Deep Analysis of Don Quixote: Tossed in a Blanket (Ch.15-28) (Patreon)

You are likely to be well-acquainted with Don Quixote and Sancho Panza at this point.

They have been battered and bruised, and so have we.

Sancho gets tossed in a blanket, Don Quixote attacks a funeral procession, they free a bunch of chained up prisoners, and they meet Cardenio.

You’ll hear I had a good laugh in this one, with my schoolboy humour showing through, and also tried my hand at voice characterisation with Sancho Panza, whom I love like a brother.

My personal favourite chapters/scenes up until now include:

• Meeting the remarkable prisoner Ginés (ch.22)
• The sick Sancho tossed in a blanket (ch.17)
• Tilting at windmills (ch.8)

What are your favourite scenes?

This lecture is another long one, clocking in at 1 hour 20 minutes. So feel free to use the timestamps below to navigate around, or self-pace it however is most rewarding to you.

Introduction

• 0:00 turn to chapters 15-28 (p.102-227)
• 0:30 a moment of appreciation
• 2:00 story analysis as dream analysis
• 3:00 factors that influence our dream landscape
• 5:00 Don Quixote reading assignment

Chapter XV

• 7:00 the high and low mode side-by-side
• 9:00 Sancho = reality principle; Don Quixote = idealism
• 13:00 “There is no memory that time does not erase, no pain not ended by death.”
• 13:30 Don Quixote and Austen’s Anne Elliot
• 15:00 “Find strength in weakness” - and sanity in insanity?

Chapter XVI

• 16:00 do you see a castle or an inn?
• 17:00 Sancho as one of literature’s most charming characters
• 17:40 Sancho developing an ironic relationship with us, the reader
• 18:20 Who is the real idealist/fantasist?
• 21:00 “An adventuring knight is someone who is beaten, then finds themselves emperor”
• 23:00 visual farce side-by-side chivalric courtly romance imagery

Chapter XVII

• 23:30 Sancho gets diarrhoea and sickness
• 25:00 Tossed in a blanket
• 30:00 why Don Quixote appeals to my schoolboy sense of humour

Chapter XVIII

• 34:30 Similes as enchantment
• 36:00 Armies, giants, flocks, windmills
• 40:00 Do we trust the knight’s wisdom?
• 42:00 what does Don Quixote fear?
• 44:00 the beauty of love and brotherhood
• 45:00 Cervantes and Chaucer

Chapter XIX

• 46:00 are you Don Quixote or Sancho Panza?
• 49:00 Intention and actuality with righting wrongs
• 50:00 another attack on the Church

Chapter XX

• 51:00 how Don Quixote secures his posterity
• 52:30 how characters tell us stories
• 55:00 ‘Fate has willed that I cannot help listening to you’
• 56:30 ‘I had seen it all’
• 58:00 ‘I’ve never found a squire who speaks as much to his master as you’

Chapter XXI

• 59:00 Mambrino’s helmet and the Sancho as Socrates
• 1:00:00 agon, and the template for chivalric romance
• 1:03:00 Falstaff and Hal parallels, and the art of conversation

Chapter XXII

• 1:04:00 the freeing of the galley slaves, and meeting Ginés

Chapter XXIII-XXVIII

• 1:09:00 meeting Cardenio
• 1:10:00 story-within-a-story and setting the rules of story
• 1:11:00 getting used to the side stories
• 1:14:00 ‘There wasn’t any reason to pay attention to the words of a madman’
• 1:15:00 proof that Don Quixote chooses his madness?
• 1:19:00 is Dulcinea real?

Questions to Consider:

1) Are you enjoying your time spent in this world? Do you bring anything back to your reality? Have you befriended Don Quixote and Sancho Panza?

2) Why do you think Cervantes' work has endured? Four centuries have passed, and the novel still very much lives and breathes. What's the secret?

Happy questing, everybody!