Anthony Cascardi’s new study of Don Quixote expands on the model proposed by James Parr and others of the Cervantine novel as an anatomy of multiple genres and discourses. Where other studies explored the proliferation of literary modalities, Cascardi excavates the numerous forms of political discourse and characterizes the text as “prismatic” in the way it incorporates all available genres and theories concerning the ideal republic and paradigms of political reform. In Cascardi’s view, Cervantes interrogates the multiple forms of political theory available in order to offer a political third road, bridging the gap between the idealism of classical political philosophy’s contemplations of the ideal republic, and the utter pragmatics of Machiavellian thought, which viewed politics as a science and a set of skills to deal with and shape reality. Each chapter focuses on identifying the unrecognized political subtext of an iconic episode, and on tracing the connections to related genres of overtly political discourse.

Chapter 2 addresses the political subtext of the canon’s discourse on the role of literature in civic society and presents the entire discussion as a satiric but double-voiced critique of the inquisitorial figures who created the banned book index. Chapter 3 addresses the political subtext in episodes or speeches on the topics of justice, utopianism, and mythologies of Golden Ages, highlighting the episode of the braying magistrates. Chapter 4 continues to develop the model of fiction as a space that erases the boundary of theory and practice, focusing on the Arms vs. Letters speech — which prizes the political function of military leaders precisely at the historical moment when the balance of power has shifted in favor of bureaucrats. Chapter 5 highlights the ideological subtexts of the episodes with Clavileño the flying horse and the Cave of Montesinos, in conjunction with the politics of early modern travel writing.

Cervantes engages most directly with politics and governance during Sancho’s adventures on the “insula” of Barataria. Cascardi links this episode to early modern writings in the didactic genres of mirrors for princes and courtesy handbooks. Chapter 7 explores Don Quixote as the product of a specific moment in history, which experiences a significant evolution of the political, as focused not on the classic city-state model, but rather on the nascent nation-state. Chapter 8 explores the role of exemplarity in fiction and politics, citing the Prologue to the Novelas ejemplares. Cascardi highlights Cervantes’s exploration of the role of didactic fiction for forming values in the real world. The concluding chapter focuses on the tactics that Cervantes employs in order to raise uncomfortable questions about the relationship between theory and praxis. He asserts that Don Quixote models a new way of reading between the lines in fiction to discover covert commentaries, so that the novel can serve the same function as the “esoteric” tracts of Erasmus and skeptical philosophers.

Cascardi asserts that the paucity of previous work on the political dimension of this novel can be attributed to the fact that Cervantes addresses politics indirectly and via double-voice discourse. He alludes to David Castillo’s related paradigm of the “oblique” angle perspective as developed in (A)wry Views — but only in a footnote. For the most part, Cascardi gives previous political analyses of Don Quixote by literary scholars short shrift, omitting them entirely or relegating them to brief footnotes. Cascardi provides illuminating commentary on the overlooked influence of political philosophy upon Cervantes’s works, but his thesis would be strengthened by more extensive discussions of Castillo’s book and also of di Salvo’s work on mirrors for princes, as well as Osterc’s magisterial (and widely overlooked) materialist study, Pensamiento social y politico del “Quiote” (1963). In addition, the chapter on courtesy manuals would benefit from engagement with recent work by Felipe Ruan and Francisco Sánchez, and the sections on the political dimensions of mythology from more extensive dialogue with Greer and de Armas. Despite this caveat, the work offers a compelling exploration of Cervantes’s engagement with the Neoplatonic and Aristotelian theories concerning the role of fiction in the early modern public realm, and of the multiple forms of political discourse to be found throughout both volumes of Don Quixote.