Part One Guide
1605. The knight rides out — and the world answers with windmills, inns, and beatings.
The shape of Part I
Fifty-two chapters, three sallies (outings), and a book-within-the-book: the story of the knight frames interpolated novellas, most famously "The Tale of Foolish Curiosity." The chapters below are the load-bearing ones; chapter numbers follow the Ormsby edition.
Chapters 1–8 — the first sally and the second
- Ch. 1. The hidalgo goes mad on books of chivalry, renames himself, his horse, and his lady. The premise of the entire novel in one chapter.
- Ch. 2–4. The first sally: the inn he takes for a castle, the dubbing ceremony at the innkeeper's mocking hands, the disastrous attempt to rescue the boy Andrés from his master Juan Haldudo. Quixote returns home beaten.
- Ch. 5. "I know who I am," he tells his neighbors, claiming he may be "not only those I have named, but all the Twelve Peers of France and even all the Nine Worthies."
- Ch. 6–7. The priest and the barber conduct the great scrutiny of the library, burning the romances of chivalry while saving Amadis of Gaul and a few others. See the knight-errant.
- Ch. 8. The windmills. Thirty or forty windmills become "thirty or more monstrous giants"; the lance catches a sail; knight and horse are flung. See the scene guide.
Chapters 9–27 — the road thickens
- Ch. 9. The great break: the narrative "stops" mid-battle with the Biscayan, and Cervantes announces he has found the rest in the Arabic manuscript of Cide Hamete Benengeli. See the manuscript.
- Ch. 10–11. Sancho joins; the goatherds' supper of acorns prompts the Golden Age speech — "Happy the age, happy the time…"
- Ch. 12–14. The shepherdess Marcela defends her freedom against the dead shepherd Grisóstomo's friends — one of the novel's early set-pieces on liberty.
- Ch. 15–17. The Yanguesan carriers beat them senseless; Juan Palomeque's inn becomes the scene of the wine-skins adventure, where Quixote slashes "the giant's" head — actually the wine-skins — and floods the room.
- Ch. 18. The flocks of sheep become two armies; Quixote charges, the shepherds stone him.
- Ch. 19. The corpse procession; Sancho names him the Knight of the Rueful Countenance (Caballero de la Triste Figura).
- Ch. 20–21. The fulling-hammers adventure and the "helmet" of Mambrino — a barber's brass basin, gleaming in the rain.
- Ch. 22. The galley slaves: Quixote frees them in the name of liberty; they stone him in thanks.
- Ch. 23–27. The Sierra Morena: Quixote does penance for Dulcinea like Amadis on the Poor Rock; Sancho rides to El Toboso with the letter.
Chapters 28–52 — the inn of convergences
- Ch. 28–36. Juan Palomeque's inn gathers the separated lovers — Dorotea, Cardenio, Luscinda, Don Fernando — and the company reads "The Tale of Foolish Curiosity" aloud.
- Ch. 37–42. Don Quixote's discourse on arms and letters; the captive's tale (Cervantes' own Algiers years bleeding into fiction); the wine-skins are avenged by a brawl.
- Ch. 43–46. The officers of the Holy Brotherhood arrive; Quixote, caged like a beast in an ox-cart, is carried home — "in delay there is danger" (ch. 46) spurring his wish to be off again.
- Ch. 47–52. The canon of Toledo debates the romances of chivalry with the priest; the goatherd's story of Leandra; the procession of the image of the Virgin; and the return to the village. Part I ends with epitaphs and the promise of a third sally.
Source notes
- Chapter summaries condensed from the Ormsby text (Project Gutenberg eBook #996); chapter numbering follows Ormsby.
- "I know who I am": Part I, ch. 5. "in delay there is danger": Part I, ch. 46.
- The "scrutiny" (donoso escrutinio): Part I, ch. 6.