Abstract

ILLADES, Gustavo. Notes to a (Half-heard) Dialogue about Madness in the Quixote from 1615. Acta poét [online]. 2016, vol.37, n.1, pp.13-36. ISSN 2448-735X.  https://doi.org/10.19130/iifl.ap.2016.1.663.

A quarter of century ago, Maurice Molho and Margit Frenk talked in person about don Quixote's madness in the Second part of Cervantes' novel. In the present article I reconstruct this dialogue from the subsequent publications that both hispanists dedicated to the topic. After describing their studies, I identify possible mutual influences, correspondences and divergences between them. Finally, I try to harmonize their findings through a personal analysis which states: a) The protagonist dies insane -as Frenk suggests-, but with a dif- ferent kind of madness; and b) It is not the character -as Mohlo proposes- but the book instead which gains access to the pre-Cartesian rationality. Both proposals converge in the identification of the implicit reader: the well-known gullible reader of knightly fiction, and at the same time the gullible believer.

Keywords : madness; rationality; death of don Quixote; Margit Frenk; Maurice Molho.

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