The Grail Quest: Imagery and Motif in the Episode at the Cave of Montesinos in Don Quixote

CRITICISM THE GRAIL QUEST: IMAGERY AND MOTIF IN THE EPISODE AT THE CAVE OF MONTESINOS IN DON QUIXOTE Bruce Tracy From the title to Chapter XXII, Book II, of The Ingenious Gentleman Don Quixote De La Mancha, the reader is told that the episode of the Cave of Montesinos takes place in the heart of La Mancha.1 Don Quixote's descent into the underworld is related to Sancho Panza and the cousin in Chapter XXIII in the form of a dream vision, which Cervantes tells us in the title is "to be regarded as apocryphal." The episode of the Cave has aroused much speculation in the criticism of Don Quixote, but it has retained its ambiguity and mystery for two main reasons: 1) The episode excludes Sancho and places Don Quixote in a passive posture, thus eliminating the regular portrayal of character through action and contrast; 2) the symbolic content of the vision (the actual scene of the crystal palace, the characters, and the artifacts) has been placed in the background and the figure of Dulcinea has been placed in the foreground , thus diverting our attention to Don Quixote's encounter with the lady of his heart. This paper proposes to establish the scene within Don Quixote's dream as analogous to, if not identical with, the scene of the Grail Quest, which has its literary genesis in the twelfth and thirteenth century French and German romances . No attempt is made to prove Cervantes' conscious familiarity with the Grail sources; but it is assumed that he would have known them either directly or indirectly through his wide reading of the chivalric romances which he ostensibly parodies in his novel. If it can be shown that he considered the Grail Quest as an important and usable motif in a novel which pretends to parody such motifs, then the pretension of satire must be viewed in an ironic light to the degree to which the Grail Quest is revived for serious, not just parodie, reasons. A brief sampling of the criticism will help to clarify for us the importance of the episode at the Cave, as well as to point out the interpretative confusion which continues to cluster around it. Miguel de Unamuno recognizes that the episode occurs "in the heart of La Mancha," and intimates that the event is meaningful in its projection of 1MIgUeI de Cervantes, The Ingenious Gentleman Don Quixote De La Mancha, trans. Samuel Putnam (New York: The Modern Library, 1949). 4 RMMLA BulletinMarch 1974 issues at the heart of the novel.2 His reading of the descent is that it symbolizes "descending and burying yourself in the deep cave of your country's tradition," an effort at the base of which lies Don Quixote's love for Dulcinea . "Love Dulcinea and there will be nothing so impossible that it cannot be undertaken and accomplished." Although Unamuno seems to intuit the importance of burying oneself in the national memory, he fails to identify the background imagery by stressing Don Quixote's remarkable courage in undertaking the descent. Americo Castro's interest focuses obliquely upon the dream. His interest is in how illusions and dreams in general become a part of Don Quixote's manifest experience of reality, thereby fusing the two worlds in one autonomous spirit: "what was before transcendency without bearing on the process of living becomes embodied into life. This is the functional idea of Don Quixote."3 Although Castro does not go on to discuss the content of the dream, his contribution to the thesis of this paper lies in the suggestion that, consciously or not, Don Quixote not only experiences the dream (he said he was in the palace for three days and three nights, even though the descent had lasted for only an hour; he had eaten lunch just before the adventure, but he returned famished) but such an experience alters significantly the foirhcoming action in the novel. Gloria M. Fry treats the descent into the cave as a symbolic rebirth into the world of reality.4 As for the personages seen in the dream, They are clearly 'instruments' used toward obtaining the end or purpose, the setting forth of Don Quixote...