11
Cfr. the procession in Espejo, II, 21.
12
I would also disagree with Allen that the speech on Arms and Letters is Don Quijote's only example of eloquence, erudition, and wit in Part I (p. 43), that Don Quijote in Part I is not as well-intentioned as in Part II (p. 45), or that nobility of soul is shown when Don Quijote helps Sancho in II, 60 (p. 48).
13
F. Sánchez Escribano ridicules Mia Gerhardt for being so naïve as to still think that the Quijote was written against the romances of chivalry, in «El sentido cervantino del ataque contra los libros de caballerías», ACerv, 5 (1955-56), 21-22.
The disagreement over the purpose of the Quijote is itself significant. There is not the slightest doubt why Dante wrote the Divina Commedia, and while there is perhaps less agreement on why Homer «wrote» his epics or Shakespeare wrote Hamlet, somehow the teleology of these works has never been such a stumbling block as it has been with the Quijote.
14
As Mandel points out, Cervantes is a very literal-minded writer (or, in Mandel's words, «Cervantes meant what he said»
; p. 157). I have seen no satisfactory explanation of why, if Cervantes had another, hidden purpose, he so often and consistently
states that his intent is to attack the romances of chivalry.
15
The reprinting of popular romances continued up to as late a date as 1590, although the composition of new romances had ceased some time before. See my «Who Read the Romances of Chivalry?», KRQ, 20 (1973), 209-33.
16
As Madariaga said, «todo en el Quijote revela improvisación»
, in his Guía del lector del «Quijote», 6th ed. (Buenos Aires: Sudamericana, 1967), p. 18.