Don Quixote Ch. 76: A Thousand Trifling Matters

Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

A Thousand Trifling Matters

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Summary

The translator prints Hamete Benengeli's margin note doubting the Montesinos cave: Quixote would not lie, yet the adventure passes reasonable bounds, so the author writes it without affirming or denying and leaves the reader to decide.

On the road the scholar cousin counts four gains from the journey, including material for his books, the antiquity of cards from "patience and shuffle," and the source of the Guadiana. They pass a man hurrying with lances to the inn, miss the hermit's good wine, and hear Sancho mourn Camacho's wedding and Don Diego's table while they drink cheap water.

A velvet-clad page bound for the wars sings that he is off for want of pence, tells how place-hunters stripped him of liveries and bounty, and receives from Don Quixote a long speech on serving God, the king, honourable arms, and dying well. Sancho thinks a man who talks so wisely should not also report impossible cave absurdities.

At nightfall they reach the inn, which Quixote takes for a real inn rather than a castle, and he asks at once for the man with the arms promised to tell curious things tomorrow.

In this chapter: Terms Characters Key Quotes Modern Story

Why This Matters

Reading When the Story Doubts Itself

A history can print a hero's impossible adventure and attach a margin note saying the author cannot fully believe it. Hamete Benengeli calls the Montesinos cave apocryphal yet records it, while the road fills with book research, missed feasts, a page marching to war for want of pence, and an inn that leads to the next promise.

Notice when a narrative keeps going even after its own author withholds certification.

Coming Up in Chapter 77

Don Quixote cannot rest until the arms-bearer tells the braying adventure and the puppet-showman's tale he promised at the inn What follows unsettles everything settled here Don Quixote will not wait for the arms-bearer's tale and sifts barley for his beast until the man sits down with the cousin, page, Sancho, and landlord as audience and tells the braying adventure. A regidor loses an.

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Original text

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Chapter 76

A Thousand Trifling Matters

WHEREIN ARE RELATED A THOUSAND TRIFLING MATTERS, AS TRIVIAL AS THEY ARE NECESSARY TO THE RIGHT UNDERSTANDING OF THIS GREAT HISTORY He who translated this great history from the original written by its first author, Cide Hamete Benengeli, says that on coming to the chapter giving the adventures of the cave of Montesinos he found written on the margin of it, in Hamete’s own hand, these exact words: “I cannot convince or persuade myself that everything that is written in the preceding chapter could have precisely happened to the valiant Don Quixote; and for this reason, that all the adventures…

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Critical Thinking Exercise

10 minutes

Name the When the Author Won't Certify the Marvel Move

Re-read the chapter summary and write down where when the author won't certify the marvel first appears, who pays for it, and who benefits from keeping it going. Then write one sentence you could say to interrupt the pattern without shaming the person caught in it.

Consider:

•Separate the person's worth from the pattern's cost
•Notice who has power to stop or fuel the scene
•Ask what truth would require someone to give up

Journaling Prompt

Write about a time when you saw when the author won't certify the marvel in your own life. What finally made the pattern impossible to ignore?

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Summary