Be sure you pay attention to which page numbers are assigned.

1. Who wrote Don Quixote? In what language was it written? How many major parts does it have? What led the author to write part II? How did the book’s first readers react?
2. Why didn’t early readers know Don Quixote was an important work of serious literature?
3. What is Don Quixote’s apparent purpose? What work(s) we have read might be called chivalric romances?
4. How is what Don Quixote does different from simple parody?
5. According to the introduction, what is the narrator’s attitude toward Don Quixote himself?
6. What two worlds encounter each other in Don Quixote?

1. Where is Don Quixote from? What is his real name? Describe his life, financial situation, and social class.
2. What has Don Quixote been reading? What effect do the things he reads have on him?
3. What does Don Quixote decide to do? How does he prepare himself? Who or what is Rocinante?
4. Who is Dulcinea del Toboso? Why does Don Quixote need to choose her? What is her real name?

1. Why does Don Quixote blame himself for waiting so long to ride out? Is this reality or illusion?
2. What is the first place Don Quixote stops, and who are the people he encounters there? How do they treat him?

1. Whom does Don Quixote ask to dub him a knight? (The ceremony in which someone becomes a knight involves a light tap on the shoulder with a sword, and this is referred to as "dubbing" someone a knight.) Why does the person he asks agree to such an inappropriate request? What good advice does he give Don Quixote? (Why do you think he does this?)
2. Knights in romances stayed up all night before the ceremony in which they were made knights to watch over or "keep vigil" over their armor in the chapel of the castle. What does Don Quixote substitute for a chapel and an altar, and what happens during the night?

1. Whom does Don Quixote try to help in his first adventure? Is the help really needed? Does it wind up being effective? Why or why not?
2. Whom does Don Quixote attack in his next adventure? What misfortune befalls him?
3. Who helps Don Quixote get home? What do Don Quixote’s family and friends think of his new life? Where do they place the blame for his madness?

1. Who goes with Don Quixote when he leaves home for the second time? What promise has Don Quixote made him?
2. Why does Don Quixote attack the windmills? What happens when he does? Once he sees what they are, how does he explain what has happened?
3. Sancho is glad that since he is not a knight he is allowed to complain even if Don Quixote must not do so. Sancho also promises NOT to do something only knights are allowed to do. What is it?
4. Don Quixote and Sancho next encounter what the Don mistakes for enchanters with a captive princess. Whom does he really encounter?
5. What situation results from this adventure? What interrupts the description of the fight? (Look back at the second paragraph of Chapter 1 and notice the reference to "those who have written on the subject." The narrator claims to be telling a story he has read in other books, just as the narrator of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight claimed to tell us Gawain’s story "As I heard it in hall.")
6. Who is Cid Hamete Benengeli?
7. What happens to Don Quixote’s opponent?
8. Sancho is afraid Don Quixote will be punished for his actions. Why does Don Quixote say this will not happen?

1. Why does Don Quixote try to fight with the sheep? What does he see them as?
2. "The worthy gentleman contrived to behold in his imagination what he did not see and what did not exist in reality" (p. 2601). Is it true to say that the armies do not exist anywhere? Think about this as you read the following descriptions.
3. What happens when Don Quixote attacks? How does he explain the fact that the armies seem to have become flocks of sheep?

1. What is really happening when Don Quixote demands that the procession "set free at once that lovely lady" (p. 2615)?
2. What does Sancho Panza say as he grieves for Don Quixote in the "O flower of chivalry" passage (p. 2616)? (Notice that this speech sounds more like something Don Quixote himself would say.)

1. Who is the bachelor of arts Sansón Carrasco?
2. How do Part I and Part II of Don Quixote relate to each other?
3. According to Carrasco, how are poetry and history different?
4. According to Carrasco, how well is Part I written?

1. What lie does the Knight of the Wood tell? What agreement do he and Don Quixote make?
2. Who is the Knight of the Wood? Who is his squire? Who do Don Quixote and Sancho Panza believe them to be?
3. What plan have Don Quixote's friends and family members made? What questions about sanity and insanity are asked in chapter 15?

1. How does Don Quixote introduce himself to the man in green?
2. According to the man in green, what do knights errant do? (Has there ever been a time when the world did not need people to do these things?)
3. Who is the man in green? How does he live? What does Sancho think of him?
4. What does Don Quixote say about the relationships between parents and their children? What does he say about poetry?
5. What happens when Don Quixote encounters the lions? (Does Don Quixote's behavior here show courage?)
6. Why may Don Quixote be seen as "a crazy sane man and an insane one of the verge of sanity"?

1. What bargain does Don Quixote make with the Knight of the White Moon? Does Don Quixote agree to say anything "untrue" about the lady Dulcinea? What does he agree to do?
2. Who is the Knight of the White Moon, and why has he come?

1. What new plan does Don Quixote make for the next year?
2. What happens to Don Quixote in chapter 74? What happens to his mind as he dies? What does he say about his niece in his will? What does he say about Sancho Panza?
3. How does Sancho react to Don Quixote's illness?
4. What is Don Quixote's real name?
5. Why is it important to have a witness to the fact that Don Quixote is dead?

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Last updated 08/09/05