Don Quixote's Hall of Mirrors

On Don Quixote's lack of narrative authority and what that means for the reader.

            When one opens a book, they might be unaware of their own preconceived notions of what they are expecting from it. One might, especially in novels, expect to find meaning, validation, lessons on how to feel about subjects like love, death, and life, looking for some "deeper truth" within the fiction, which poses a certain irony: real life lessons taken from a fictional world.[1] But what such a reader may not realize is, they are unconsciously casting a filter over their eyes, one of a singular way to read the text, and their judgement of the book will be based on how well it offers what is expected of it. In doing this, the reader assumes a certain authority to the book, to the writer of the book whose name is on the cover, whose picture is on the back, and who is taking credit for the narrative. The publisher and its reputation, the plot summary and the blurbs on the back of the book also serve to lend it more credibility. For the sake of the point, a fictional blurb one might find on the back of a novel is: "A profound statement on marriage and grief, this novel taught me how to live in the 21st century." Thus, a reader will go into the novel expecting to learn something about marriage, grief, and how to live in the 21st century. Where this gets murky is when such a reader takes said lessons from the novel and applies them in their real life. They are, essentially, living their life based on a fiction. This is the foundational device at the heart of Miguel de Cervante's Don Quixote, a man who is obsessed with the books of chivalric romances becomes convinced they are true histories and decides to become a knight errant, traveling around, imposing the "truth" of these texts on the real world around him.

            Where Don Quixote strays far from the aforementioned type of novel is by how it calls attention to the paradoxical nature of narrative authority and the power books possess over a reader. It does this through various ways, but mainly by in how it is written. Within Don Quixote, we learn there are a few different authors presenting "The History of Don Quixote." There is Miguel de Cervantes, whose name is on the cover; there is Cide Hamete Benengeli, who the narrator claims is the first author of the history; there is a random translator, along various sources of the texts, such as manuscripts found in different places at different times.

It is because of this disjointed narrative of fictions upon fictions upon fictions based on fictions, that the book loses all authority. Because to whom shall the reader ascribe the authority to? The "first author" Cide Hamete Benengeli? The Morisco translator? Cervantes?[2] You cannot pin any foundational truth upon any of these authors. Once the author is removed, it leaves the reader to look to the subjects of the stories for these truths, which, among the constant bickering of Sancho and Don Quixote, the constant narrative interruptions by side character's monologues and debates, we are left with a spray of varying sides of opinions to construct our own meaning from. Wherever we believe we are getting a glimpse of a truth or belief that something means something, because of the layering of the narrative where no author can state outright what is true, we are instead met with our own projection of what we believe a character or author is intending. Thus, creating a "hall of mirrors" effect. To understand the full scope of this "hall of mirrors,” we must analyze the narrative moves at each level of fictionality, i.e. who is claiming responsibility of each layer and how they are denying it.

            If we begin with the prologue, we get a direct address, "Idle Reader" followed by a statement of intention: "Without my swearing to it, you can believe I would like this book, the child of my understanding, to be the most beautiful, the most brilliant, and the most discreet that anyone could imagine." This alone grants the writer some authority. However, this writer, the "I" who we automatically assume is Cervantes[3], is quick to undermine his own authority by claiming to be the "stepfather of Don Quixote." The writer of this Prologue goes on to doubt how his book will be viewed in the public, because his will lack notes and annotations, and he isn't sure of his place in a lineage of authors he has followed to give credit to. This is a writer hyper-aware of influence, who is careful to not automatically take on authority, just because he has written a book.

            The writer's reassurance comes from a friend[4] who tells him to make it all up, to write the sonnets, epigrams, poems himself. With regards to sources and citing in the margins, he tells him to simply insert Latin phrases and cite whoever said it, even if he quotes God Himself[5], because it will make people think he has done his studies. As for annotations, he tells him to cite great works because it will lend him credit. He says, "All you have to do is to name the names or touch on the histories, [that a] lengthy catalogue of authors will give the book an unexpected authority." This sets the course for a book full of sonnets, epigrams, and references to other texts, and has the reader assume a role of doubt. This seems to be the right place to start from in a book that wants nothing to do with authority, that makes the case that the authority of fiction cannot lie outside of itself.

            The writer of the prologue also takes care to tell the reader that they are left to take from the book what they want. "I do not wish to go along with the common custom[6]," he writes, "and implore you...to forgive or ignore the faults you may find in this my child, for you are neither his kin nor his friend, and you have a soul in your body and a will as free as anyone's, and you are in your own house, where you are lord...which exempts and excuses you from all respect and obligation, and you can say anything you desire about this history without fear that you will be reviled for the bad things or rewarded for the good that you might say about it." With this direct address, responsibility is now fully on the reader to parse out things for themselves.

            This is a strange place to start a book from: a writer of a prologue, who we can only assume is the author, is telling us he isn't the sole author of this history, that all its factual references and allusions are made up, and we are left to our own judgements. It's shaky ground to say the least, but is really only the first layer of the fictionality, an entry point, into the unstable authority of this book.

            The next shirking of authority comes in Chapter II, where the narrator tells us he is basing his telling off what he has "discovered written in the annals of La Mancha," solidifying the doubt created in the prologue, which gives new meaning to the phrase "stepfather of Don Quixote." We begin to fully understand what this means: the writer of the prologue is presenting us with something he found, so we cannot be sure how much of what is being told is his or was something already written. So, it is with this in mind, we begin Don Quixote's journey.

            It isn't until the end of Chapter VIII where we get another break in the narrative, another reason to doubt the authority of this this text. The narrator writes, "But the difficulty in all this is that at this very point and juncture, the author of the history leaves the battle pending, apologizing because he found nothing else written about the feats of Don Quixote other than what he has already counted. It is certainly true that the second author [who Edith Grossman notes as Cervantes]...did not despair of finding the conclusion to this gentle history, which, with heaven's help, he discovered in the manner that will be revealed in part two."[7] This disclaimer now recontextualizes everything we just read in the first eighter chapters even more; we are yet again confronted by the nature of how this fiction is being presented. On one hand we have built trust in the narrator, who seems to have done his diligence in presenting us this history, which, when he admits he couldn't find the rest of it, the honesty paradoxically has us put more trust in him. But on the other hand, we must now face the fact that with this total break in narrative, we move away from Cervantes's own responsibility and authority over the text to someone else’s.

            In Chapter IX, we move to another level deeper of fictionality, where the narrator tells us he came across notebooks and old papers at the Alcaná market in Toledo containing the history of Don Quixote, written by the Arab historian Cide Hamete Benengeli, which the narrator has translated by a random "Morisco" he finds in the market, adding another layer of fictionality: the Morisco's own interpretation in translating the original manuscript written by Cide Hamete Benengeli. It is this double layering that adds not only complexity into the history of this narrative, but it completely smashes any remaining trust a reader may have had left in any semblance of an authority figure. For now, we don't know where to place our unconscious hopes to know the truth––is it in Cervantes? The narrator? The supposed original history itself? The Morisco translator? Cide Hamete Benengeli? Don Quixote himself?[8]

            From here, it is worth studying these supposed authors and translators and analyzing what kind of authors they claim to be. Starting with Cide Hamete Benengeli, the narrator gives us unique insight into him, based on some quick, albeit racist judgements he makes about him and the translation itself.[9] He writes, "If any objection can be raised regarding the truth of this one, it can only be that its author was Arabic, since the people of that nation are very prone to telling falsehoods, but because they are such great enemies of ours, it can be assumed that he has given us too little rather than too much." Now, not only do we have instability of authority because of the varying authors, we have one author criticizing another, who is a supposed enemy of his race. What does this mean for us as readers? Are we supposed to take sides? Doesn't this change how our narrator could be presenting the history?

            A few lines later, the narrator continues to bash Benengeli. "This is something badly done and poorly throughout," he writes. "Since historians must and ought to be exact, truth, and absolutely free of passions, for neither interest, fear, rancor, nor affection should make them deviate from the path of the truth, whose mother is history, the rival of time, repository of great deeds, witness to the past, example and adviser to the present, and forewarning to the future. In this account I know there will be found everything that could be rightly desired in the most pleasant history, and if something of value is missing from it, in my opinion the fault lies with the dog who was its author rather than with any defect in its subject." This is a massive shift in the narrative framing of this book. As readers, we now are left to not only parse out the fictional truth in this fictiveness but also deal with a narrator who has both earned and broken our trust time and time again, and has now revealed himself to be biased, racist, and irresponsible. If one were to project a kind of intention here on the writer Cervantes himself, one could make the assumption that what he is saying is authors will always bring their unconscious biases to texts and to be weary of them claiming authority over any ideology.[10]

            Throughout the rest of Book One, we get slight insertions from the narrator regarding Benengeli. For instance, the way he starts Chapter XV: "The learned Cide Hamete Benengeli tells us..." In reflection of his earlier assertion (he called him a dog, remember), "learned" here could be read as ironic and mockingly, but also earnestly, as we have been getting a robust, detailed telling of the history thus far with no interruptions since Chapter IX, reestablishing a sort of trust in the narrative, and with Benengeli himself.

            This trust is not only built with us, but in the narrator himself, who, in Chapter XVI notes that Benengeli actually knew a character in the history, a muledriver. He writes, "In any case, Cide Hamete Benengeli was a very careful historian, and very accurate in all things, as can be clearly seen in the details he relates to us, for although they are trivial and inconsequential, he does not attempt to pass over them in silence; his example could be followed by solemn historians who recount actions so briefly and succinctly that we can barely taste them, and leave behind in the inkwell, through careless, malice, or ignorance, the most substantiative part of the work." Note here the change in the narrator's view of Benengeli. Not only is he validating him but urging historians after him to take lessons from his dutifulness to details and truth. This is another shift in the balance of authority for the reader, which is now leaning more toward Benengeli than it previously did, suggesting authority depends on truth, which depends on reputation. Later, we get more praise for Benengeli from the narrator: "It is recounted by Cide Hamete Benengeli, the Arabic and Manchegan author, in this most serious, high-sounding, detailed, sweet inventive history..." Again, this could be read as both ironic and sincere, both mocking and a handing over total authority to Benengeli[11].

            So now we seem to have the narrator's trust in Benengeli, but what about our own? In the back of our minds, we still doubt how much is being presented by whom. Despite the narrator's praising of Benengeli, we get summaries at the beginning of chapters, like this one in Chapter XXVII: "Concerning how the priest and the barber carried out their plan, along with other matters worthy of being recounted in this great history." Matters worthy of being recounted––what does that mean? Someone is still deeming things worthy enough to include, implying things were not worthy enough, so they are being discarded. But by whom? The narrator? The Morisco translator? All of these insertions act as reminders that we are still on shaky ground here, that we can continue to question the authority of this book and the assumptions we've made about it thus far. All of this serves to draw attention to the fictionality of the world inside the book.

            The final shattering of authority comes in Chapter LII, the last chapter of Book One, where we learn the author of the history[12] could not find any account in "authenticated documents" of Don Quixote's feats on a third journey. The narrator writes, "Their fame has been maintained only in the memories of La Mancha."[13] With this, we leave any written history for verification of the history and now are relying on the fallible memories of a town. And as for what happened to Don Quixote, the narrator writes, "Nor could he [the author of this history] find or learn anything about Don Quixote's final end, and never would have, if good fortune had not presented him with an ancient physician who had in his possession a leaden box that he claimed to have found in the ruined foundations of an old hermitage that was being renovated; in this box he discovered some parchments on which, in Gothic script, Castilian verses [note: so not written by the Arabic Cede Hamete Benengali] celebrated many of the knight's exploits and described the beauty of Dulcinea of Toboso, the figure of Rocinante, the fidelity of Sancho Panza, and the tomb of Don Quixote, with various epitaphs and eulogies to his life and customs." With this, any assumptions about where the history of Don Quixote is fragmented and what we get is a reclaiming of authority over the text by our narrator.

            "Those that were legible and could be transcribed," he writes, "are the ones that the trustworthy author of this[14] new and unparalleled history has set down here. This author does not ask compensation from his readers for the immense labor required to investigate and search all the Manchegan archives in order to bring this history to light; he asks only that they afford it the same credit that judicious readers give to the books of chivalry that are esteemed so highly in the world[15]; with this he will consider himself well-paid and satisfied, and encouraged to seek and publish other histories, if not as true, then at least as inventive and entertaining as this one." This being the final paragraph of Book One practically acts as its closing argument on behalf of Cervantes, the narrator, the Morisco translator, Cede Hamete Benengeli, or whomever: that nothing is owed to the author himself, but that the reader takes what they want as true. This is a different type of contract offered between author and reader, one that disregards any authority and intentionality on the author's part and gives the reader complete free will.

            Now that the layers of fictiveness have been mapped, we are free to analyze Don Quixote's "hall of mirrors" effect. Because it is important to understand that the authors within authors of the book, merely act as the construction of the mirrors, but not as the reflective panes themselves.[16] It is the establishing of a lack of authority, which frees you to get lost in the dialectical nature of this book.

            One of the main points up for debate in the book revolves around the madness of Don Quixote. Throughout, we get many points of view regarding his mental state, including his own. Everyone from his neighbor Pedro Alonso, the priest Pero Perez, the Innkeepers, the Holy Brotherhood, and Sancho Panza all are quick to judge him as mad, but in Don Quixote's defenses and rationalizations, we see the other side to his "madness." Sancho's arch of doubt is notable in how it parallels the reader's own perception of the madness of Don Quixote. At first, like Sancho, we are highly skeptical. This is shown in the classic scene of the windmills, where Don Quixote sees them as giants.

            "It's clear to me," Don Quixote says, "that thou are not well-versed in the matter of adventures: these are giants."

            What Don Quixote does here is not mad, but actually clever; he doesn't just say Sancho is wrong, but he undermines the authority of his perception, says, because you don't know adventure like I do, because you haven't read all books I have, all you see is windmills. This is the first mirror. As a reader, we could say to ourselves, "Hmm. We, like Sancho, maybe are not as well-versed in adventure or chivalric romances, so who are we to doubt this? What would happen if we chose to see giants like Quixote?" It is this constant challenging and undermining from Don Quixote, for he is highly skilled, knowledgeable, and confident in his authority, that breaks Sancho's own perception of what is real and what is not, very much in the way the various authors of the histories do to the reader.

            While there are many more "mirrors" in this hall for a reader to extract their own truths and meanings––such as: the book burning scene in Chapter VI, Marcela's tale, the two interpolated novels[17], and so on––for the sake of word count and the reader's time, I'll limit any more analyzing of the dialectics of this book to one notable instance: the argument between the priest, the canon, and Don Quixote.

            In Chapter XLVII, Don Quixote is caged and believes he is enchanted, being taken home to La Mancha by the priest and the barber with Sancho tagging along. On their way, they are stopped by a canon who questions why they are carrying Don Quixote in a cage. It is Quixote who speaks up and tells him that he is enchanted and the priest says he is telling the truth.[18] Oddly enough, it is Sancho who testifies to Quixote's sanity, which in turn makes him look mad to the barber. The priest decides to clear things up and tells the canon everything about Don Quixote, from the source of his madness and the series of events that followed it.

            In response to this, the canon is astonished, not only by Quixote himself but by the fact that it was chivalric romances of all things that caused his madness. He goes on to admit he could never finish them, that they are no different from one another, that they are "foolish stories only to delight and not to teach, unlike moral tales, which delight and teach at the same time." Here we get an explicit take on taste in genres. For an entire page he critiques the genre and concludes that, "since they are totally lacking intelligent artifice, they deserve to be banished." And obviously, because of the book burning scene at the beginning of the book, the priest agrees, and recounts this to the canon, who delights in it.

            What follows is a bit of taste-making, where the canon says that the books of chivalry are only good for one thing: describing characteristics of a perfect noble man. He even sets some rules regarding style, that they be "done in a pleasing style and with ingenious invention...drawn as close as possible to the truth...display perfection and beauty...[and] achieve the greatest goal of any writing, which, as I have said, is to teach and delight at the same time." He admits to having written part of a book of chivalry himself, but despite getting some approval with a few readers, hasn't pursued to write anymore. One reason is he realized what type of readers enjoy books of chivalry, which he considers simpleminded.[19] But the main reason in which he stopped writing them was an argument he had with himself regarding the plays being produced at the time. He comes to the conclusion that popular plays, despite being nonsense (to him) are beloved by people, and since they are beloved, the authors and actors of the plays are convinced that that is the way plays should be, because the audience loves them, that "it is better to earn a living with the crowd than a reputation with the elite." But, when he presses a playwright if he knows a popular play that delighted the simpleminded and the wise, and the playwright does, he realizes that great plays following his precepts of art are possible and concludes, "Which means the fault lies not with the mob, who demands nonsense, but with those who do not know how to produce anything else." He’s suggesting that the playwrights are choosing to be only populist and not also moral, which means he believes sole responsibility in writing is on the author.

            The priest concurs, and adds to the canon's argument, stating that plays should "be a mirror of human life, an example of customs, and an image of truth...[that] those produced these days are mirrors[20] of nonsense, examples of foolishness, and images of lewdness... [that] mimesis is the principal quality a play should have." He later goes on to even suggest that courts should be held to judge art by "an intelligent and judicious person [to] examine each play before it was performed."

            This is a strong argument made by the priest and the canon.[21] In fact, it's such a strong argument that there are readers of the Edith Grossman translation of Don Quixote in 2025 who probably have read that, placed the book down, took a deep sigh of relief and said they agree. But an attuned reader might say, "No I disagree, books shouldn't be one thing. In fact, the one I'm holding isn't one thing. And judging art is insane! Burning books?!” In any case, this is where some narrative authority could lend a hand for landing home a specific truth or belief, could help confirm something the reader is picking up on and reacting to. But Quixote isn't that kind of book. There is no author (of its fictional many) who will step forward and claim the priest and the canon's argument as right. What we get instead is something else.

            First, we get the canon's assessment of Don Quixote, that the reading of books of chivalry have driven him mad and should be burned "for being deceptive and false and far beyond the limit of common sense...and for giving the ignorant rabble a reason to believe and consider as true all the absurdities they contain." It is after this, our hero, our shining knight, Don Quixote comes forward with a counter argument: that the canon is the mad one, because he denies something so widely accepted in the world.

            Don Quixote goes on at length, citing many different anecdotes and histories, saying how can the canon doubt them when so much truth lies within them, that physical evidence and artifacts from the histories exist. The canon sees his point but remains doubtful and calls out the impossibility of the details in the stories of the "Twelve Peers of France" because he's never seen all of the physical evidence of them himself. But Don Quixote says they are still out there, regardless. The point Don Quixote makes here is true. Consider how many people celebrate Bloomsday, take walking tours of Joyce’s Dublin, visiting physical places such as Sweny’s Pharmacy, where in Ulysses, Bloom stops for a bar of lemon soap in the Lotus Eaters episode. By this relationship our world has with literature, because it takes place in our world, you will always find cases like this; the world informing literature, and literature informing the world, a reciprocal relationship.

            Lastly, Don Quixote claims that because you derive pleasure and delight from books, your spirit is affected by them. And because books have this ability to dictate your emotions, they can also dictate your values and behavior. He says, “For myself, I can say that since I became a knight errant[22] I have been valiant, well-mannered, liberal, polite, generous, courteous, bold, gentle, patient, long-suffering in labors, imprisonments, and enchantments…” If we let them, books can help us change and grow. And not only that, this could make us better people, who can help others. As Quixote puts it, “can display the gratitude and liberality of my heart… can display my heartfelt desire to do good for my friends.”

            After, there is no settlement to this debate. The canon considers Quixote’s response “reasoned nonsense” speaking to the paradoxical nature to truth in this book; then there is yet another break in the narrative, a goatherd’s story. This resembles reality, which is full of constant breaks in narrative. We do not get neatly wrapped answers or truths, only things to consider, like the places we pull our own beliefs and values from while we are in the middle of things happening to us.

The question after this great debate becomes, is looking to books for answers in how to live, for meaning, values, or beliefs a kind of madness? The priest and the canon say yes, unless it is from one type of book. For Quixote, there is no better way to improve yourself than to read other people’s stories, no matter how it is written or who tells it. As he tells Sancho regarding the goatherd, “All I need is to nourish my spirit, which I shall do by listening to this good man’s story.” Quixote begs the question, how could trying to understand all kinds of people, empathizing with them, striving to be better, to be more noble and virtuous be a bad thing? The answer lies in how the book Don Quixote handles authority. On one hand: it offers a variety of arguments and views of the world; on the other, it does not preach any of them or confirm them. It lets you, the reader, decide what to take away. What it does say is this: books have a certain degree of power, but be careful. Distrust anyone claiming to be an authority on anything and be weary of anything that claims to be an absolute truth, for that is ideology, and ideology blinds us. Vale. ♦︎

[1] Ralph Waldo Emerson supposedly said, "Fiction reveals truth that reality obscures." The irony here is the source of this quote is unfound online so it cannot be verified as true. Why does it seem like most sharp, untraceable aphorisms about life are automatically attributed to Emerson for some reason?

[2] There's also an on-going bit with regards to the printer being at fault for some factual errors in the book, such as Sancho's grey getting stolen in Book One, adding another layer of doubt to the authority of this book.

[3] We later may doubt this, because the Prologue could also have been written in the "original history."

[4] This "friend" seems to be an obvious fiction, making it the first glimpse of the narrative moves Cervantes will deploy to distort his own authority.

[5]Hilarious because it implies, who is arrogant enough to doubt that God said something? This might answer my earlier question to why a lot of quotes online are false attributed to Ralph Waldo Emerson. Who could doubt Emerson?

[6] The common custom assumingly being a book having total authority and having a relationship with a reader that I described in the opening paragraph.

[7] Note how Cervantes refers to himself as the "second author" and is speaking in the third person, distancing himself as the supposed author even further.

[8] In trying to parse out any answer to this question, by page 70 in the book, it's like you can hear Cervantes laughing, saying, "Go with God, Sancho."

[9] Which, again, could actually be the faults of the Morisco translator, but the narrator seems to ignore this.

[10] Note the squeamish casting of this projection onto someone else with the use of "one," because I, Nick Farriella, humble grad student and writer of this essay, could never assert any intentionality upon the great Miguel de Cervantes.

[11] An interesting question to ask is what does Benengeli do himself with said authority? In fact, we discover that Benengeli is sort of unreliable himself, with factual errors (Sancho's Grey going missing/getting stolen), judgements of Don Quixote (calling him mad), and sometimes authorial laziness. We learn he sometimes skips things if they are boring, rushes through them, or cuts to other things happening. From Chapter XLIV: "But let us leave the innkeeper here, for someone will help him... and we shall go back fifty paces and see how Don Luis responded to the Magistrate..."

[12] Another sleight of hand on Cervantes' part is his tactful use of "the author of this history" twice on the final page. The use of "this" in the context of the paragraph could be taken as the author of this history, as in the one Cede Hamete Benengali wrote, or the author of this history that is being written by the narrator. Just delicious doubling there.

[13] Recall too the opening line from Chapter I, where the narrator says of La Mancha, "a place whose name I do not care to remember." So, it is left up for debate whether how much he would credit such a place.

[14] Same doubling of the word "this" here as before.

[15] Meaning: read the fiction as real history.

[16] Perhaps, only minimally, if you find yourself gravitating toward one author over the other, but in how you would do that is beyond me.

[17] The novels The Man Who Was Recklessly Curious and The Captive's Tale, much like Marcela's tale, are examples of when the authority of the narrative is completely given over to not a translator nor writer of the history of Don Quixote, but to a physical book within the book itself (a manuscript found at an inn) and to a character within it (the captive).

[18] Which is a fiction about a fiction, making the priest implicate in Quixote's madness.

[19] He goes on to say, "It is better to be praised by a few wise men and mocked by many fools." And I can just see herds of writers of literary fiction nodding in agreement.

[20] The use of the mirror metaphor is not like my own, because here it’s suggesting the author should have authority in what gets shown in the mirror, whereas Don Quixote wants you to see yourself.

[21] Pointing out here the genius in Cervantes, having a priest and a canon canonize certain type of works and dismissing others. It's that delicious doubling I mentioned in an earlier footnote.

[22] Meaning: living his life according to the books of chivalry.