Roberto González Echevarría continues his Yale course on Cervantes with this lecture on the opening chapters of Don Quixote, Part II. He argues that Part II functions as the first political novel, an urban genre engaged with contemporary events like the expulsion of the moriscos, satire of arbitristas, and mockery of the aristocracy. He traces how Part I now plays the role the romances of chivalry played earlier, since characters have read it, adding a new layer to the novel's mirrored structure. The lecture examines Sansón Carrasco as a figure representing the text being written in real time, discusses how characters evolve within a social context that anticipates literary realism, and closes with an account of Renaissance and Baroque elements that clarify the relationship between the novel's two parts. Recorded at Yale in Fall 2009 as part of the Open Yale Courses series.