ABSTRACT
As Steven Hutchinson notes in his important study, Cervantine Journeys, 'Seldom in Cervantine criticism has there been any reflective acknowledgement or discussion of a quite extraordinary aspect of Cervantes's novelistic writings: the tendency of the narrative and its traveling protagonists to be drawn into world-like vortices.' 1 Hutchinson goes on to name a number of such worlds, from the cave of Montesinos and the Insula Barataria, which form the basis of his study of 'Quixotic Worlds', 2 to the islands of the Persiles and the community of rogues depicted in Rinconete y Cortadillo. To Hutchinson's list of such worlds might be added those with which this chapter is chiefly concerned: Palomeque's inn and the ducal castle. 3
