The Chivalric World of Don Quijote: Style, Structure, and Narrative Technique by Howard Mancing (review)

Book Reviews279 (Kamele, die bis dato sie gewesen, mit ihren Exegesen, zäh wie Leder!)." Frappierend ist die Vielseitigkeit seiner Thematik; prophetisch warnt er noch vor dem Antritt Kohls, "Syphilis frißt Linksabbieger," denn "Bedenklich ist's, den Kopf zu schütteln. Ein Ruck nach links, schon fliegt er weg vor eiligen Ermittlungsbütteln die da geheiligt sind vom Zweck." (Bedenklich). Gleichzeitig persifliert er die kapitalistische Bigotterie der USA unter "Coca Cola — Hallelujah!" Er beherrscht sein Metier mit allen stilistischen Raffinessen, vom Akrostichon für Benno Ohnesorg bis zum Palindrom (Odradek-Kedardo), von rhetorischen Figuren bis zum alliterierenden Neologismus (Wortwildwuchs). Sein Stimmungsbarometer reicht von verschmitzt heiter, "Es folgt kein Epilöglein — /Drum schweigt das Dichtervöglein," bis zum absoluten Tief, "Und kannst du noch schreiben — /treiben/sie dich zum Selbstentleiben!" Ein Sprachvirtuose, der etwas zu sagen hat, ist dieser Rarisch, rar. INGEBORG L. CARLSON Arizona State University Howard Mancing. The Chivalric World of Don Quijote: Style, Structure, and Narrative Technique. Columbia and London: University of Missouri Press, 1982. 240p. The sixteenth-century romances of chivalry, mostnotablyAmadis de Gaula, are the primary source and the mediating presence for Don Quijote, for Don Quijote, and for Howard Mancing's The Chivalric World of Don Quijote. Don Quijote's selfconscious imitation of chivalric heroes forms the base of Mancing's examination of the conventions of this literary universe, as they determine a direction for the anachronistic knight-errant and his creator. Mancing views the chivalric backdrop as a key to textual analysis; hesets amonghis goals to demonstrate "that Don Quijote begins to retreat from his chivalric fantasy to reach an accord with reality in part I of the novel rather than in part II as is generally believed; that Sancho Panza both undermines and sustains his master's fantasy from the start; that the priest and the barber are not, as first presented, Don Quijote's friends, but rather his greatest enemies; and that Cide Hamete Benengeli becomes increasingly unreliable as a narrator and increasingly comic as a character in the secondpart ofthe novel" (p. 1). The five chapters ofthestudy convincingly defend these points and offer a structural framework for consideration of the novel's dynamics. Mancing begins with an assessment of the social and literary pre-history of Alonso Quijano and then moves to a detailed elaboration of Don Quijote's archaic rhetoric ofchivalry. Analogous tothe changes in focus of Cervantes' literary project, Don Quijote's trajectory is marked by a changing conception of himself, a corresponding (and generally antithetical) transformation of Sancho Panza, and a crucial interplay between the two. The acceptance of the chivalric mode by other characters, including the priest, the barber, and Dorotea, isa "mixed blessing" (p. 96) for Don Quijote, for it both validates and undermines his chivalric existence, 280ROCKY MOUNTAIN REVIEW reducing him from master of his destiny to the pawn of these real enchanters. In the episode of the penitents at the end of Part I, there are no more fictional enchanters for the knight; his spirit as well as his body is broken. In Part II, the decline in chivalric force is at its maximum intensity, and Don Quijote becomes "a more profoundly human and sympathetic person but is a poor imitation of his once chivalric self" (p. 138). For the most part, he either perceives reality as it is or participates in metatheatrical adventures arranged by others. The entire second part sacrifices the chivalric code for a more transcendent motif, "a meaningful process of disillusionment and increasing self-knowledge" (p. 215). The most polemical aspect of Mancing's reading involves the relationship between Cervantes and Cide Hamete Benengeli (especially pages 192-209). The objectiveseems to be a delineation of the opposition between Cervantesaseditorand Cide Hamete as author, with the Arab as the butt of Cervantine humor and irony in Part II. Mancing makes the point that Cide Hamete is a better historian than psychologist: "his interpretation of . . . events or of the characters' motives or psychological states is frequently questionable" (p. 145). This observation overlooks several fundamental elements. Don Quijote brings into question the act of writing history, given that what is arguably the world's greatest novel is arguably the world's worst...