González Echevarría starts by reviewing the Spanish baroque concept of desengaño. He proposes that the plot of theQuixote and some of the stories in part two unfold from deceit (engaño) to disillusionment (desengaño). He then turns his attention to Auerbach and Spitzer’s essays included in the Casebook (“Enchanted Dulcinea” and “Linguistic Perspectivism” respectively) that try to describe what González Echevarría calls the “Cervantean,” the particularities that define Cervantes’ mind and style.

The modern novel that develops from the Quixote is essentially a political novel and an urban genre dealing with cities. In Part II there is a sense of the text being written and performed in the present because it incorporates current events, such as the expulsion of the moriscos, a critic of the arbitristas and a satire of the aristocracy.

The lecture focuses on the ending of the first part of the Quixote, which for the seventeenth-century reader was, simply, the end because no second part existed yet or was envisioned. Probably because it represents a difficult process (since the Quixote is not an ordinary story with a clear beginning) the end is already contained in the prologue, which also works as an epilogue echoing the characteristics of the meta-novel.

The insertion of the Novel of the Curious Impertinent at the end of part one of the Quixote may be explained by Cervantes’ intention of meshing both the forms of the chivalric romance and of the collection of Italian novelle. The result, though awkward, leads to the creation of the modern novel. This short novel seems to have been included by Cervantes as a way to publishing it in the same way. Reading the novel out loud, with all the characters gathered connects with the old tradition of reading literature out loud.

Professor González Echevarría resumes his commentary on the galley slaves episode by talking about Ginés’ cross-eyedness as a metaphor for congenital internal perspectivism. This is a new model of conflictive being, capable of seeing simultaneously in two ways. The character among the galley slaves that he calls “the prisoner of sex” follows. Professor González Echevarría shows how Cervantes can create a complex character in just one paragraph while portraying the historical and legal background of Cervantes’ time.