This talk explores the many ways that the squire plays a fundamental role in the reading of Don Quixote. The centuries that have passed since the initial publication of Cervantes’s novel (1605) have brought about a curious evolution. Early readers who held much in common with the work’s protagonist – given their familiarity with books of chivalry as well as other genres cultivated in early seventeenth-century Spain – have given way to readers more like Sancho Panza, unschooled in chivalric conventions and unacquainted with the literary culture that so enchants Alonso Quijano. Given that Don Quixote parodies libros de caballerías – a genre that no longer attracts reader interest – how does a reader today appreciate, or even understand, the work’s layered and complex intertextuality? Although a modern-day reader fails to perceive many of the parodies of chivalric conventions interlaced throughout the novel, a reading of Don Quixote today is generally not considered to be an exercise in boredom or bewilderment; on the contrary, readers of the work almost universally praise it. How?
Readers today approach the text much as the illiterate Sancho begins his first adventure with Don Quixote: unaware of the rules that govern the world of chivalry, which the knight has learned from his many readings and which he shares with his squire throughout the work. As Sancho’s education progresses, so, too, does that of the modern-day reader. As a result, it is through the squire that the reader gains access to Cervantes’s nuanced engagement of literary and cultural sources.
Talk in English & Open to Public!
TIME: 3:30 PM
DATE: Friday, March 6th, 2026
LOCATION: Dartmouth Hall 105