The Introductory Chapters

The first seven chapters of Don Quixote Part II are devoted primarily to two things: first, the discussion between Don Quixote, Sancho and Sansón Carrasco about the reception of Benengeli's chronicle – that is, Part I – and second, the crystallisation of the resolve of the two heroes to embark on a new sally, together with the reactions of their intimate circle to this news. The chapters are a splendid example of the major innovation brought by Cervantes to the genre of the novel: the comic depiction of traits of character displayed in colloquial style and a context of homely familiarity. Like the overture to an opera, they introduce a major theme to be developed in the rest of the work, and two new emphases that distinguish this Part from its precursor. The theme results from the characters’ awareness of the publication of a chronicle of Don Quixote's and Sancho's adventures; and this introduces a new reflexivity into the novel on various levels. The new emphases fall on the Don's lucidity and on Sancho's comic interventions, which will not only be treated as counterpoint to his master’s, but will also frequently occupy the reader's principal or exclusive attention in chapters devoted specifically to them.

We are offered a succession of intimate conversations, mostly set in the hidalgo's home. The first, marking the modified focus on his character, takes place in his bedroom following a visit by the priest and barber, who, encouraged though not convinced by the niece's and housekeeper's reports of his recovery of sanity, go to his house to put them to the test. They find him in bed, wearing a green dressing-gown and red bonnet, with a dried-up, mummified aspect, which would suggest, despite his judicious and elegant contributions to the ensuing discussion on politics, that nothing has really changed. This is because, from the beginning of the novel, Cervantes's conception of his madness reflects his age's assumptions about the physical determinants of the human psyche: its dependence on the specific mix of the four ‘qualities’ (heat, cold, humidity, dryness) and the four ‘humours’ (choler, phlegm, blood, melancholy), which, together with the individual's physical constitution, are conditioned by the influence of the planets, diet, climate, age and sex.