The voice of Cervantes «creator» in Don Quixote

Abstract

The aim of this paper is identifying the genuine voice of the Cervantes creator in the multiple choir of fictitious intermediaries involved in the authorship and the story of Don Quijote (reporter, editor, translator, Cide Hamete, supernarrator, readers, etc.) trying, at the same time, to gauging the sense and the scope of their interventions. It happens that Miguel de Cervantes keeps to himself a novelistic role radically different depending on whether it is about the «story of story» or the «story itself»: refering to the first one, the author is out of the cast, delegating the reconstruction of Don Quixote’s legend in multiple fictional masks always comically manipulated; on the other hand, when it is the turn to the novelistic design of the chivalrous adventures of Don Quixote and Sancho, the voice of Cervantes creator comes to the forefront in order to take on, —as the «final author»— all narrative responsibility with absolute omniscience and solemnity. The resulting Quijote can only be explained from the intersection of both attitudes: the risible story of the most solemn/serious and magnificent novelistic bet never tried out..