432
PARTISAN REVIEW
and calling into question the even more prevalent assumption that the self–
absorption ofso much twentieth-century fiction is a characteristically modern
development. In one sense , my argument is an attempt to elaborate and
to
validate Lionel Trilling's suggestive remarks concerning the
Quixote
in
"Manners, Morals and the Novel. "
In any genre it may happen that the first great example contains the
whole potentiality of the genre .
It
has been said that all philosophy is a
footnote to Plato.
It
can be said that all prose fiction is a variation on the
theme of
Don Quixote.
Cervantes sets for the novel the problem of
appearance and reality : the shifting and conflict of social classes become
the field of the problem of knowledge , of how
we
know and of how reli–
able our knowledge is .
Trilling goes on to describe the novel's generic intimacy with questions of
money and ofsocial class, leaving implicit the epistemological theme I wish
to
pursue. But he has at least intimated what I want to examine directly , and his
claim for the
Quixote's
decisive inclusiveness seems as true of the book's pre–
occupation with its own nature as of its focus on manners and morals.
That preoccupation is distilled for us, and in particularly resonant ways ,
in the third chapter of Part II, which opens with Quixote waiting uneasily for
Sancho and the Bachelor Carrasco, who is to report on the mysterious publi–
cation of Part I of the novel. This volume has appeared as if "by magic art ,"
and much to Quixote's discomfort, even while
the blood of the enemies he had slain was scarcely dry on his own sword–
blade .
. [IJfitwere true that there was such a history , since it was about
a knight errant it must perforce be grandiloquent, lofty, remarkable ,
magnificent and true. With this
he
was somewhat conso led ; but it dis–
turbed him to think that its author was a Moor , as that name of Cide
suggested. For
he
cou ld hope for no truth of
the
Moors , since they are all
cheats, f<Jrgers , and schemers. He was afraid too that his love affairs might
have been created with indelicacy . . . (). M. Cohen Translation ;
Penguin Books , 1954 .)
The complex unease suggested here-Quixote's doubts about his chivalric
enterprise encouraging the defensive suspicion that Moors are untrust–
worthy-continues through the whole chapter, and contrasts sharply with
Sancho's confident , even aggressive loquaciousness . Sancho's interruptions
during the conversation between Carrasco and Quixote repeatedly direct
attention toward those elements of their past adventures that are least Quixot–
ic and most congruent with the pragmatic earthiness of Sancho 's sense of the
world .
Sancho begins this cornie drama of self-assertion and self-definition
