giselle wrote:what is Cervantes saying about knight errantry? Is he saying it’s an archaic practice that should be left as a relic of the past or celebrating it and suggesting that we learn from it? Or does he value knight errantry as a great source of entertainment (like many of his time) and a great way to sell books? Or is he using the latter as a vehicle to accomplish the former? There are many layers here and, I think, questions attached to each layer.
I’ve been meaning to respond to these great questions and comments from Giselle. The wonderful thing about knight errantry is the idea of selfless compassion, of armed service for justice and truth in the face of anarchic misery. The dark ages were a time of rule by the sword. Errantry puts the sword in service of law, representing the divine nobility of Christ, so the warrior defends the helpless instead of embarking on an evil quest for domination and control. Errantry was part of the ideal of Christendom as a society of rule of law, and the myth continued into the modern world with Superman and Batman as knights errant.
However, part of the irony for Cervantes is that by his time the knight in armour had long been obsolete. A recent
article by Freeman Dyson in the New York Review of Books cites the knight on horseback as a failed piece of military insanity, along with the dreadnought battleship and the Star Wars shield against nuclear weapons, as a strategic technology that was grossly wasteful and was never able to work as intended.
I’ve been enchanted by the story of Lancelot of the Lake since before I could read. The mythology of the entertainment involves the context of the quest for the holy grail, the ideals of purity and valour, the presence of danger and magic, and the moral lessons. By Cervantes’ time, modern technology was already making the feudal social relations obsolete. This is why the windmill is such an evocative symbol; it represents the impersonal power of industrial production of food, replacing the charm of the medieval ox turning the millstone with a new vast power. Of course today we see windmills as quaint and old-fashioned because technology has advanced so much further, but then they were relatively new. Confusing one with a giant deliberately mixed the Arthurian charm of the grail quest with the impersonal factory of mercantile capitalism.
I continue to find Cervantes theme of enchantment interesting and relevant to our times. As I read, I see more of enchantment and the way it influences Quixote’s mind and less of outright madness, but perhaps I am being generous toward him. In any case, I think he genuinely believes in enchantment and sees it all around and so it is real to him. President Camacho « 08 Jun 2010 12:13 » im safe, Tulip doesn't read the shoutbox
I agree, except that self-delusion is madness, so anyone who claims that their belief proves the world is wrong on such flimsy grounds is indeed mad. Yet, the problem remains that we have a nagging wonder regarding enchantment, a sense that perhaps the world is indeed more complex than our surface impressions suggest, that we are actually connected to the universe by intricate webs of mystery, creating subtle layers of reality that our science cannot detect. The miracles of Christ are entirely a gesture towards this sense of mystery, that there is more in heaven and earth than can be explained by philosophy. Descartes used Cervantes’ device of the ‘evil enchanter’ to argue that logically, solipsism is possible, and is only refuted by faith in God.
Children today typically view the world to be full of enchantment as I’m sure children did in Cervantes time. Our institutions are designed to drum enchantment and magic out of children because as mainstream society we desire stability and predictability, we do not think enchantment has a place in the adult world. We label it all sorts of negative things and we slot those who believe in enchantment into some pretty undesirable places.
A while back we read the book The Secret Garden, in which this theme of childhood sense of innocent enchantment is presented as a way to find meaning in a bleak world. The disenchantment of the world is a central theme of modern enlightenment, with the mechanistic exploitation of matter seen as the basis of production of wealth. If we regard trees and rocks and animals as ensouled, we risk a collapse in confidence of the human right to dominion over nature, the faith that has motivated the imperial conquest of the world.
Today the school system is likely the number one suppression culprit whereas in Cervantes time it was more likely the church. Although we have worked hard to suppress wacky ideas like enchantment, our suppression system is not water tight and some people slip through the cracks bringing the notion of enchantment into the adult world and into the mainstream. When this happens, do we foster this enchantment or do we suppress it because it challenges our ways and creates disorder and fear? I’m not sure, and perhaps we are not consistent one way or the other, but I feel an adult world with enchantment is a whole lot richer than a world without. Perhaps enchantment itself is an airy fairy concept but really it’s not just enchantment at stake because with enchantment may come many beneficial, productive things, like innovativeness, and these benefits will be gained only if valued and supported and nurtured through thoughtful social policy.
I’m not sure that enchantment is allowed into the mainstream, except perhaps in the controlled ‘suspension of disbelief’ in books and movies such as Harry Potter and The Lord of the Rings. Anyone who believes that magic is possible gets very short shrift. What we do see is enchantment controlled on the fringes of the mainstream, with Christian belief in miracles and the eternal soul, and also with New Age beliefs like astrology. Part of the culture war is over this problem of enchantment, that the mainstream insists it is meaningless and wacky, but many people find that it resonates with their experience, so there is a loss of faith in mainstream values around science and progress.