1
This article is the text of an address delivered to the Annual Membership Meeting of the Cervantes Society of America held during the MLA Convention in New York City on the 29th December 1986. I have appended notes only when further commentary or bibliographical reference seemed appropriate, but otherwise I have kept them to a minimum. (N. from the A.)
2
For anti-Romantic views see A. A. Parker, «El concepto de la verdad en Don Quijote», RFE 32 (1948), 287-304; Erich Auerbach, «The Enchanted Dulcinea» in Mimesis: The Representation of Reality in Western Literature (Princeton: Princeton U. P., 1953), 334-58; Oscar Mandel, «The Function of the Norm in Don Quixote», MPh 55 (1957), 154-63. However, P. E. Russell first drew the attention of modern critics to the sustained parodic character of the novel in an influential article that stimulated the current controversy: «Don Quixote as a Funny Book», MLR 64 (1969), 312-26. See also his Cervantes, Past Masters Series (Oxford: Oxford U. P., 1985); Anthony Close, «Don Quixote as a Burlesque Hero: A Reconstructed Eighteenth-Century View», FMLS 10 (1974), 365-78. For a critical survey of Romantic interpretations, see Anthony Close, The Romantic Approach to «Don Quixote» (Cambridge: Cambridge U. P., 1978). (N. from the A.)
3
Quotations refer to Don Quijote de la Mancha, ed. Martín de Riquer (Barcelona: Juventud, 1968). (N. from the A.)
4
On the question of Cervantes's intentions see Anthony Close, «Don Quijote and the 'Intentionalist Fallacy'», British Journal of Aesthetics 12 (1972), 19-39; and for a contrary view, John G. Weiger, The Substance of Cervantes (Cambridge, New York: Cambridge U. P., 1985). (N. from the A.)
5
I discuss the Platonist influence on Arthurian romance more fully in my book The Half-way House o/ Fiction: 'Don Quixote' and Arthurian Romance (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1984), pp. 1-28. (N. from the A.)
6
«The Enchanted Dulcinea», p. 339. (N. from the A.)
7
Ibid., p. 340. (N. from the A.)
8
Aristotle observes that «all the parts of an epic are included in Tragedy; but those of Tragedy are not all of them to be found in the Epic» (Aristotle on the Art of Poetry, trans. by Ingram Bywater. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1920, p. 34). This would apply a fortiori to a comic epic in prose such as Don Quixote but, by the same token, its action may include constituents found also in the serious epic and in tragedy. (N. from the A.)
9
Aristotle on the Art of Poetry, p. 33. (N. from the A.)
10
Ibid., p. 33. (N. from the A.)