ABSTRACT
Robin Chapman's The Duchess's Diary is a good-spirited supplement to the quixotic canon, written not so much to ruffle feathers as to fill in gaps. In the spirit of Cervantes, Chapman includes a preface that explains that the narrative persona has found the manuscript of the diary of Dona Maria Isabel Echauri y Pradillo, Duchess of Caparroso, who records events that took place during the early months of 1616. In The Duchess's Diary, he amplifies the base by affording the lady the opportunity to deal with Cervantes's offensive delineation when, to her credit, she accentuates the brilliance and profundity of the second part. This is a new take on poetic licence and on the interplay of history and fiction that initiates and remains at the centre of the two parts of Don Quixote. In The Duchess's Diary, Robin Chapman concentrates on lacunae and on the act of writing as rewriting.
