Roberto González Echevarría continues his Yale course on Cervantes with a session on the middle chapters of Don Quixote, Part II. He opens with a nod to Claude Lévi-Strauss before tracing how Part II measures itself against Part I, expanding on themes of love, death, and the grotesque. The bulk of the lecture works through two elaborate episodes staged by the Duke and Duchess: the afflicted matron and Countess Trifaldi, and the wooden horse Clavileño, reading their cross-dressing, monsters, and clashing tones as baroque excess pushed to the limits of representation. González Echevarría connects the growing presence of Virgil and the Aeneid to Don Quixote's own quest, arguing that his task is self-conquest rather than empire building. He closes by showing how the steward's pranks teach the reader not just to find the story behind the story, as in Part I, but to watch a story being constructed in real time.