SOURCE: Friedman, Edward. “Reading Inscribed: Don Quixote and the Parameters of Fiction.” In On Cervantes: Essays for L. A. Murillo, edited by James A. Parr, pp. 63-84. Newark, Del.: Juan de la Cuesta, 1991.

In the following essay, Friedman discusses how in Don Quixote Cervantes explores the relationship between literature and life.

A blessing on Cide Hamete Benengeli, who has written the history of your great deeds, and a double blessing on that connoisseur who took the trouble of having it translated out of Arabic into our Castilian tongue for the universal entertainment of the people.

(II, 3, 438)

There comes a time in literary history in which those who create and those who partake of texts begin to presuppose the inseparability of literature and life. Writing and reading, two types of word processing, are no longer viewed as fringe activities but as part of the act of perception, as part...