Don Quixote - Chapters 10 - 18

For Tuesday, please write about two episodes in these chapters that you feel reflect the themes we discussed last Thursday (the ideals of chivalry in the "modern world," the constant play between truth and fiction, trickery and reality, the role of myth, the novel as a meta-fiction, the play with authorship, etc.).

Chapter XVI:
In this chapter Don Quixote and Sancho come upon an inn. This inn is mistaken, by Don Quixote, as a castle. The inn keeper's daughter takes care of Don Quixote's wounds and Don Quixote believe that she fell in love with him and that she will meet up with him that night in his bed. Someone comes to Don Quixote's bed that night, but it is not the beautiful daughter, it is Maritornes. Again we see how Don Quixote sees the inn as something that it is not. He also believes that the daughter is a maiden that has fallen in love with his chilvalrous, knightly ways, but this is not the case. The line between reality and fiction is shown through these two examples from Don Quixote.


Chapter XVII:
In this chapter there is a mystical potion that Don Quixote believe only worked on him and not on Sancho. His reasoning for this is because he threw up right away & felt much better when he woke up from sleep whereas Sancho did not throw up & felt ill because he is the knight and Sancho is not. "I believe that all this mischief happens to thee, Sancho, because thou art not a knight; for, I am persuaded, that this liquor will be of service to none but such as are of the order of knighthood" (Don Quixote, Cervantes, Pg: 121). Therefore the balsam was magical, but this is all in the mind of Don Quixote because he feels he has special treatments and abilities as a knight. I feel that this mythical balsam only feeds into Don Quixote's beliefs of knighthood and all that involves knights as being real.