Cervantes' Don Quixote (SPAN 300)

After pointing out the prosaic world depicted in the Quixote with subtle but sharp irony, González Echevarría analyzes the episode at Juan Palomeque's inn, which may well be seen as a representation of the whole first part of the novel. The episodes at the inn are an instance of the social being subverted by erotic desire and they show the subconscious of literature. Then follows a commentary on the characters that appear in the episode, all drawn from the picaresque and the juridical documents of the period, and many of whom are marked by a physical defect that makes them unique and yet attractive, even if ugly. Don Quixote's and Sancho's bodily evacuations dramatize the violent forces behind their basic drives to live; the ramshackle improvised architecture of the inn symbolizes the apparently improvised design of the novel, yet, like the inn, it has cosmic connections.

00:00 - Chapter 1. Prose, Heroism and Irony
05:25 - Chapter 2. Juan Palomeque's Inn and its Characters
26:23 - Chapter 3. The Phenomenology of Ugliness; The Staging of Basic Drives
42:46 - Chapter 4. Juan Palomeque's Inn as an Internal Emblem for the Novel
49:09 - Chapter 5. Cervantes's Notorious Errors
53:42 - Chapter 6. The Deepening Relationship between Don Quixote and Sancho

Complete course materials are available at the Open Yale Courses website: [ Ссылка ]

This course was recorded in Fall 2009.

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