Don Quixote as Anti-Romance
Key Elements in a Medieval Romance
- Romance stresses tales involving knightly adventures
- Romance's values are those of a chivalric age
- Motivations include courtly love, pious faith, and desire for deeds of valor
- Romance stresses the values of fantasy and mystery
- Romance tends to light-hearted
- Romance tends to be loose in structure
Cervantes' Don Quixote reverses these values yet also ironically reaffirms some of them
Don Quixote offers tales involving knightly adventures, but they are illusionary and Quixote's adventure always seems to result in disgrace for Sancho and himself.
Quixote's values are those of a chivalric age, but no one else's is. Chivalric values are out-of-place at best; at worst they result in injustice and harm. Yet, they also haunt the scenes; perhaps, suggesting what might be.
Quixote's motivations include courtly love, pious faith, and desire for deeds of valor. But each of these is overturned. Dulcinea is a farm hand. Quixote's faith seems more like madness, and his valorous deeds include tilting at windmills and attacking herds of sheep.
Cervantes stresses the dangers of fantasy. Quixote at least deserves our laughter and pity. Does he offer anything more?
Don Quixote tends to light-hearted because it stresses the disparity between Quixote's dreams and reality, as well as Sancho's low class humor.
Don Quixote tends to be loose in structure; it moves from episode to episode with little overall structure or plan.