| Mikhail Bakhtin's theory on carnival and the grotesque as well as the theories of Sypher, Kris, Girard and others on the comic identify the mythic origins of the literary work. In the popular feasts of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, official ceremonies are transformed when a figure from the lower classes is "elected" to protagonize them. From his throne the wise fool espouses our highest ideals. Amid the mirth and revelry, he is reviled and "uncrowned.".;Alonso Quijano enters the sphere of carnival as he transgresses the limits of his own personality and assumes the disguise of an ideal "other." The arms of the romance hero are substituted by false parts, junk, and domestic utensils, and his mythical steed by the skeletal Rocinante. Don Quixote's ensuing inability to protect himself leaves him subject to beatings and falls. Ultimately, the defender of chivalric ideology is converted into the carnival scapegoat.;Sancho, the archaic King of Years, the double of the hero himself, is instrumental in uncrowning the knight. Forced to assume the more unpleasant duties of the office, Sancho turns on his master and usurps his power. He exposes the weakness of the king/alazon's ideals by means of philosophical buffoonery. Yet he pays for his insolence as he is again transformed into victim.;The discourse of romance is also subject to transformation. Our sense of reality (ideals and facts) is fixed by means of language. Extensive use of word play in the text invests this reality with a new "valuation." The presence of rhetorical discourse intensifies the conflicts produced by word play. Characters and narrators employ rhetorical arguments in order to back up chivalric ideals. Yet the play on the varying types of audience, the ambiguity of terms, the instability of premises, the style, tone, and form of discourse all operate to underscore the objections to the ideals upheld. The dialogic discourse of the text invites the reader to re-analyze his ideals, while at the same time allows the author to break with literary conventions and codes in order to find a more individual form of artistic expression. |
