On reality and fiction in Don Quixote’s after-dinners. a study of chapter XI: «De lo que le sucedió a Don Quijote con unos cabreros»

Abstract

Don Quijote de la Mancha has become an endless source for studies about cooking and socio-gastronomy, as Carolyn Nadeau and Martín Morán’s works attest. But beyond this culinary interpretation, Cervantes’s «after-dinner prose» can be said to treasure something else, rather than the mere narrative contextualization of food and entertainment. One proof of this argument is that some of the most enjoyable and masterful dialogues of the book converge in the after-dinner scenario, where a close relationship is established between food and conversations, between food and literature. This work defends the idea that Cervantes integrated these elements in order to convey one of the central topics of his novel: the intrinsic relation between reality and fiction, or between life and books.