Part One, The Garden of Forking Paths, Pierre Menard, Author of Don Quixote Summary

Upon the death of Pierre Menard, the narrator goes through his manuscripts and makes notes of all the writings he has left behind. Among the visible works the narrator notes a symbolist sonnet, a monograph on the possibility of creating a new vocabulary, a monograph on connecting the ideas of very different writers, an article on eliminating the rook's pawns in chess, various translations, an examination of metric laws, and several opinion pieces. Among his less visible work, the narrator finds several chapters of Don Quixote that Menard has rewritten, using the same words and phrases as the original writer, Miguel de Cervantes.

The narrator was aware of the existence of these chapters before Menard's death because Menard corresponded...