Roberto González Echevarría opens Yale's Cervantes' Don Quixote course by asking why the novel still resonates today, arguing that it is fundamentally about the effect literature has on its readers and about the act of literary creation itself. He distinguishes the novel from the romance, and chivalric romance from courtly romance, to make the case that Don Quixote is the first true novel because it stages a clash between protagonist and setting never attempted before. He traces its precursors in the picaresque tradition and early realism, situating Cervantes within the Spanish literary genealogy. The lecture closes with an extended reading of the prologue, unpacking its stated intentions and its deeper concerns with authorship, the legitimation of literature, and Cervantes' own self invention as a fifty-year-old first-time novelist.