Symbolic Action in the Episode of the Cave of Montesinos from "Don Quijote"

TLDR: In this paper, the authors discuss the symbolic action in the cave of Montesinos in Don Quijote and propose to discuss this part of the novel in terms of symbolic action, in order to shed some light on at least one aspect of its many possible meanings.

Abstract: For such a rich work as Don Quijote, it seems that the best approach should be one characterized by an open-minded inclusiveness rather than by dogmatism. Aubrey Bell refers to Cervantes' great novel as "a book which tends to be all things to all men."' This statement may sound a little sweeping to the reader who has not had the opportunity to enter fully-and as fully lose himself-in that magnificent and somewhat precarious world of the mad knight and his lovable squire. The novel, though not perhaps literally all things to all men, is certainly many things to many men. Like the highly praised ambiguity in poetry,2 the eclecticism of Don Quijote, far from being a fault, is indeed its chief virtue. This eclecticism enriches the novel, extends its area of operation, and gives it great depth and significance. The various interpretations of Don Quijote through the centuries attest to the novel's deep wealth of meaning and complexity. As Valbuena Prat says, Cervantes' first public saw Don Quijote as "un libro de entretenimiento, una obra de burlas . .. ,"3 but its evaluation changed with each succeeding generation of readers. To the reader of Cervantes' time Don Quijote was a satire against the novels of chivalry, a comedy to while away the long hours of leisure of that unsophisticated age; to the eighteenth century reader, one more potent argument for the superiority of reason over the unbridled imagination; to the nineteenth century romantics, an ironic plea for human feeling and emotion, an expression of the quest of the individual's liberation from the strictures of calculating reason and bourgeois common sense. And to the twentieth century reader? It can be one or all of these things.4 Perhaps no other part of Don Quijote is more ambiguous or thought-provoking than the episode of the Cave of Montesinos. At the first level of interpretation it is another adventure among the many of the Manchegan Knight Errant. More fanciful, certainly, as it actually makes use of legend, myth, and the supernatural element. It is the type of adventure that satisfies the popular craving for novelty since there is much of what can be called thrilling and suspenseful. Considered however in its conceptual and formal structure, the episode goes far beyond the realm of pure entertainment. Indeed it becomes the very fulcrum of the swing of the entire narrative as it moves toward its end, objectified in the figure of the Knight of the Mournful Countenance turned once again into the peaceable Don Alonso Quijano the Good as he lies dying on his bed in La Mancha. From the moment of the introduction of the Montesinos episode into the novel, it begins to function as its most valuable frame of reference. It is within the terms of the meaning of the Cave of Montesinos that Don Quijote's individual problem and principal concerns will have to be considered. Because of the nature of the Montesinos adventure and especially because of the peculiar relationship between character and event, I propose to discuss this part of Don Quijote in terms of "symbolic action" in the hope that such an approach might shed some light on at least one aspect of its many possible meanings. Symbolic action in literature, developed and formalized by Kenneth Burke,5 is probably the most eclectic modern critical theory