The third major section of the story is partly a critical evaluation of Menard's Quixote, partly a panegyric of the man, and partly a theoretical reflection on the aesthetic lessons taught us by him. Panegyric and theoretical reflection are inextricably bound up with each other, however, and thus will be considered together below. Also, the third section is far and away the richest of the three, from a philosophical point of view, and so a fair amount of space will need to be devoted to it in order to do it justice. First, then, the narrator's critical assessment of Menard's magnum opus.

Having detailed how difficult it was to pull off the trick of writing a new Quixote at all, the narrator proceeds to argue that the new Quixote is aesthetically superior to the original. Menard's book is "more subtle" than Cervantes', for instance, because Menard doesn't...