marry. The phrase Rodríguez uses here echoes the corrupt petitioner at SP’s court: “we tied the knot of peace before the Holy
Mother Roman Catholic Church.” Remember that in the case of the petitioner the outward appearances of his son and Clara Perlerina
were so grotesque that his claims of purity were ridiculous. Rodríguez’s story seems more realistic, less absurd, but is it really all that
different?

8
The death of Rodríguez’s husband occurs after an eerie event in the streets of Madrid. Rodríguez erupts in tears, recalling the
majesty with which her husband escorted her mistress on his mule: “God help me! And with what majesty he carried my mistress
on the haunches of a powerful mule!” It’s a tragic version of the violent mule that kicked the barber in the Micomicón plot of DQ
1.29 as well as Dulcinea’s shocking fall in DQ 2.10. Note, too, the hyperbolic emphasis on the color of the mount: “as black as jet
itself!” (azabache). Readers of Lazarillo de Tormes will recognize this as an allusion to race. Also present is the north-south conflict of
medieval Spain, for the subsequent scene takes place on “Santiago Street in Madrid” precisely at “the Guadalajara Gate,” an open-
air marketplace frequented by pícaros.
The abuse suffered by Rodríguez’s husband highlights the hierarchal privilege that Cervantes always criticizes. The squire turns his
mule toward a court magistrate as a sign of respect, but this angers his mistress, whom Rodríguez calls “my Lady Doña Casilda,” an
allusion to Saint Casilda of Toledo, a medieval devotee of Saint Vincent of Zaragoza. Note the trajectory of the novel in this allusion.
Doña Casilda’s arrogance grows (as we saw recently with SP) until she attacks Rodríguez’s husband. As poetic justice, she is then thrown
from the mule: “full of choler and rage, she took a thick needle, I think it was a knitting pin, from its case and she stabbed it into
his back, which caused my husband to shout out and twist his body such that he knocked her grace to the ground.” Rodríguez’s
husband seeks medical attention “in the house of a barber” and Doña Casilda is forced to walk home. Remember when SP was forced
to walk in DQ 1?
“somewhat advanced
in years, bearded and
impressive, and, above all,
an hidalgo as noble as the
king, for he was from the
mountainous region.”

9
LESSON03
Doña Rodríguez asks
Don Quijote for help
T
he strangest aspect of the story involves what many see as another slip of the pen or printer’s error: “my lady the Duchess
fired him, which was such a blow to him that I am convinced without a doubt that it caused his death.” Has Cervantes,
not learning his lesson from part one, now inadvertently confused Rodríguez’s earlier mistress with the Duchess whom she
now serves? I think not. Doña Casilda is in fact our unnamed Duchess, and the point is that she has a shameful and symbolic past.
Consider, for example, that the real Saint Casilda was a Muslim woman who behaved charitably toward Christians; whereas the Duchess
in Rodríguez’s tale abuses her servants, whose impurity alludes to the Moriscos.
Finally, Rodríguez tells DQ why she seeks his help: “since I was known as an excellent seamstress, my lady the Duchess, who was
recently married to my lord the Duke, decided to bring me with her here to the Kingdom of Aragón, with none other than my
daughter as well.” Her daughter has many talents, like Dorotea, and, again, Rodríguez uses contradictory phrases to overemphasize
her blood purity: “I can say nothing of her purity. She is purer than rushing water.” The daughter falls in love with the son of a rich
farmer and, like Dorotea and Fernando, “I know not how nor where, they met, and under the pretext of his word to marry her,
he seduced my daughter.” Rodríguez has complained to the Duke, but he ignores her –“he gets ‘merchant’s ears’ and will scarcely
listen to me”– because the rich farmer has given him loans and guaranteed others, and so he does not want to risk his line of credit:
“the reason is that the father of the seducer is very rich and makes him loans and sometimes provides guarantees when he gets
into trouble, so he doesn’t want to offend him.” Notice Cervantes’s typical turn to bourgeois material reality here.

So Rodríguez wants DQ to right this wrong. Moreover, she claims that Altisidora
is not what she seems –“not all that glitters is gold”–, and that she is envious of
her daughter’s beauty. Then she slanders the Duchess, who, although she appears
beautiful (like Marcela’s mother, her face contains the sun and the moon), she
has two incisions on her legs “from which she drains all the black and yellow
bile that the doctors say fills her body.” Gross! DQ accepts Rodríguez’s word,
although he argues that “such incisions in such places must not secrete bile
but liquid amber.” This recalls his objection to the slander of Dulcinea by the
merchants of Toledo in DQ 1.4. The chapter ends when the door to DQ’s room flies
open, Rodríguez’s candle is put out, and they are left in darkness “in the wolf’s
mouth, as they say.” Rodríguez and DQ are then slapped and pinched for almost
half an hour before the “phantoms” retreat. But wait, I thought Rodríguez and DQ
were the phantoms.
We return to SP’s governorship in chapter forty-nine. The novel we are reading
is fiction, but we must also remember that most of the characters on SP’s island
are acting, and that most of his rule is a scripted farce. In other words, we face
another extension of DQ’s mise-en-abyme structure: Cide Hamete is supposedly
the ultimate author, and translators and narrators provide additional frames
between him and us; but now we see that within this already messy text, certain
characters place other characters within still other narrative frames. DQ traps us all
in its existentialist game, with implications for a range of viewers and readers. In
this case, we might identify with the Duke and the Duchess, feeling privileged and
more knowledgeable vis-à-vis SP. But the Duke and Duchess are just characters
in Cervantes’s novel, so perhaps we should reflect on our own situation. As the
Duke’s majordomo says: “deceptions turn into the truth and the deceivers find
themselves deceived.” Also, like the play within the play in Hamlet, Cervantes
aims his mise en abyme at a political problem, using all these frames to signal us:
“Look here! Sancho’s reign in Barataria is the ultimate focus of part two of my novel.”
She has two incisions on her legs “from which
she drains all the black and yellow bile that
the doctors say fills her body.”

11
LESSON04
Sanchosolves
three cases
A
t the beginning of chapter forty-nine, SP’s sophisticated reflection on his experience as ruler amazes everyone. Anticipating
the modern notion of crony capitalism, SP observes how difficult it is to resist “the importunities of those seeking
favoritism.” He notes how citizens become irate when they don’t get handouts from their rulers: “they curse them and
spread rumors... they even slander their lineages.” Populist resentment and racism often undercut powerful people in early modern
Spain. Cervantes then turns SP’s desire to eat a traditional Spanish stew of Burgos, known as “rotten pots,” which should recall SP’s
sorrow over the loss of “the fleshpots of Egypt” at Camacho’s wedding (cf. DQ 2.22). In other words, SP has finally become a kind of
Pharaoh. Ironically, however, he claims to value equality: “when God makes it dawn, he makes it dawn for all.”
The contradictions of being a ruler are on display at Barataria. SP’s butler informs him that the people appreciate “the soft manner of
governing that your mercy has demonstrated at the beginning.” But SP alludes again to the picaresque symbol sine qua non: “Once
again, I say that my sustenance should be looked after, as should that of my gray, which is all that matters in this business.” Then
he embarks on a nocturnal patrol –“let’s make the rounds” (Cf. Calderón’s El médico de su honra)– in order to purify Barataria “of all
types of human filth and vagabond people.” His allegory is political: “people who are indigent and lazy are to the republic what
the drones are to the hive, for they eat up all the honey that the worker bees produce.”
Again, SP resolves three specific cases. The first involves gambling. A witness to a card game demands a tip from a man who won
1,000 reales. The gambler accuses the witness of extortion and refuses to pay the traditional tip. Careful readers note that the witness
is corrupt. And more careful readers note that when SP rules that the gambler must pay 130 reales, this is the exact amount of money
that was at issue between the creditor and the debtor of DQ 2.45. When SP contemplates banning gambling houses, a scribe points out
Chapter49

12
that it is better to regulate gambling. This discussion is interrupted by the night’s second case. Here we investigate the limits of royal
power in an episode that recalls the galley slaves of DQ 1.22 and anticipates modern debates over the rights of citizens confronted by
the police. Note how the man is presumed guilty. According to the arresting officer: “he started to run like a deer: a sign that he must
be some delinquent.” The man is cheeky, and so SP, behaving like an absolutist king –“I am the very air”–, orders him thrown in jail.
The case turns on a technicality as the arrested man tells our governor that he can control his body but not his mind: “No matter how
much power your mercy has... it will not be enough to force me to sleep in jail.” SP is infuriated –“do you have some guardian
angel who’ll release you?”–, but when he finally grasps the man’s literal point that “shackles and chains” cannot force him sleep in
jail if he stays awake, he lets him go. There’s a defense of freedom of religious conscience here. However, SP’s final advice to the man
evinces a pragmatic truth: “from now on don’t joke around with officers of the law, because you’ll come across one who’ll react
to the joke by busting your skull.” Don’t run from the police!
“people who are indigent and lazy are to the republic what the drones are to
the hive, for they eat up all the honey that the worker bees produce.”

13
LESSON05
Making the
rounds at night
T
he night’s final case is the strangest of all. The narrator lets us know that, unlike all the other cases, this one is not planned
by the Duke’s minions: “those who were in the know regarding the jokes to be played on Sancho were those most in
amazement, because this happening and discovery was not orchestrated by them.” Helped by her brother, a young girl
has escaped her household, where her father kept her secluded. She dressed like a man, and her brother like a girl, so that she could see
the outside world. The girl is upset, but SP dismisses everything as a childish prank and returns the siblings to their father’s house. This
confusion of genders caused by cross-dressing echoes that of both the ancient byzantine novel and many of the era’s plays.
Once again, Cervantes indicates social problems while distracting us with complex narrative details. Careful readers will note three
odd aspects to the girl’s story. First, why does her brother dress like a girl? Nobody says. Second, as SP points out, the girl claims that “the
force of a certain jealousy has made her break with the decorum that chastity requires,” and yet no jealousy appears anywhere in
her story. Third, the girl first states that her father is Pedro Pérez Mazorca, the “tax collector,” but then she changes her mind, insisting
her real father is “Diego de la Llana... a principal and wealthy hidalgo.” The only explanation she gives of this confusion is that Pedro
Pérez “very often visits the house of my father.” But this just begs the question of why she first claimed Pérez is her father. Did Llana’s
wife have an affair? This is all very weird. To top things off SP’s butler plans on asking the girl’s father for her hand in marriage, and SP
himself thinks the girl’s brother would make a good husband for his own daughter, Sanchica.

14
What is going on here? Cervantes is again addressing the Expulsion of the Moriscos and the conflict between Christians and Moors.
He is also suggesting that love and commerce in textiles represent possible solutions. Note the Neoplatonic impact that the girl has
on SP’s butler, and note that she exhibits oriental characteristics: “The beauty of the maiden had pressed upon the soul of the
butler, and once more he brought his lantern close to see her again, and it seemed to him that those were not tears that she was
shedding, but seed pearls or the dew of the meadows, and he even raised them a level and compared them to Oriental pearls.”
Her dress is also exotic: “her hair tied back in a net of gold and green silk, as beautiful as a thousand pearls... with stockings of
scarlet silk with garters of white taffeta finished with gold and seed pearls: her breeches were green, made of gold cloth, and
her jacket or coat was of the same.” This recalls Zoraida. Her brother too: “He wore nothing less than a rich skirt and a shawl of
blue damask with fine gold fringe.” Finally, the girl’s first father’s status as a tax collector who frequently visits the home of her second
father, who is a rich hidalgo, recalls the Duke’s aversion to Rodríguez’s daughter’s desire to marry the son of another rich hidalgo. Taxes
depend on trade, and trade requires social relations. In my view, Cervantes is saying that the wealth of Aragón is now threatened by an
inflexible social hierarchy, governmental corruption, and racism.
“the force of a certain
jealousy has made her
break with the decorum
that chastity requires,”

“...and light itself
is not more
persistentthanthe
stream of feminine
discourse.”

16
LESSON06
“Wehaveourselvesa
little governorship!”
C
hapter fifty performs another miraculous narrative maneuver. It takes Cide Hamete’s explanation of what actually happened
in DQ’s room, when he and Doña Rodríguez were attacked, and weaves it together with the arrival of the Duke and Duchess’s
page at SP’s home bearing gifts and letters for Teresa. A double narrative now becomes a triple narrative. We learn that
Altisidora and her friend were the intruders who avenged Rodríguez’s disloyalty to the Duchess, specifically the fact that she had
“made public knowledge the Aranjuez of her leg-fountains.” On one hand, feminine discourse continues to dominate the novel. On
the other hand, the narrator says women are not perfect: “affronts that go against the beauty and vanity of women awaken in them
an immense ire and kindle in them a desire for revenge.” Next, we learn that the page sent to visit SP’s family had previously played
the part of Dulcinea enchanted by Merlin. So women are not always what they seem.
Teresa and Sanchica’s chatter in this episode echoes the pettiness of Altisidora and the Duchess. They repeatedly relish their new
power and status. Teresa brags –“We have ourselves a little governorship!”– and imagines humiliating her rivals: “let the most
arrogant hidalga snub me now, for I’ll set her straight!” Sanchica fantasizes about provoking the envy of others by going to court
in a coach “as if she were the Popess”: “Bad year and bad month for all the gossipers in the world, and as long as I’m warm, let
the people laugh!” The two women even bicker over who gets the corral necklace sent by the Duchess. Sanchica: “look, you’re gonna
have to share that necklace with me.” Teresa: “let me wear it on my neck a few days.”
Chapter50

Note the exchange between Teresa and the Duchess. The Duchess’s gifts of the necklace and Sancho’s green jacket that will be
made into a dress for Sanchica are followed by her request for acorns. Note also the episode’s allusions to a rigid caste society being
dismantled by such commerce. Teresa is a Cinderella figure rebelling against her arrogant neighbors: “the hidalgas... who think that
because they’re hidalgas the wind shouldn’t touch them, and who go to church with all the arrogance of queens, and who seem
to think it’s a dishonor to even look at a peasant woman.” She sees the Duchess as her ally: “this good lady, even though she is a
duchess, she calls me her friend and she treats me like her equal.” The page then highlights this egalitarianism as a distinguishing
characteristic of the Aragonese nobility: “the ladies of Aragón, even though they’re just as well-born, are not as punctilious and
self-important as Castilian ladies, and they treat people in a simpler manner.”
Cervantes also targets religious orthodoxy. The necklace the Duchess gives to Teresa is a parody of a garish rosary: “the Hail
Marys are of fine coral and the Our Fathers are of beaten gold.” Likewise, our priest is so stunned by all the contradictions that he
becomes a doubting Thomas: “on one hand, I can see and touch the fineness of this coral, and, on the other hand, I read that a
duchess has requested two dozen acorns.” The narrator tells us that the priest and Carrasco realize the page is mocking SP’s women.
Nevertheless, the same narrator tells us that the two men are so shocked by this turn of events that they think they might be losing
their minds like DQ. Carrasco speaks to the page on their behalf: “even though we touched the presents and we have read the
letters, we do not believe, and we think that this is one of those things that concern our compatriot Don Quijote, who thinks
they are all performed by enchantment; and so, I have half a mind to touch and feel your grace in order to see whether you are
a phantasmagoric ambassador or a man of flesh and bone.” The page’s response is double. He echoes the narrator in DQ 2.10: “the
truth is what I have stated, and it is what will always rise above falsehood, like oil above water.” Then, in Latin, he cites an earlier
passage from the same biblical text alluded to by Carrasco: “operibus credite, et non verbis,” i.e., credit the works, not the words (John
10.38; cf. DQ 2.25).
Sanchica: “look, you’re gonna have
to share that necklace with me.”
Teresa: “let me wear it on my
neck a few days.”

18
Chapter
45 - 47 review

19
In chapter forty-eight, DQ experiences a nightmare of courtly
intrigue driven by feminine rivalries and slanders. Rodríguez’s
story reviews picaresque themes: caste privilege, race relations,
and commerce. In chapter forty-nine, SP faces three more cases
that satirize political power on Barataria. The last of these is
highly enigmatic due to SP’s and his butler’s plans to link their
families via marriages to a pair of crossdressing siblings as
well as the girl’s confusion regarding the identity of her father.
Chapter fifty echoes this social flux when SP’s wife and daughter
fantasize about their new status. Cervantes’s perspectivism
and irony are so radical here that Carrasco and the priest are
prepared to accept that DQ’s insanity is insightful. What exactly
about SP’s reign in Aragón causes all this? It’s supposed to be
an illusion, but perhaps some greater truth is on display. The
biblical doubting Thomas theme urges us to think.
Let’s review

“A peace that was truly
permanent would be the
same as a permanent war.
This –although the vast
majority of Party members
understand it only in a
shallower sense– is the inner
meaning of the Party slogan:
WAR IS PEACE.”
—Emmanuel Goldstein, The Theory
and Practice of Oligarchical Collectivism

21
LESSON07
Sancho
solves a paradox
C
hapters fifty-one though fifty-three of DQ 2 conclude Sancho’s rule over Barataria, i.e., the climax of the novel’s political
allegory. Note that the novel is decidedly epistolary here. Chapter fifty-one opens with a review of Cervantes’s meditation
on politics circa 1614. First, he recalls politics generally, for after SP makes his rounds, the majordomo spends the rest of
the night writing to the Duke and Duchess about the governor’s paradoxical rule: “because his words and actions were all mixed up,
with indications of both discretion and idiocy.” Second, Cervantes recalls Barataria’s byzantine love narrative, for the steward spends
the night “his thoughts occupied by the face, initiative, and beauty of the disguised damsel.” Finally, he recalls classical political
philosophy’s metaphor of medicine, for SP wants food, which in turn allows Pedro Recio to affirm that “small and delicate morsels
revived the wit, which was precisely what was needed for persons assigned to high commands and serious offices.” As a glimpse
of Cervantes’s cynicism, the narrator calls Recio’s reasoning nonsense –“sophistry”– and tells us that SP “in his heart he cursed the
governorship.”
Now SP confronts a final riddle. The last test of his capacities as governor is a philosophical paradox, designed to paralyze SP’s
ability to reason and immobilize him like Buridan’s ass. A foreigner tells SP about a noble’s estate divided by a river. This lord has
placed a gallows and a tribunal at one end of a bridge, and he has established a law whereby anyone wishing to cross must declare
his intentions. If the traveler tells the truth, he may pass; if he lies, he is hanged. A man declares “that he was going to die on that
gallows over there.” It’s a paradox: according to the law, if the judges let the man go free, then they must hang him, and if they hang
him, then they must let him go free. SP first acts like Solomon splitting the baby (1 Kings 3.16-28): “of this man, that part which swore
the truth they should allow to pass and that which told the lie they should hang.” But this hilarious sophistry will only kill the man,
thus breaking the law: “it will be necessary that this man be divided into two parts, the lying half and the honest half; and if he
is divided, by force he will die.”
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22
Note two things. First, the episode recalls the Balsam of Fierabrás in DQ 1.10, suggesting that Cervantes’s scheme was always going
to span both parts of the novel. Second, like his initial humility at Barataria when he refused to accept the epithet “Don,” SP’s final
decision fulfills another aspect of DQ’s princely advice: when in doubt, error on the side of mercy. SP says this himself: “that they
should let him pass freely, for it is always more praiseworthy to do good than bad... a precept came into my memory, one among
the many that Don Quijote told me the night before I came to be governor of this isle, which was that when justice is in doubt, I
should lean toward, and choose, mercy.” SP states that DQ’s advice was made for this particular case, “fitting perfectly.” The juridical
aphorism on display is In dubio, pro reo, a principle of criminal justice: a defendant is innocent until proven guilty.
The Duke’s majordomo compares the governor favorably to “Lycurgus himself” and SP is proud to have resolved the matter so
neatly. He says “bars unbent,” meaning “no harm, no foul.” After the resolution of the paradox of the bridge, the narrator announces
the end of SP’s rule: “the butler... planning to conclude with him that very night playing the final joke on him for which he was
commissioned.” Cervantes concludes the Barataria allegory with a statement: governance inevitably faces paradoxes, and one solution
is to show mercy whenever possible. But we might ask: Whom does he have in mind? And will not showing mercy cause people to
take advantage of a tendency to not enforce the law? We’ll find partial answers later. For now, realize that Cervantes is thinking of the
Aragonese nobility of 1591 and the Morisco population in southeast Spain circa 1609. And remember our author’s “perspectivism”: life’s
hardest decisions are by definition never simple.
“In dubio, pro reo”

23
LESSON08
«Las constituciones
delgrangobernador
Sancho Panza»
R
einforcing the idea of a political “endgame,” a final letter from DQ arrives at SP’s court. SP orders his secretary to look it over,
and he responds: “It can well be read out loud, for what Sir Don Quijote writes to your grace should be written and
stamped in letters of gold.” DQ’s preamble indicates his pride in SP’s humility, which has caused a metamorphosis. He
alludes to Psalms 113.7 and 1 Samuel 2.18 when he gives thanks to heaven: “which knows how to lift the poor out of the dung heap.”
He also alludes to SP’s miraculous transformation from an ass into a human being: “They tell me that you govern as if you were a
man, and that you are a man as if you were a beast, according to the humility that you manifest.” There’s more advice on how to
avoid a political fall from grace: be civil, make sure the people are well fed, don’t issue too many decrees, embrace virtue and avoid vice,
remember the Aristotelian middle way, and promote justice and fairness regarding weights and measures in the marketplace. Above all,
SP should review DQ’s written advice. Then DQ informs SP about “a certain catment,” asks him if he still thinks the majordomo is the
Countess Trifaldi, and hints at Rodríguez’s “business,” which he fears will anger the Duke and Duchess. Finally, DQ cites an anti-utopian,
Aristotelian dictum in Latin: “Amicus Plato, sed magis amica veritas,” or “Plato is a friend, but the truth a greater friend.” Strangely,
he assumes SP has already learned this from his governing experience. DQ was an idealistic humanist at the beginning of his letter, but
he’s a rational scholastic at the end.
Typically, right when we locate a moral or identify with a character in DQ, Cervantes deploys irony and other perspectives to make us
question our conclusions. Take SP’s letter. Whereas DQ’s letter suggested that the governor was doing well, SP’s reply is ominous. He has
ignored some of DQ’s advice in favor of humility and against lineage. Specifically, he displays social status by not cutting his fingernails
and he decides to marry his son to the distressed daughter of Diego de la Llana, because the latter is “as much an hidalgo and an Old
Christian as one could ask.” Furthermore, although he’s concerned with maintaining an orderly marketplace, he still sounds corrupt

at times. For example, he exaggerates his avoidance of graft and bribes –“So far I have not handled any fees nor taken any bribes”–,
but he then says he will acquire gifts for DQ, either “either by skirt or by sleeve,” that is, honestly or dishonestly. SP says he doesn’t
understand what DQ means by the “catting,” although he assumes it involves enchanters. He also expresses concern that DQ might
alienate his noble benefactors. Strangest of all, SP sends his master “a very curious type of cane flute, which is attached to bladders,
that they make on this isle.” This echoes the albogues or “double flutes” of Camacho’s wedding in DQ 2.19, the devil’s bladders in DQ
2.11, the man who inflates dogs in the prologue to DQ 2, and the Knight of the Phoebus’s enema in DQ 1.15.
Finally, we come to the edicts that SP imposes on the citizens of Barataria: “The Constitutions of the Great Governor Sancho
Panza.” Perspectivism: as elsewhere in SP’s reign, this legal document manifests a weird combination of wisdom and stupidity. SP’s
laws are prudent, tragic, or absurd, depending on your point of view. Keep in mind that many of these laws were actually attempted in
Cervantes’s day. SP creates the office of “bailiff for the poor,” which will make sure that beggars don’t fake their poverty. He bans erotic
singing and requires blind beggars to document the authenticity of the miracles in their songs. Cervantes’s skeptical attitude toward
religious thinking arises here. But prices and governmental interference in the marketplace are the more important focus. SP’s legal
contradictions suggest political satire. On one hand, he bans hording and speculation. Not good economic policy. On the other hand,
he allows market pricing on the importation of wines, so long as they are properly labeled: “so as to be able to price them according
to their quality, sweetness, and reputation.” And yet, he orders fraud in selling wine punishable by death! His most destructive and
deeply ironical laws involve price fixing: “He lowered the prices of all types of footwear, especially that of shoes, which it seemed
to him were running a bit inflated; he placed a ceiling on the salaries of servants, which galloped freely down the road of self-
interest.” Like SP’s first legal case, when the farmer asked the tailor to make more and more hats from the same amount of cloth, SP has
now reduced the quality and accessibility of footwear for the citizens of Barataria. SP also orders a maximum wage for servants. This is
a particularly odd gesture given our squire’s constant requests for a salary from his master.
“so as to be able to price them
according to their quality,
sweetness, and reputation.”

25
LESSON09
Don Quijote
proposes a duel
I
n chapter fifty-two DQ challenges the son of the Duke’s banker-vassal to a duel in defense of Doña Rodríguez’s daughter. Then
two letters arrive from Teresa Panza, one to the Duchess and the other to her husband. Central throughout is the conflict between
the outmoded codes of conduct of feudalism and the increasing social mobility of the modern world. The narrator reports that
Cide Hamete reports that DQ tires of his courtly existence and longs to depart for Zaragoza, where he plans to “to win the suit of armor
offered to the victor at such festivals.” This refers to the chivalric games that flourished under Alfonso V, the Magnanimous, whose
empire included Aragón, Barcelona, Naples, Valencia, Sicily, Majorca, Sardinia, and Corsica. It is difficult to separate nostalgia for the
reign of Alfonso V from the Duke and Duchess’s estate on the Ebro and SP’s rule on the Isle of Barataria. Also, Cervantes here suggests
that DQ’s chivalric fantasy is more Aragonese than Castilian in nature.
Just as DQ is about to take leave of the Duke and Duchess, Doña Rodríguez enters the palatial hall with her daughter. The narrator
tells us that Rodríguez is acting independently, that this is not another trick by the nobles or their staff. Rodríguez speaks “en fabla,”
that is, according to the old chivalric dialect preferred by DQ. She demands that DQ force the Duke to marry his vassal to her daughter:
“because to expect the Duke my lord to do justice by me is to ask an elm tree for pears.” When the Duke accedes to the duel, he
uses legalistic, contractual language. Rodríguez and her daughter must agree that all their claims against him will be resolved by DQ:
“they place their right to justice in Sir Don Quijote’s hands.”
The formal“challenge,”or repto, issued by DQ embodies the social transition from feudalism to the early modern bourgeois world that
we have been tracing. Plays like Guillén de Castro’s Las mocedades del Cid (1618) or Corneille’s Le Cid (1637) also mark the domestication
of the nobility at the courts of early modern autocrats (cf. Norbert Elias’s The Court Society). In these works, the aristocratic right to settle
differences by duels makes a final appearance before it yields to the bureaucratic functionalism of the modern state.
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We see something similar in this chapter. It’s a reworking of Don Fernando’s submission to Dorotea’s claims in DQ 1, although at a
lower social level. On one hand, DQ formulates his challenge in noble, Virgilian terms: “the principal purpose of my profession is to
pardon the humble and punish the proud.” And the Duke vows to provide “a proper field... applying his justice equally to both
parties, as all princes who provide a free field to all those who duel in their realms are obligated to do.” On the other hand,
DQ comically admits that Rodríguez’s claim on behalf of her daughter is pathetic: “it would have been easier not to have been so
gullible as to believe the promises of lovers.” Moreover, DQ actually breaks the rules of chivalry. Technically, he is not allowed to
challenge a man who is not at least an hidalgo like himself, and so: “I renounce my hidalgo caste, and I lower and adjust myself to
the commoner status of the offender, and I make myself his equal, thus giving him the right to enter into combat with me.” Then,
because the young man is absent, the narrator tells us that the Duke “accepted the challenge in the name of his vassal.”
So we have a chain of social confrontations: Rodríguez’s daughter is from the lowest caste, an illegitimate laborer, although she
claims pure Christian blood; DQ is from the lowest caste of nobility; and the Duke and Duchess are from the high nobility. If we think
back to Rodríguez’s story in DQ 2.48, here she seems to be demanding justice for her daughter via DQ as a means of avenging her
husband’s death. The Duchess’s reaction emphasizes this formal conflict: “the Duchess ordered that from that moment forward they
were not to be treated like her servants but, rather, as enterprising ladies who had come to her house seeking justice.”

27
LESSON10
Teresa Panza’s
second letter
E
choing the social tensions on display, the page now arrives with Teresa Panza’s letters to the Duchess and SP. The Duchess
allows the first letter to be read aloud. Teresa informs her that SP’s fortune amazes everyone: “in this town everyone thinks
that my husband is an idiot, and, outside of governing a tribe of goats, they can’t imagine what sort of government he
could be good for.” Teresa again reveals her obsession with money and status: “I am determined... when going to court to lean back
in a carriage so as to pop the eyes of the thousand envious neighbors that I have; and, thus, I request that your excellency tell
my husband to send me a little money, and let it be enough, for the expenses at court are great.” For a third time, she dreams of
the effect of riding in a coach: “it being inevitable that many ask: ‘Who are the ladies in that carriage?,’ and that a servant of mine
respond: ‘The wife and daughter of Sancho Panza, Governor of the Isle of Barataria.’” Finally, hinting at DQ’s speech in DQ 1.11 and
the fallen “golden age” we are witnessing here, Teresa apologizes for the meager acorns that she has sent the Duchess –“this year they
have not picked acorns in this town”– and then she asks her to keep in touch: “Your magnificence shouldn’t forget to write to me.”
Is this a knowing wink or is Teresa being as crude as SP?
Manifesting a rude invasion of SP’s privacy, DQ now agrees to open and read the second letter. Teresa’s letter to SP continues to
contrast nobles and the masses: “when I came to hear that you are a governor, I thought I might fall down dead from delight...
Sanchica, your daughter, pissed herself without even knowing it from pure pleasure.” Again: “who would have thought that a
goatherd was to rise to be a governor of isles?” Teresa makes an odd reference to her hope that SP will rise at least to the status
of a tax collector. This recalls Cervantes’s own job as a tax collector for the Armada in the 1580s; it also recalls the taxman whom the

28
cross-dressed girl claimed was her father during SP’s rounds at night in DQ 2.49. Teresa is brutally honest about the corruption of these
officials: “my plan is to see you made a collector of the wool tax or sales taxes, which are offices that if abused can send a person
straight to Hell, but, after all, they always have and are handling money.” Teresa then thanks SP for the tunic for Sanchica’s dress,
repeats that she wishes she could have sent better acorns to the Duchess –“I wish they could be made of gold”–, and asks SP to send
her pearls “if they are worn on that isle.”
Finally, Teresa reports a series of anecdotal details about life in her town. The first hints at Cervantes’s antimonarchical attitude
and harkens back to the Comuneros Rebellion against Charles V. A man was hired to “to paint the coat of arms of His Majesty above
the doors of the town council.” In the end, “he didn’t paint anything, saying that he was no good at painting such trash.” This
sounds like Cervantes himself with a hint of the Cincinnatus myth, for the painter returned the money and became a farmer: “he has
abandoned the brush and taken up the hoe, and he goes into the fields like a gentleman.” The second story is religiously irreverent.
The son of Pedro de Lobo has entered the priesthood, but “Minguilla, the granddaughter of Mingo Silbato,” claims Lobo is the father
of her child. Next, Teresa takes a swipe at the army and the town’s prostitutes: “A company of soldiers passed through here: on their
way they took three of the town’s lasses with them.” By contrast, Teresa then reveals that her daughter is generating income and
saving money toward her dowry: “Sanchica is doing some lace embroidery; each day she clears eight maravedís, which she is
setting aside in a money box to help with her dowry.” Finally, lightning has struck the town’s stocks and the well has dried up, but
she doesn’t care.

29
LESSON11
Sancho resigns
N
ow we transition to the end of the reign of SP, “flower and mirror for all insular governors.” Chapter fifty-three describes
the invasion of Barataria by enemy forces and SP’s subsequent resignation. Note how frequently Cide Hamete intrudes in
these chapters. Here the narrator gives us a direct quote of what the “Mohammedan philosopher” has to say about how
time cannot be stopped: “only human life rushes after its fleeting end more than the wind.” Hamete poetically alludes to Job 7.6-
7, which also compares life to the weaving of textiles. Here also, the narrator makes a strange concession to Muslims’ ability to reason
“without the enlightenment of faith, only by the light of their natural intelligence.” This is big. Is Hamete a rationalist? an atheist?
an Averroist? The narrator then turns our attention to “the rapidity with which the governorship of Sancho ended, was consumed,
dissolved itself, and vanished in shadow and smoke.” This is typical baroque discourse: life is a dream and all things come to an end.
Next comes another enactment of war, like those we have seen elsewhere, such as in the hills between the two towns proud of their
braying, or in the woods near the ducal palace. War comes to Barataria in the dark of night. SP wakes up to “infinite trumpets and
drums” and emerges to find “more than twenty people with burning torches in their hands and with their swords unsheathed.”
They are in panic: “To arms, to arms, Sir Governor, to arms, for infinite enemies have infiltrated the isle, and we are lost if your
industry and valor do not save us!” SP contrasts himself with his master: “These things would be better left to my master Don
Quijote.” He’s not up to the task. His servants throw two shields on him like a turtle: “He ended up like a Galapagos tortoise, enclosed
and concealed between his shells.” The lights go out, SP is trampled, and someone stands on his shell and shouts orders for the
defense of the palace. When all seems lost, victory is declared and attributed to SP: “Victory, victory, our enemies flee in defeat!... by
the valor of that invincible arm!” But SP faints and resolves to leave.

30
The shift from the hectic, panic of war to SP’s slow, resigned withdrawal is a touching scene: “He
fell silent, and without saying another word he began to dress himself, as if entombed in silence,
and everyone watched him, waiting to see what the end result would be.” His tragedy becomes a
spectacle. Of course, his only concern is his ass, whom he humanizes to an incredible degree: “he went
to the stable, with everyone who was there following him, and going up to his gray he hugged him
and gave him a peaceful kiss on his forehead, and, not without tears in his eyes, he spoke to him:
‘Come here you, my compadre and my friend and sharer of my labors and my sufferings: when I was
with you and had no other thoughts than those that attended to my efforts to mend your trappings
and feed your chubby body, blessed were my hours, days, and years; but since I left you and climbed
the towers of ambition and pride, my soul has been penetrated by a thousand miseries, a thousand
labors, and four thousand misgivings.’” And so SP departs: “Make way, my lords, and let me return to
my customary liberty of yore: let me depart in search of my past life, so that I might be reborn from
this state of death... Much better for me to have a sickle in my hand than the scepter of a governor.”
This is a huge moment: SP’s political experiment culminates in cynicism. Thus, SP’s speech alludes to a
motif from Horace: “Beatus ille qui procul negotiis” or “Blessed is the man who stays away from business.”
It’s also an echo of DQ’s niece arguing with her uncle: “Would it not be better to remain peacefully at
home?” (DQ 1.7). And looking ahead, it’s an anticipation of Voltaire’s Candide insisting that we should
all take care of our garden. In Spain, SP’s retreat from politics anticipates philosopher Ortega y Gasset’s
famous “Bene fac loco illi quo natus est” or “Improve the place into which you were born.” Finally, SP’s
abdication of power is another echo of the Cincinnatus myth that would become so popular among the
American founders.
Two final points about the end of SP’s governorship. First, he twice emphasizes his total lack of
corruption: “I have governed like an angel.” If we are skeptical, then Cervantes’s point seems much like
James Madison’s view in Federalist 51: precisely because people are not angels, the powers of government
must be limited. SP even refuses to submit himself to the traditional juicio de residencia or “review of
time in office,” claiming that only the Duke can judge him. This sure sounds like corruption. Second, in a
symbolic gesture, Pedro Recio offers SP a medicine that recalls the balsam of Fierabrás in DQ 1.10: “I will
prepare your grace a drink to protect against falls and thrashings.” But SP refuses: “Tarde piache!
Too late!... I’d sooner become a Turk than not leave.” It would appear that there’s no absolute cure to
political problems. War, poverty, crime, corruption, and tyranny are facts of human existence.

31
Chapter
51 - 53 review

The novel’s epistolary turn draws our attention through a
sequence of frames and perspectives that are as complex as ever.
Back and forth we go between the Duke and Duchess’s court and
Sancho’s. We see the importance of humility in politics, but we
also see how the law itself is a riddle, a kind of paradox that seeks
to regulate human action so much that it risks provoking inaction.
These chapters also provide a close look at the social dynamism
of early modern Spain. The lower castes are mobile; the nobility
in decline. DQ is at the center of it all, trapped between Doña
Rodríguez and the Duke and Duchess. Finally, what do we make of
the invasion of SP’s island? Like DQ’s earlier allusion to Clavileño as
a Trojan horse, the invasion of Barataria likely refers to the Morisco
problem. SP can’t handle the violent truth of politics and resigns
himself to obscurity. His strange metaphor combines the ant of
Rojas’s prologue to La Celestina with Apuleius’s ass in The Golden
Ass: “Let the wings of the ant stay in the stable.” All SP wants is
some normal shoes, which adds irony to his stupid law fixing the
price of shoes. It’s a tragic end to SP’s dream of ruling over a happy
republic (Cf. Jack Nicholson in A Few Good Men). The only solution
is the Cincinnatus myth: return to the farm. Two final points: 1) in
another nod to the moral of Apuleius’s novel, SP humanizes his ass
more than anywhere else in the novel; 2) Cide Hamete Benengeli’s
interventions are growing, as he provides major commentary
in chapters 48, 50, 52, 53, and 54. As we shall see, Cervantes’s
treatment of the Morisco question is reaching a climax
Let’s review

“I will only say that I do not
know if human misery can be
portrayed with more realism
than to see so many people
leaving in such confusion, with
the cries of women and children
so burdened by obstacles and
difficulties... and truth be told, if
these people have sinned, then
they are paying for it dearly.”
—Don Juan de Austria,
Letter 6 November 1570

34
LESSON12
Ricote
C
hapters fifty-four and fifty-five of DQ 2 are crucial to understanding Cervantes’s art of the novel. Here, more than anywhere
else, our author combines two symbols: 1) the ass as the mistreated human beings of Apuleius’s anti-slavery picaresque The
Golden Ass; and 2) the cave as the state of unenlightened philosophical ignorance in the political allegory of Plato’s Republic.
First, note chapter fifty-four’s ridiculous subtitle: “Which deals with things pertaining to this story and no other.” It’s absurd and
comedic, but it also signals this chapter as fundamental. Ironically, the narrator cuts from SP’s abdication of political power to events
at the ducal palace. It turns out that the Duke’s vassal, whom Doña Rodríguez wants to marry her daughter, is in Flanders, a subversive
allusion to Spain’s most costly imperial adventure in the Low Countries, where Cervantes’s own brother Rodrigo had died in battle in
1600. So a young lackey named Tosilos (a reference to Toxilo, a slave in Plautus’s play The Persian) must take the vassal’s place in the
joust with DQ. In stark contrast to SP’s tragic reaction to the invasion of Barataria, DQ is now eager to prove “the valor of his mighty
arm.”
Then we switch from the ducal palace back to SP. Notice again Cervantes’s inclusive use of the first person plural: “Let us let those
things pass, as we have left other things pass, and go join the company of Sancho, who, both happy and sad, came riding atop
his gray in search of his master.” Here, Cervantes confronts our fallen governor with the great moral and political issue of the day,
the Expulsion of the Morisco population from southern Spain, which had taken place between 1609 and 1614. Now we understand the
reason for the weird date of SP’s letter to Teresa way back in DQ 2.36. Leaving Barataria, SP meets six pilgrims who ask him for alms.
Note that the narrator cites Cide Hamete’s description of SP as “charitable” when he gives the pilgrims bread and cheese. When they
ask for money, speaking German –“Gueld! Gueld!”–, he indicates with signs that he has none. German foregrounds the issue of the
Habsburg Empire.
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35
At this point the novel’s major Morisco character appears and, from the ground, he hugs SP about the waist, recalling SP and DQ
in the fulling mills episode. Speaking perfect Castilian –“in a clear and very Castilian voice”– the man recognizes his old friend: “Is
it possible that I have in my arms that great friend of mine, that good neighbor of mine, Sancho Panza?” At first, SP does not
recognize him, and Cervantes uses this problem to emphasize the Morisco theme: “How is it possible, Sancho Panza, brother, that you
do not recognize your neighbor Ricote the Morisco, the shopkeeper in your village?” Now SP hugs him back in a notably awkward
way: “without dismounting, he threw his arms around his neck.” Three points here: 1) Ricote and SP are neighbors, apparently good
friends; 2) SP indicates that Ricote is in danger if he is discovered –“if they catch you and recognize you, it will go very badly for
you”–; 3) and finally, the Morisco is a shopkeeper. Cervantes signals that the Expulsion of the Moriscos has been morally tragic as well
as economically devastating.
Ricote and his company are friendly: “they are very amicable folk.” SP and Ricote leave the “the royal highway” in order to
converse in private, and Ricote tells SP “that which happened to me after I left our village, in obedience of the decree of His
Majesty, which threatened the unfortunates of my nation so severely, as you know.” This is huge. Some historians put the figure of
expelled Moriscos as high as 300,000. The justification of their expulsion was formulated in terms of the Machiavellian “reason of state”:
Spain was threatened externally by the Turks and the Moriscos were considered internal enemies, a potential fifth column. If Cervantes
saw the expulsion as necessary, and this is hotly debated, then, at the very least, Ricote represents an exception that calls the policy into
question. He is SP’s neighbor, but his name also refers to the Valle de Ricote in Murcia, famous for the loyalty and Christian faith of its
Morisco population. In fact, these were the last Moriscos to be expelled from Spain. They were initially granted an exemption and only
when the local oligarchy insisted on expropriating their property were they finally sent to the Barbary Coast in 1614.
The ironies of this scene are thick. First, Ricote and his friends are the antithesis of Pedro Recio. They offer SP a generous banquet,
complete with bread, salt, nuts, cheese, ham, olives, and even caviar, which Cervantes describes in detail: “They also offered a black
delicacy, which they say is called caviar and is made from the eggs of fish.” Finally, on one hand, if the Moriscos only suck the ham
bones, which hints at their Islamic beliefs, on the other hand, they go against their faith by drinking a lot of wine: “But what most won
the day on that field of a banquet were six wineskins, for each of them took one from their saddlebags... and then, straightaway
and all together, they raised their arms with wineskins in the air: with their mouths on the openings and their eyes fixed on the
sky, it seemed no less than that they were aiming at it.” Note the painful contrast between sharing a meal and being at war, between
drinking wine and aiming guns.

36
“Gueld! Gueld!”
The irony continues as the narrator cites a popular ballad about Nero, who watched “how Rome burned,” in order to describe SP,
who “suffered not from anything.” This contrasts our governor as a potential tyrant with our squire as such a friend of Moriscos that
he does not worry about being a Roman Catholic. It even turns the Inquisition’s attempts to burn people like Ricote back against the
institution, because by violently betraying Christian ideals, what gets burned is Rome itself. And at this very moment, SP joins the
drunken orgy: “he asked Ricote for the wineskin and took his aim like the rest of them.” Next, Cervantes reveals the political bond
between Spain and the German House of Habsburg as a lie, a sign of hypocrisy. Our Old Christian squire bonds with his Morisco hosts,
who, for their part, pretend to be Germans. Notice that both SP and the Moriscos speak the Mediterranean lingua franca that was so
important in “The Captive’s Tale” of DQ 1.39-41: “Now and again one of them would grasp Sancho’s right hand and say: ‘Español y
tudesqui, tuto uno: bon compaño.’ And Sancho would reply: ‘¡Bon compaño, jura Di!’” The Moriscos mean: “Spaniards and Germans,
united together: good friends.” SP means: “Good friends, I swear by God!” Note also how the following description of SP subverts
war and government with laughter and feasting: “And he fired off volleys of laughter for an hour, forgetting all about what had
happened to him during his governorship, because our cares have little jurisdiction regarding the timing and duration of food
and drink.” Finally, note that Ricote speaks perfect Spanish: “Ricote, without the slightest sign of his Morisco language, addressed
the following words to him in pure Castilian.” Is this a man who deserves expulsion?

37
LESSON13
“Freedom of
conscience”
N
ow, what Ricote tells SP is one of Cervantes’s most problematic passages. Given the social bonding on display, it’s difficult
to take the apologetic tone of Ricote’s description of the policy of expulsion seriously. First, he underscores the terror
caused by “the proclamation and edict which His Majesty ordered to be issued against those of my nation.” But then
he endorses Felipe III’s decision, using the same logic and metaphors that were used to justify the policy: “it seems to me that it was
divine inspiration that moved His Majesty to enact such a noble resolution, not because all of us were guilty, for some were
Christians true and firm, but because these were so few that they could not oppose those who were not, and it was not good to
harbor the snake so near the heart, allowing the enemy inside the house. In the end, with just reason we were punished with the
penalty of exile, moderate and lenient in the opinion of some, but in ours the most terrible that could befall us.”
What is going on here? At the very least, Ricote evinces a Stockholm syndrome by sympathizing with his persecutors. Regarding
Cervantes’s intentions, the inherent goodness of Ricote trumps his own endorsement of the expulsion. I could be wrong, of course.
It might be more accurate to say that the irony and perspectivism of Cervantes’s complex narrative disallows easy conclusions about
these types of issues. And note again the timelessness of Cervantes’s fiction. Look at Europe’s Muslim immigration problem. History
does not repeat itself; but it rhymes. And even so, there are no easy answers.
Things get more tragic and more complicated. Ricote describes the agony of the Moriscos: “Wherever we are we cry for Spain,”
because “it is our natural homeland” and “love for one’s country is sweet.” He then relates his journey through France and Italy on
his way to Germany. In fact, Ricote now lives in the very place after which the Habsburgs take their name: “I took a house in a town
near Augsburg.” We read another hotly debated passage when Ricote claims that in Germany he is not persecuted for his religious

38
beliefs: “I reached Germany, and there it seemed to me that one could live with more liberty because the inhabitants do not pry
into the lives of others: each lives as he wishes, because in most places one lives with freedom of religious conscience.” Note how
this idea anticipates the fundamental importance of the First Amendment to the US Constitution.
More agony. We learn that Ricote has been separated from his wife and daughter, who are in Árgel. And SP faces one final social and
economic predicament. Ricote claims his wife and daughter are “Catholic Christians,” and yet he admits that he himself is ambivalent:
“and even though I am not so committed, I am still more Christian than Moor, and I always pray to God that he open the eyes
of my understanding and let me know how best to serve him.” Remember this Neoplatonic take on theology. Ricote wants God to
show him the light of how to be a proper Christian. The problem facing SP is that Ricote proposes that his friend help him recover his
buried treasure so that he can rescue his family from Algiers: “if you want, Sancho, to come with me and help me dig it up and hide
it, I will give you two hundred escudos, with which you can remedy your needs, and you know that I know that you have many.”
Note that, figuratively speaking, the ethical dilemma of DQ 1, the issue of the 100 escudos that Carrasco brought up in DQ 2.3-4, has
now been doubled. And note how the theft of Cardenio’s money by SP now relates to the expropriation of the Moriscos by the Spanish
Crown, the Inquisition, and the local oligarchs and Old Christians who supported the policy of expulsion.
Like “Sancho the slaver” in DQ 1, “Sancho the governor” in DQ 2 disappoints modern readers. He refuses to help Ricote. Even if the
Morisco were to pay him double, and upfront and in cash, he says he will not betray his king: “because it would seem to me treachery
to my king to favor of his enemies, I would not go with you, even if, as you just promised to give me two hundred escudos, you
were now to offer me four hundred and in cash.” Moreover, he claims that he is not greedy –“I am in no way avaricious”–, offering as
proof the fact that he has not embezzled money from his time in office. Given SP’s constant interest in money, get-rich-quick schemes,
and salaries, do we believe him?
At the end of chapter fifty-four, Ricote asks about SP’s governorship, hilariously pointing out that “there are no isles on terra
firma.” SP insists he has governed “like a Sagittarius,” alluding to Chiron, the teacher of Achilles, again referring to the classical genre
of princely advice manuals that are a major theme of DQ 2. Ricote tells SP to drop his fantastical talk of governing islands and embrace
the option of helping him recover his treasure. At this point, SP says “be content that I will not expose you,” alluding to the fact
that he risks six years in the galleys for helping a Morisco. Finally, Ricote asks if SP has news of his family and SP reports that a certain
Don Pedro Gregorio was courting Ricote’s daughter. Cervantes’s favorite theme of lovers with different social statuses: Gregorio is not
only an Old Christian Spaniard, he is also the firstborn of a wealthy family: “that rich young heir.” Ricote expresses confidence that
“Moriscas rarely, if ever, get mixed up in love with Old Christians” and SP sympathizes given the political circumstances: “May God
make it so... for it would go bad for both of them.” Then SP and Ricote hug once more and go their separate ways.

39
LESSON14
Sancho and his
ass fall into a cave
C
hapter fifty-five offers poetic and political justice for the governor who has refused to help his friend. Note another absurdly
redundant subtitle: “On things that happened to Sancho on the road, and others which simply have to be seen.” The
emphasis on vision is important. Remember the cave allegory in Plato’s Republic and the metaphor of the ass as a human
being in Apuleius’s The Golden Ass. The brutal irony is that SP now shows great concern for his ass, which grows human in this episode,
whereas he has just repressed his natural sympathy for his neighbor.
Let’s deal first with the Apuleian aspect of the episode. SP’s concern is constant and the ass is a fluid figure. When he falls into the
pit, SP complains, “especially when he heard his gray painfully and tenderly moaning.” SP speaks about himself in the third person
and uses a suggestive quiasmus: “Sancho Panza never abandoned his ass, nor his ass Sancho Panza.” He helps the ass stand up
and feeds it, and he addresses it “as if he could understand.” Think of it this way: the ass is Ricote, and Cervantes models SP’s strange
concern for his ass after those characters in Apuleius’s novel who praise Lucius the ass, who is really a human being: “Oh, friend and
companion of mine, how poorly I have paid you for your good services! Forgive me... for I promise to place a crown of laurel
atop your head, such that you will seem nothing less than a poet laureate, and to double your feed rations.” SP makes sure his
ass can move through the pit: “he made room so that the ass could easily pass through.” When DQ appears at an opening above, SP
specifies that his ass is with him, and, according to the narrator: “And there’s more, for it seems no less than that the ass understood
what Sancho said, for at that moment he began to bray with force, such that the whole cave reverberated.” When SP is freed,
he first makes sure his ass is comfortable: “he refused to go up to greet the Duke without first seeing the gray accommodated in
the stable.” If you still think SP’s ass is just a comical detail, then you are a philistine; but you are in good company, because most of
Cervantes’s editors and commentators agree with you.
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Now let’s look at the episode’s allusions to Plato’s cave. The context of the episode is darkness: SP travels in “the night somewhat
dark and gloomy”; and he falls into “a deep and most dark chasm.” Interesting here are the “old structures” that frame the hole. It’s as
if SP has fallen into that primitive darkness out of which all civilizations attempt to escape; or perhaps he has fallen into that primitive
darkness between two ancient civilizations at war. The latter seems plausible because when SP checks himself, like DQ did after the
Battle of the Brayers in DQ 1.27, the former governor finds himself “good, whole, and in catholic health.”
Next, SP contrasts his predicament with his master’s: “I won’t be as fortunate as my lord Don Quijote of La Mancha when he
descended and went down into the cave of that enchanted Montesinos.” He spends the night in the pit. Day brings “clarity and
splendor,” but SP is still trapped. He spies “a ray of sunshine” and moves toward “a confused spot of clarity” at the other end of the
cave. Midway through the episode, as we saw in the Cave of Montesinos, and more recently in DQ’s concern for Rodríguez, the theme of
Purgatory returns. SP shouts for help: “Is there a Christian who can hear me?” DQ is prepared to rescue souls: “if you are a soul doing
penance, tell me what you want me to do on your behalf.” There is humor here as SP has to repeatedly insist that he is still alive. DQ
offers an hilarious citation of Catholic doctrine: “if you are my squire, Sancho Panza, and you have died, so long as the devils have
not taken you, and by the mercy of God you are in Purgatory, then Our Holy Mother the Roman Catholic Church has enough
intercessory prayers that can save you from the suffering in which you find yourself.” Recall that Protestantism rejects this idea.
Also recall Ricote’s ambivalence about his faith and the mockery of Catholic orthodoxy elsewhere in the novel. This is a big moment.
The cave is also Platonic to the degree that it is political. The episode begins with a political version of the ubi sunt topic inherited
from Cicero and popular during the Middle Ages (cf. Jorge Manrique). SP: “Who would have said that he who yesterday saw himself
enthroned as governor of an isle, giving orders to his servants and his vassals, would today find himself entombed in a chasm?”
Like the last Visigothic King Rodrigo, SP will only find “snakes and toads” in the pit. Remember DQ’s anecdote about Charles V at the
Pantheon in Rome in DQ 2.8. Has someone figuratively pushed SP from the cima or “peak” of the dome into this sima or “pit”? SP
himself says this is political punishment: “a sinner buried alive, an unfortunate ungoverned governor.” And once he escapes the pit,
SP asserts that he governed honestly: “neither did I have time to take any bribes or charge any fees... I arrived naked, and naked
I find myself now: I neither lost nor gained.” To paraphrase Hamlet, the governor “doth protest too much, methinks.” The narrator
reports that the Duke plans to compensate SP: “he would arrange to grant him another office in his territory, one less onerous and
more lucrative.”

41
Cervantes’s innovation on Plato is that the cave also represents ethnic fusion. SP claims DQ would experience it as if it were “the
palaces of Galiana,” alluding to the legend of a Moorish princess of Toledo who fell in love with Charlemagne. Moreover, at this
moment, Benengeli intrudes and tells us how DQ came across SP’s cave while out preparing for his joust. The narrator continues to
weave together the political and ethnic symbolism of ass, cave, and light: “at the cost of many people and much work they raised
the gray and Sancho Panza out from that darkness and into the light of the sun. A student saw him and said: ‘This is how all
wicked governors should leave their governments: just like this sinner leaves the depths of the abyss, starving to death, pale,
and without a blanca to his name, as far as I can tell.’” SP’s version is similar but more concise: “I left, as I was saying, I left that isle
without any other company than that of my ass; I fell into a chasm, and I made my way through it until this morning, with the
light of the sun, when I saw the way out.” More cynicism appears in the Duke’s plan to grant SP another office and SP’s description
of governing as a child’s game, something like hop frog or four corners: “like that game played by children when they shout ‘Your
jump, and now give to me,’ I jump out of the government and I pass into the service of my lord Don Quijote.’”

42
LESSON15
The battle between
Don Quijote and Tosilos
C
hapter fifty-six echoes the vision theme via its playful subtitle –“Concerning the gigantic and never seen battle”– and in
the joust’s early details: “infinite people who were hoping to see the severe and never seen encounter.” It’s an extension
of the Plato’s cave symbolism in the previous chapter. It’s also important to note that Cervantes frames the combat between
DQ and the lackey Tosilos with the official ban on dueling. The Duke removes the iron tips of the jousters’ lances as a precaution
and tells DQ to be satisfied that the Duke is allowing this event, even though “it went against the decree by the Holy Council
which prohibits such challenges.” Remember that from the nobility’s perspective, it’s a fallen world. Chivalry is dead on many levels.
Similarly, Rocinante is always pathetic, and now Tosilos arrives atop a workhorse from the Low Countries. The mundane detail also refers
to the Habsburgs’ use of Spaniards to repress that region.
In the end, Tosilos falls in love with Rodríguez’s daughter, who becomes “the lady of his liberty.” Cervantes offers a detailed
description of Eros, or “Love,” piercing Tosilos’s heart with an arrow. It’s comedic, but it’s also a Neoplatonic view of the mechanics of
love. More importantly, Tosilos’s formal declaration of surrender is an idealistic articulation of how to resolve social and ethnic conflict:
“I say that I recognize having been defeated and that I wish to marry that lady immediately... I do not want to achieve through
disputes and battles what I can achieve peacefully and with no risk of death.” This contrasts with the Duke, who at first “remained
shocked and extremely angry.” But even the Duke is eventually satisfied, perhaps because, instead of the son of his vassal, a mere
lackey will marry Rodríguez’s daughter. Three final points: 1) DQ’s rare religiosity echoes Vivaldo’s objections to the heresy of knights
errant in DQ 1.13. Awaiting combat, DQ properly entrusts “all of his heart to Our Lord God and to his lady Dulcinea of Toboso.” Later,
he even blesses Tosilo’s marriage with religious language: “since Our Lord God has granted it to you, may Saint Peter bless it for
you.” 2) The metamorphosis theme reappears. Rodríguez and her daughter object to the “transformations” of a rich man into a lackey.
But DQ and SP act as mediators and Rodríguez’s daughter is happy in the end: “I would rather be the legitimate wife of a lackey than
the deceived mistress of a nobleman.” 3) All this religious respect and social cohesion contrasts with the sadistic disappointment
of the masses: “all proclaimed victory for Don Quijote, and most of them went away sad and melancholy at seeing that the two
combatants they had waited for with such anticipation had not hacked one another to bits, just like when boys are disappointed
when the man they are waiting to see hanged does not appear because either the other party or the court has pardoned him.”
What to do about the masses? Morality is the last thing on their minds.
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Chapter
54 - 56 review

44
The ass and the cave, along with vision and metamorphosis,
are the major symbols and themes of these chapters.
Simultaneously, the Morisco problem comes into greater focus.
Nothing is simple; the expulsion might have been necessary.
However, Cervantes signals other ways of escaping the
potential darkness of ethnic conflict: commerce, dining, and
gift-giving are ways of recognizing shared values. Whether
Ricote is Christian or not, he is certainly kind to our former
governor. But the tensions between Islam and Christianity
during Inquisitional Spain were no simpler than they are
today. Finally, note the happy ending, the “transformation,”
represented by the marriage between Tosilos and Rodríguez’s
daughter, whose name, curiously, we never learn. Tosilos’s
metamorphosis echoes Carrasco’s role as the Knight of the
Mirrors in DQ 2.14, and we’ll see this narrative tactic applied
to DQ himself in a future episode. Again, Cervantes proposes
some sort of metamorphosis as a solution to social conflict.
By contrast, note the disappointment of the masses, who had
hoped for bloody combat like young boys thrilled at the idea
of a hanging. Cervantes may be a humanist, but he does not
appear to be a populist.
Let’s review

“And as he journeyed, he
came near Damascus:
and suddenly there
shined round about him
a light from heaven: And
he fell to the earth, and
heard a voice saying
unto him, Saul, Saul, why
persecutest thou me?”
—Acts 9.3-4

46
LESSON16
Don Quijote and
Sanchoare escorted
to the ducal palace
C
hapter fifty-seven of DQ 2 narrates DQ and SP’s departure from the ducal palace. Its humor centers on Altisidora’s complaint
via a ballad she sings in front of everyone present. The narrator opens by underscoring DQ’s intense desire to depart: “he
imagined that allowing his person to be enclosed and idle was a great error.” He twice repeats the term ociosidad,
meaning “leisure” or “idleness” and alluding to the abstract Latin concept of “otium.” The significance of this term in DQ would
require a dissertation, but we can make four points. First, DQ’s unoccupied state reflects back on the reader who was addressed as
“idle reader” in the first prologue of 1605. Second, adding to this circular effect, we recall that at the beginning of his first sally, DQ
expressed the same anxiety regarding the world’s need for him: “spurring him on was the need that he thought was caused in
the world by his delay” (DQ 1.2). Third, during the Renaissance, “otium,” a concept inherited from Cicero and Petrarch, was a positive
humanist ideal associated with intellectual refinement and learning about nature and man. But because humanists were often advisors
to dukes and kings, the term has political connotations, and in princely advice manuals, it could have negative connotations: too much
thinking can lead to melancholy and an inability to act. Ironically, near the end of part two, as DQ becomes more reflective, he becomes
more melancholy. Finally, both classical nobles and the modern merchants regarded a person’s work, or “negotium,” as the negation of
her “otium.”
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Speaking of politics, for his part, SP’s capacity for corruption is the other major theme in chapter fifty-seven. He constantly refers to
his impeccable reign, even insisting that his wife’s gift of acorns to the Duchess cannot implicate him in any dishonesty: “I am consoled
by the fact that this gift cannot be called a bribe, because I was already governor when she sent them.” And again: “In effect, I
entered government naked and I leave it naked, and thus I will be able to say with a clear conscience, which is no small thing: ‘I
was born naked, and naked I still am: I have neither lost nor gained.’” SP please! DQ is a weird text, but SP’s obsession has become
meaningfully absurd. Cervantes again alludes to the motif of the provisional leader who serves the state, but then returns to his normal
life. American readers should recognize the Cincinnatus legend so popular among the Founders, many of whom, by the way, were avid
readers of DQ.
An interesting detail undercuts SP’s claims of innocence: “Sancho was atop his ass, with his saddlebags, case, and provisions,
overjoyed because the Duke’s majordomo, the one who had been Trifaldi, had given him a small purse with two hundred gold
escudos to cover the costs of the trip, and Don Quijote still knew nothing of this.” WOW! What did SP do to deserve this money?
Recall that SP turned down this exact sum from Ricote. And why are we told that DQ is still unaware of this? DQ seems unknowingly
implicated in SP’s corruption.
‘I was born naked, and
naked I still am: I have
neither lost nor gained.’”

48
LESSON17
Altisidora’s
complaint
T
he complaint sung by Altisodora is another of Cervantes’s burlesque ballads. The refrain is hyperbolic: “Cruel Vireno, fugitive
Aeneas, / go with Barabbas, you belong with him.” But notice how this transmits two ideas: first, amorous betrayal, for
Vireno and Aeneus abandoned Olimpia and Dido in Ariosto’s Orlando furioso and Virgil’s Aeneid; second, defiant theft, for
according to the gospels, Barabbas was a bandit and a rebel released by Pontius Pilate before the crucifixion of Jesus. A moral and
political transgression has occurred. At first glance, Altisidora’s ballad is silly: she mocks DQ’s horse –“your poorly governed beast”–,
she exaggerates her sexual attractiveness –“the most beautiful damsel / that Diana ever saw in her woods, / or that Venus spied in
her forest”–, she accuses DQ of having stolen three nightcaps and several garters from her –“You have taken three nightcaps / and
the garters off certain legs”–, and she even wishes him misfortune at cards and hopes that if he ever gets his molars pulled, they break
off at the roots. As the son of a dentist, I can tell you that is a terrible thing to wish on someone.
But Altisidora’s song is also damming in four ways. First, equating DQ with Aeneas, who escaped Troy but also abandoned Dido, is
an anti-imperial gesture inherited from the poet Garcilaso. Second, when Altisidora curses Dulcinea, she says “for the just perhaps
/ pay for sinners in my land,” which, as we saw in DQ 1.7, voices Cervantes’s main criticism of the Inquisition. Third, she accuses DQ
of having stolen her heart, her nightcaps, and her garters by using his garras or “claws” and his cerras or “hands.” But in slang these
terms also mean “thefts” and “bags,” alluding to SP’s “small purse with two hundred gold escudos.” Finally, according to the tortured
grammar of the second stanza, Altisidora describes not her garters but her own legs as “black and white,” bringing up the issue of race

again. So, Altisidora’s ballad attacks the iconography of Habsburg imperialism, alludes to the injustice of the Inquisition, accuses both
DQ and SP of robbery, and hints at an erotic miscegenation rejected by DQ. In short, the broken love affair between Altisidora and DQ
is yet another of the novel’s allegories for the Morisco problem. And beyond Rocinante, the “poorly governed beast” surely refers
to governor SP’s rucio as well as the Trojan horse Clavileño, which ultimately ties everything back to multi-ethnic figures like Aldonza
Lorenzo, Zoraida, and most recently Ricote.
The true hilarity of the episode, and more proof of Cervantes’s comic genius, occurs at the end of Altisodora’s song, in the narrator’s
description of DQ’s reaction: “During the time that sad Altisidora complained in the way described, Don Quijote was staring at
her, and then, without responding a word to her, he turned toward Sancho and said to him: ‘For the love of your ancestors, dear
Sancho, I urge you to tell me the truth. Tell me, have you, by chance, taken the three nightcaps and the garters that this lovesick
damsel claims?’” As if DQ’s patient attention to Altisidora’s ballad were not funny enough, his instinct is to accuse SP of having stolen
her nightcaps and her garters. And SP’s response?: “I am indeed carrying the three nightcaps, but as for the garters, well, she’s off
in the hills of Úbeda.” By this last phrase SP accuses Altisidora of being out of her mind. But we have to ask: how in the world did SP
end up with three of her nightcaps?
More humor: the Duke now plays along and insists that DQ should return Altisidora’s garters or else face him in a duel: “if not, then
I challenge you to mortal combat.” DQ is caught off guard by all of this, especially the accusation of theft: “I, Sir Duke, have never
been a thief, nor do I plan to be one ever in my life.” But is this true? A certain barber and a few goatherds and innkeepers back in
the Sierra Morena might disagree. In the end, however, Altisidora confesses that she has lied: “I beg your forgiveness regarding the
larceny of the garters, because I swear by God and my soul that I am wearing them, and I must have fallen into that careless state
of he who went looking for the ass he was riding.” Notice how Altisidora admits that she is actually wearing the garters. Note too
how she uses the precise legalistic term “larceny,” which is the issue of her song and which echoes the essence of Cervantes’s critiques
of the Inquisition and the Expulsion of the Moriscos. SP responds that he would never lie about a theft –“As if I would hide stolen
things!”–, which we know is a lie. SP also over-emphasizes yet again the purity of his governorship: “For, if had wanted to, I would
have had loads of opportunities during my governorship.” And with that, our heroes depart for the capital of Aragón: “heading in
the direction of Zaragoza.”

51
LESSON18
Liberty and five saints,
that’s right, FIVE (5)
C
hapter fifty-eight has three movements: our heroes’ encounter with four effigies of saints, a delightful pastoral adventure,
and then DQ’s clash with a herd of “fierce bulls.” Before any of these, we read DQ’s famous preamble on the theme of
liberty. We have seen the idea of liberty a number of times: 1) as a matter of human dignity in the prologue of DQ 1; 2) as
a problematic aspect of the relationship between master and servant throughout the novel; 3) as a particular feature of Cervantes’s
meditations on slavery, both the new trans-Atlantic slave trade as well as Viedma’s enslavement at Algiers. Here DQ pontificates on
liberty as an expression of his escape from the restrictive and decadent environment of the ducal palace. But he also elevates the topic
to a universal level: “Liberty, Sancho, is one of the most precious gifts that the Heavens gave to men; she is worth more than all
the hidden treasures on land and beneath the sea; for liberty, as well as for honor, one can and should risk one’s life, and by
contrast, captivity is the worst thing that can happen to men.”
DQ concludes by formulating liberty as freedom from feudal norms: “the obligations to remunerate received benefits and
largesse are bonds that restrain the independence of the spirit.” The irony is that his listener, SP, seeks a salary from his master, that
is, liberation from the organic, reciprocal bonds between lord and vassal. Or another way, the Duke is to DQ what DQ is to SP. Adding
to this irony, SP now lets DQ in on a secret: “Even given... what your mercy has just stated, it’s not good that two hundred gold
escudos in a small purse which the Duke’s majordomo gave me should remain without acknowledgement on our part.” SP also
notes that compensation means a lot in the modern world: “for we’ll not always find castles where they welcome us; we might come
across some inns where they’ll beat us.”
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52
DQ and SP now come across a group of twelve men in a “small verdant meadow” (another green locus amoenus) who are transporting
four effigies of saints covered by sheets. Once again, vision is the theme as DQ requests a viewing: “If you please... I would like to see
them.” Money is also a theme. One of the men specifies the value of the images: “none of them is worth less than fifty ducados; and
so that your grace will see the truth of this, just wait, and your grace will see it with your own eyes.” A ducado is slightly more than
an escudo, i.e., the images are worth more than the two hundred escudos that SP has just reported as a gift from the Duke.
These saints inevitably relate to DQ’s profession. They are all mounted, i.e., they are Christian knights: George, Martin, James, and
Paul. It’s a fascinating series and Cervantes wants us to compare and contrast their value. But which one is the ideal? Two of the saints
have political connotations: George is the patron saint of Aragón; James is the famous Moorslayer, patron saint of Spain. Recall that
we are approaching Zaragoza and that Aragón was subdued by Philip II in 1591. And recall the Expulsion of the Moriscos carried out
in the years prior to the publication of part two. The other two saints represent pacifist alternatives: Martin is famous for sharing half
his cloak with a beggar and Paul is famous for having converted to Christianity after being thrown from his horse. Recall that SP was
mounted when he encountered Ricote in the guise of a beggar. And recall that DQ cited Paul when he blessed the marriage between
Tosilos and Rodríguez’s daughter. The narrator’s descriptions and DQ’s explanations of each mounted saint are part of Cervantes’s game
of perspectivism. George is like DQ: “furthermore, he was a defender of damsels.” Martin represents a civilizing trajectory: “more
liberal than valiant.” James recalls the Morisco question: “his sword bloody, trampling Moors and crushing their heads.” Paul is the
archetypical convert to Christianity: “in his day he was the fiercest enemy had by Our Lord God’s Church and the greatest defender
she will ever have.”

53
If peace is the goal, and Cervantes is criticizing the Expulsion of the Moriscos, then Martin and Paul trump George and James. If
Aragón’s freedom is the issue, then George trumps James. But note that SP’s humorous quip about the selfish charity of Martin suggests
the mutual advantages of market commerce: “to give and to withhold require wisdom untold.” Moreover, the dialogue circles back
to the contrast between peace and war. First SP celebrates the adventure as unique: “we have escaped without any frights or blows,
nor have we laid a hand on our swords.” But then he asks why Spaniards evoke James by shouting “Santiago and close for Spain!”:
“Is Spain by chance open and in need of closing? What ceremony is that?” DQ pushes the meaning of Santiago further: “this great
knight with the crimson cross has been given to Spain by God as her patron and protector, especially in the violent encounters
that the Spaniards have had with the Moors, and thus they invoke and call on him as their defender in all the battles they
undertake, and often they have visibly witnessed him fighting amongst them, crushing, trampling, destroying, and killing the
squadrons of the Hagarenes.”
This meditation on the conflict between Christianity and Islam, with the theological reference to Hagar, deepens the episode’s
relation to the Morisco question. If some of the Christian Moriscos are infiltrated by Muslims, then in answer to SP’s query, Spain
must resist invasion by its enemies. Questions remain, however. Given the pro-Morisco roles of Aldonza Lorenzo, Zoraida, and Ricote,
is this portrait of Santiago negative? Or is it a tragic recognition of the need to expel a possible fifth column? Or could Cervantes be
saying that Muslim women should be admitted and Muslim men expelled? It’s hard to tell, and perhaps this is Cervantes’s point. It all
depends on your perspective. DQ further highlights the difficulty here by alluding to the Mendoza clan, who were notoriously against
the Expulsion of the Moriscos, but then alluding to Scipio Africanus, who represented the Habsburg Kings who carried out the policy.

54
LECCIÓN19
The false
Arcadia and the
ferocious bulls
T
he conversation now turns to love. SP asks why Altisidora became enamored of DQ. DQ responds that “Love” is blind, like
death. Then he quotes Horace on the equalizing power of death: “it assails the noble fortresses (alcázares) of kings as well
as the humble huts of shepherds.” This phrase is clearly important to Cervantes: he cites it in the prologue to DQ 1 as well
as in DQ 2.20. Note the evolution of the phrase from Latin to Spanish, and then the shift from torres or “towers” in DQ 2.20 to the Arabic
alcázares or “fortresses” here in DQ 2.58. SP and DQ then discuss the superficial nature of external beauty versus the internal beauty
represented by positive values and character, “liberalness” and “good breeding.” Is Cervantes saying that the outward appearance of
Moriscos should not obscure their interior Christianity? You decide.
Let’s back up a bit. Another saint surfaces here after the complex review of the effigies. Francis enters the brief discussion of
superstition. Francis was famous for his ability to make animals get along. Does this refer to Muslims, Christians, and Jews? Animals
are important throughout this episode. We began with horses mounted by different saints; and now we will see birds, dogs, and bulls.
In the midst of their discussion of love, DQ gets caught up in green nets: “Don Quijote found himself tangled up in webs of green
thread.” We are approaching an understanding of Cervantes’s use of textiles. DQ recalls the net that Vulcan used to humiliate Venus and
Mars, again indicating the conflict between Love and War. Shepherdesses now appear, and their dress is described in great detail: “their
skirts were of rich rippled silk shot with gold.” The girls beg DQ not to break the threads of their nets: “Hold your step, Sir Knight,
and do not break the nets.” This contrast between our knight and young girls recalls the encounter between the violent warrior and
the little girl of Burgos in the Poem of the Cid. Note also how the girls allude to an aristocratic ideal of social harmony. They have come
to these woods to role-play a pastoral fantasy: “In a village that is about two leagues from here, where there are many nobles, and

Discover Don Quijote de la Mancha, Part II - chapters 48 - 74 - donquijote.ufm.edu/en

Discover Don Quijote de la Mancha, Part II - chapters 48 - 74 - donquijote.ufm.edu/en

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Discover Don Quijote de la Mancha, Part II - chapters 48 - 74 - donquijote.ufm.edu/en