Roberto González Echevarría, professor of Hispanic and Comparative Literature at Yale, opens this lecture from SPAN 300 by reviewing the major critical themes of Don Quixote Part I: ambiguity and perspectivism, the limits of the self's will, the act of reading within the novel, the relational nature of its characters, and improvisation as a compositional method. He then turns to Part II, published a decade later in 1615, situating Cervantes within his cultural moment and unpacking the significance of both parts' titles. A substantial section covers Avellaneda's spurious sequel, the unauthorized continuation that forced Cervantes to write his own Part II quickly, and how that rivalry shaped the second novel's relationship to the first. The lecture closes by comparing the two parts directly, tracing how Cervantes' approach to narrative shifted.