Don Quixote in Sierra Morena
The penance of Don Quixote in Sierra Morena is the high point of the first part of Miguel de Cervantes’ work. This importance is reflected both in the symbolisms that we find during the development of this episode, and in the importance it has for the structuring of the novel and the plot. We must say that everything that happens in Sierra Morena, including what happens to Sancho, to the priest and the barber, goes from the twenty -three chapter to twenty -nine both included, but when we talk about penance we refer mainly to the twenty -five chapters andTwenty -six, because it is when Don Quijote imitates the penance of the books of cavalries he had read.
As we know, after having released the galleotes, Don Quijote and Sancho for fear of the Holy Brotherhood in Sierra Morena. There the Andante Knight decides to “temporarily suspend his vagabundo in search of adventures and stay only in Sierra Morena delivered to penance and folly” (De Riquer, 1993, p. 52). This moment refers to a topic of the chivalrous novel, where the heroes retired to the loneliness of a forest and there they made their penance, but, as expected, Cervantes took this a point beyond and parody all these heroes withThe figure of Don Quijote. Our hero writes verses to his beloved Dulcinea in the trees, he gets carried away by his "fury" and gives somersaults by the mountain in shirt. This is a very important moment, because the walking knight, always taken by all as a madman, voluntarily decides to become or at least behave like a real madman. Riley (2005) defends that this penance is an imitation of the retirement that Amadís made in the poor rock after the rejection of his beloved Oriana.
Also, something very interesting about this episode is that Don Quijote has a moment of sanYoung Aldonza Lorenzo, and in this way he explains it to Sancho: “I imagine that everything I say is so, without anything about or missing, and pintola in my imagination as desire, thus in beauty as in the main.”(Cervantes, 1605, part I, Cap. 25, p. 244). This is one of the few times that Don Quixote recognizes the idealization of the young woman. We must not forget that Don Quixote has no reason to do this penance, because unlike the great chivalrous novels, Dulcinea has not rejected him, because he does not even have a relationship with him and is not in love either. Once again everything is a product of the imagination of the walking knight and his desire to live the adventures he had read in the books of cavalry.
Another great parody of this episode is the letter made by Don Quijote to Dulcinea. With this letter Cervantes parodia those that appear in the books of cavalries, where the hero declares the love he feels for his beloved. The similarities between the letter written by Don Quijote and those that appear in other books of cavalries are great, especially with the letter that Oriana writes in the Amadís de Gaula. In fact, both letters begin in a very similar way;The one from Don Quixote to Dulcinea begins as follows: "The fertile of absence and the llagado of the fabrics of the heart, sweet Dulcinea del Toboso, sends you the health that he does not have" (Cervantes, 1605, part I,chap. 25, p. 245) and that of Oriana in this way: "I am the maiden wounded by the heart, and you so that you feristic me". As you can see both, Oriana and Don Quijote, are "ferid", in the case of Don Quijote for the absence of his beloved and Oriana for the supposed infidelity of Amadís. We find this letter deformed later, in a very rustic way, when Sancho recites it to the priest to transcribe it. That is, Cervantes makes a parody of his own work.
The penance in Sierra Morena ends when the priest and the barber, with the help of the young Dorotea, deceive Don Quijote inventing an adventure worthy of a novel of cavalries. This is the first time that Don Quijote is cheated in this way in the first part of Quijoteall in order to laugh at him. From this moment on, the work will continue with a network of love stories, or rather we should say that it will continue with a maze of love stories.
As we have already indicated at the beginning of this essay, the penance in Sierra Morena also has great importance for the structure of the work, and as Professor Gómez Canseco (2005) indicates the work was created with “a certain artificial balance, because the plotIt is divided into two parts provided, whose axis is the penance of Don Quixote in Sierra Morena ”(p. 46). The penance, mainly, takes place in chapter twenty -six, when Don Quijote stays totally only after Sancho’s exit towards El Toboso, this chapter is just half of the fifty -two that form the first part of Quijote. You could say that at this time the first part has reached its summit, that of Sierra Morena, and from here the plot begins to descend, the walking knight ends his second exit and begins his way back home. The first part of the work is thus divided into two, but both parties have many similarities between them. Due to these similarities there are many authors who defend the premeditation of this structure by Cervantes. In addition, it seems that Cervantes used this episode to make a change in the genre or style of the novel, because the previous part of the arrival in Sierra Morena corresponds to the chivalrous genre, since its chapters are full of adventures, and from penanceA lot of love stories that are typical of the sentimental genre appear.
Thus, as we have been able to verify throughout the essay, the episode of penance in Sierra Morena is essential for the development and structuring of the first part of Don Quixote. It is an episode where the author parody, in my opinion more than in any other chapter, to the novels of cavalries. In addition, from him Cervantes takes a twist to the plot of the work, because he not only focuses on the sentimental issues, but Don Quixote and his adventures, on some occasions, pass to the background and the author isfocuses throughout love stories. Also, in the episode the great reader who was Cervantes is also reflected by making so many similarities with other chivalrous novels such as the Amadís de Gaula or the Niquel Florisel, among others. In conclusion, and as many scholars have demonstrated, the chapter was premeditated by the author, both for the structure of the novel and for the continuation of the plot.
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