The Chivalric World of Don Quijote

The purpose of this book is to examine the characters, style, themes, structure, and narrative technique of that chivalric world. I hope to show, among other things, that Don Quijote begins to retreat from his chivalric fantasy and to reach an accord with reality in part I of the novel rather than in part II as is generally believed; that Sancho Panza both undermines and sustains his master's fantasy from the start; that the priest and the barber are not, as first presented, Don Quijote's friends, but rather his greatest enemies; and that Cide Hamete Benengeli becomes increasingly unreliable as a narrator and increasingly comic as a character in the second part of the novel.