La razón de la sinrazón: naturaleza y función de los libros de caballerías en la primera salida de don Quijote (I, 1-5)

Abstract

This paper is part of a bigger research that studies the texts inside Don Quixote:
their images and forms of representation, the links between them, and the way they circulate.
In this occasion, we will analyze the way in which chivalric romances are represented during
Don Quixote’s first appearance, as well as their functions. Chapters 1 to 5, and preliminary
texts, shape chivalric romances as paradoxical objects capable of fusing fundamental
dichotomies behind the life of Alonso Quijano. They also present rhetoric figures linked to
this oppositional movement, giving as a result a bombastic style. Between paradox and
ornament, chivalric romances act as totalizer texts, which can contain and capture everything,
against a reality threatened by disruption, emptiness, and silence. This conflict fueled by the
books configures hidalgo’s first appearance as well as the initial guidelines for his feat.