ABSTRACT
While in ‘The Dialogue of the Dogs’, tropelía comes through the figure of a bewitching witch, in Don Quixote’s adventure in the Cave of Montesinos (Part 2, Chapters 22-4 of Don Quixote), it manifests itself as Don Quxiote’s response to Sancho Panza’s trick on him in Part 2, Chapter 10, and his account of what he experiences in his adventures in the cave can be regarded as an example of tropelía, through which Don Quixote takes his revenge for Sancho Panza’s trick on him. In this chapter, the tropelía that Don Quixote experiences in the cave will be discussed to unravel its destabilization of the binary opposites of inside / outside, real / unreal and life / death. A Lacanian reading of this cave episode is offered by Sullivan, but will be contested to show that Don Quixote’s utopian adventures and knight-errantry can be regarded as tropelía for creating a past for a better future.
