Originally conceived as a comic satire against the chivalric romances then in literary vogue, it describes realistically what befalls an elderly knight (Don Quixote) who, his head bemused by reading romances, sets out on his old horse Rosinante, with his pragmatic squire Sancho Panza, to seek adventure. Don Quixote has read himself into madness by reading too many books of chivalry, and so sets out to emulate the knights of old, first by getting himself some armour (out of pasteboard) and a steed (a broken-down nag), and then by getting himself knighted. He goes to an inn, which he thinks a castle, meets prostitutes whom he thinks high-born ladies, addresses them and the innkeeper, who is a thief, in language so literary that they cannot understand it, and then seeks to get himself knighted by standing vigil all night over his armour. The ludicrous transformation of the sacred rituals of knighthood into their ad hoc material equivalents parallels a similar desacralizing going on Europe at the time.
![[(Don Quixote)] [ By (author) Miguel de Cervantes, Translated by Tom Lathrop ] [October, 2014] book cover](https://cdn.margins.app/catalog/work-covers/01a093b7-79e6-494d-998f-54a41c61484e.jpg)
