
Don Quixote, Part II: Chapters LIV-LXX
Roberto González Echevarría continues his Yale course on Cervantes' Don Quixote with a lecture on the novel's final chapters. He traces three threads as the book nears its end: the improvisational blending of real geography and current events, seen in the expulsion of the moriscos and the story of Ricote, a compressed morisco novel that shows how political decisions strike ordinary people; the international scope introduced through Roque Guinard and Don Quixote's arrival in Barcelona; and the question of art's power over reality, as the duke and duchess's prank engineers an actual marriage for dueña Rodriguez's daughter. He closes on Sancho's fall into a pit, a deliberate parody of Don Quixote's descent into the cave of Montesinos, arguing it marks Sancho's rise to equal standing with his master.