SPAN 300 - Lecture 5 - Don Quixote, Part I: Chapters XI-XX (cont.) | Open Yale Courses

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. Professor Roberto González Echevarría: Now, let us begin today with just some general issues that I think are very

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