Deep Analysis of Don Quixote: Tilting at Windmills (Ch.1-14) (Patreon)

This is the video lecture I am most proud of to date. Of course, I'm proud of all the lectures, with my personal favourites being those of Proust, Tolstoy, and Hesse. But this one received a whole heap of my heart and soul.

This lecture also has the longest running time of any single lecture at 1 hour 40 mins. So you might wish to divide it up or focus on your areas of interest.

For these purposes, I have provided timestamps grouped by chapter, and bolded some of my personal favourite parts.

We cover a lot of ground. If you already love the novel, I hope this lecture helps illuminate just why you love it, making your appreciation more robust. If you are still fresh to Cervantes, I hope this helps you fall in love as deeply as I am. 

Introduction

• 0:00 Our aim in reading Don Quixote
• 5:15 Refuting Nabokov's damnation of the novel
• 10:00 Don Quixote as greatest novel of all time

Chapter I

• 10:20 En un lugar de la Mancha
• 11:00 Meeting Don Quixote 
• 12:00 The Decline of Spain
• 13:00 Quijada/Quesada/Quixote
• 13:58 Going "mad" from reading
• 16:00 Joseph Campbell and the loss of meaning
• 17:00 What is a quest? A romance?

Chapter II

• 19:00 Whose world are we really living in?
• 20:00 Virtues, vices, and chivalry 
• 22:00 Amadís de Gaul 
• 24:00 The magic inn
• 25:00 Shakespeare and Cervantes

Chapter III

• 27:00 Don Quixote meeting the ladies of easy virtue
• 29:00 The knighting of Don Quixote
• 29:45 "Ennoble yourself"

Chapter IV

• 30:00 The dark humour of the whipped boy
• 32:30 "Each man is the child of his deeds"
• 34:50 Adventures of crossroads vs insulas 
• 36:00 Swearing to Dulcinea del Toboso
• 38:00 The power of myth and story
• 39:00 The refuge of reading 

Chapter V

• 41:40 "I know who I am"

Chapter VI

• 41:57 Burning the library of Don Quixote
• 42:40 How Proust helps us unlock Cervantes
• 45:00 Round vs flat characters
• 47:00 Cervantes the post-modernist

Chapter VII

• 48:00 Meeting Sancho Panza

Chapter VIII

• 50:30 Tilting at Windmills 
• 51:00 Willing suspension of disbelief 
• 53:00 Deep-reading the windmills scene
• 58:00 Viktor Frankl, salvation, love 
• 59:30 Enchantments and layers of narrative
• 1:01:00 Attacking the friars
• 1:04:00 Do you identify more with Sancho or Don Quixote?
• 1:06:00 Knights and idealism/spiritualism, squire as physicality 

Chapter IX

• 1:07:00 The author and translator of the tale
• 1:09:30 Spanish Inquisition and being a good Christian

Chapter X

• 1:11:00 'The Truth of Sancho Panza' (Franz Kafka)
• 1:13:00 Characters as free artists of themselves
• 1:14:00 How Don Quixote and Sancho Panza talk to each other
• 1:15:00 Do people ever truly listen to one another?

Chapter XI

• 1:16:00 Inevitability, remembrance, and beautiful prose
• 1:21:00 Cervantes and pre/early pro-woman

Chapter XII

• 1:23:00 When Don Quixote corrects the goatherds' speech
• 1:23:50 The theory of linguistic relativity and confirmation bias

Chapter XIII

• 1:25:30 Don Quixote talking sense, but considered mad
• 1:31:00 Shakespeare's 130th sonnet and courtly love conventions

Chapter XIV

• 1:34:00 Marcela's speech on love and obligation

Conclusion

• 1:41:00 Reading assignment for next lecture

Questions to Consider:

1) What do you make of our knight errant and squire so far? Do you identify with Don Quixote or Sancho Panza?

2) Do you have any favourite scenes or chapters so far? Have there been any lines that has resonated with you for any reason? 

Please share any impressions, great or small, you have of this wonderful novel. 

Comments, meditations, ideas, and questions will be incorporated into the lectures.

Happy reading!