Las hipóstasis de Armida: Dorotea y Micomicona

Abstract

The fiction of Micomicona's seduction, employed to inspire Don Quixote to set out to conquer a kingdom, is in fact a trick to return him to the circumscribed space of his Manchegan village. Dorotea's deception, echoing that of Boiardo's Angelica, follows the model of the deception carried out by Armida in Tasso's Gerusalemme. The literary model and the use of such materials in the construction of a character are not unusual in Cervantes. But in this case it is the character herself, a reader of books of chivalry, who assumes her disguise and constructs her character, at the same time constructing herself, as both image and agent in the Quixotic universe.