«Yo no veo, Sancho – dijo don Quijote – sino a tres labradoras sobre tres borricos»: le coincidenze mancate di Don Quijote II, 10

Abstract

Although the episode contained in chapter II, 10 of Miguel de Cervantes’ Don Quijote de la Mancha has received numerous and appreciated essays, no one of them ever considered the scene according to his natural novelistic pattern: that is, as a ‘first encounter’ between the lovers, in which for the first time the knight-errant Don Quixote and his beloved Dulcinea are ‘coincident’ in the same space, at the same time. Through the application of the formal model of première vue elaborated by Jean Rousset (1981), the work aims to reconstruct the inner development of this encounter, paying special attention to the implications of meaning that emerge from the lack of correspondence – as consequence of his parodic status – between the episode and the courtesan-chivalric literary convention, together with his corresponding textual effects.