An interpretation of the great novel Don Quixote through the lens of René Girard’s mimetic theory. In mimetic theory, human love is always mediated by a third person who also works as a motivator.
In the section of the famous novel that Echevarria interprets, Don Quixote interrupts a “reading” of stories by young people that was going to culminate in marriage. The interruption of the reading allows the court-like scene of reconciliations among the various couples and all restitutions which were made, as a reaffirmation of new social forms. Cervantes’ point is that mental life is made up of levels that mirror and distort each other.
Watch the professor’s interpretation of Cervantes’ Don Quixote