Don Quixote and the Postmodern Perspective
Cervantes takes this unprecedented step of questioning the value of his readers’ intelligence because Don Quixote is a novel that takes its first step off the curb outside the Harlequin Romance publishers of his day, the incredibly popular chivalric romances that were the fashion of the day. Although it might strain the credulity of even a hardcore Bush supporter to buy the idea that a bona fide literary masterpiece that would endure for 400 years could today be procreated using the DNA of those very same Harlequin Romance novels seen in supermarket checkout aisles, the analogy fits.
Quixote was right in calling the readers of those exploits of chivalric knights idle; perhaps even more so that it would be today to call Harlequin Romance novel readers idle. (Who has time to be idle today?) The idleness of those readers is perhaps very accurately reflected in the character of the man who will become Don Quixote; before taking up the armor, he was himself the epitome of the idle reader disregards everything for the sake of pursuing the latest literary tale. Idle reader: That appellation is a precursor of the greatness about to be launched by Miguel Cervantes; Don Quixote’s adventures will unravel in a universe turned upside down, world where chivalry may be an object of derision textually, but which comes to be seen as an even higher calling buried beneath the surface.
The differences between appearance and reality are two of the key themes at play in Don Quixote, and Cervantes confronts them almost at once when he profoundly considers the validity of authority. Cervantes ironically lays the groundwork for much of what is to come by his suggestion that certain tales attempt to gain a measure of verisimilitude by extensive annotation and allusion to previous knowledge.
The narrator then goes on to assure the reader that the book they hold in their hands are lacking in all those things. Where Don Quixote begins with the promise of parody, Cervantes quickly makes clear that the book will be rising above that into the heady stratosphere of satire. At the same time, during a very dangerous age in which to do so, Cervantes is setting up a framework whereby he is asking the reader to question just exactly what authority is, and to further question how authority is established.
Surprisingly, Cervantes seems to have skipped right over modernism to predict the coming of postmodernism as he interrupts the narrative right at the very apex Quixote’s closest approach to actual chivalric heroism. Over the course of chapter IX, the authority that the narrator worried about in the preface seems to explode. The very concept of reality and the possibility of achieving it in a chivalrous romance is seriously undermined when the reader learns that from this point forward what he is reading isn’t just someone else’s history of Quixote, but a translation of someone else’s history; and not even Cervantes’ own translation.
Particularly telling of the importance of this sudden and unexpected interruption is that it follows upon a moment of extreme drama in the narrative. In so doing, Cervantes goes back to the whole question of authority once again, seeming to say that distortions of reality may even exist within legendary feats of heroism commonly believed to be true.
The idea of perspective containing multiple levels of truth and falsehood is more explicitly played out both by Quixote’s speech about the Golden Age of Chivalry and the story of Marcella. Quixote’s version of the Golden Age existed only, if at all, in the Garden of Eden, but it is spoken of as if it existed not too long before. The fact that this speech comes soon after the reader learns that what he is reading is at best a third-hand account is vital; just as we are receiving information that must likely contain distortions and embellishments, so too has Quixote received his ideas of a Golden Age that never existed.
Further cementing this pre-postmodernist view of reality and appearance is the multifaceted tale of Marcela. For Quixote, Marcela is a vestige of the Golden Age in which humans communed with nature. She lives in the wilderness and is seen as proof that the “good old days” can be returned. But Marcela is better viewed as a symbol of the uncertainty of truth. Her story is told in one manner or another by Pedro, Vivaldo, Ambrosio, Chrysostum and Marcela herself. Taken together it is impossible to construct an objective truth about the nature of Marcela.
The point of this admittedly long-winded digression from the narrative spine may be lost on many readers, but it remains true to the thematic spine of Don Quixote. The image presented to us of Marcela is one that, the reader soon learns, has diverged further and further from the truth with each retelling. The idea we are left with is that even stories not designed for propaganda are not without underlying ideological intents. The men express outrage over Marcela’s cruelty, but we eventually learn that their outrage is driven more by anxiety over her declarations of independence.
