Abstract
Paradoxical narration is one of the main strategies of perturbatory narration, a new narratological concept which I developed for postmodern literary and filmic fiction. The novel of novels Don Quijote does not yet work with unreliable and empuzzling procedures, which are the other two techniques of perturbatory narration. But it offers an impressive use of sophisticated paradoxical techniques which transmit the same disorientating effects as contemporary perturbatory narrations. Cervantes’ novel sets up the reader by offering a very complex narrative situation which I compare to Wolfram’s Parzival, in order to shed light on the narrative instances coming from different cultural and religious backgrounds. Nevertheless, Don Quijote proves to be even more complex because it offers a pseudodiegetic structure which can be modelled in various ways. Another irritating device is the inscription of the author Cervantes into his own fiction by metalepsis and autotextual references. Really upsetting is the aporetical inclusion of the second part of the novel in itself. Furthermore, Don Quijote contains an early example of horizontal metalepsis and reflects its poetics of ambivalence and contradiction using several mises en abyme. Finally we have to ask why there are so many paradoxical devices in a novel quite often reduced to a simple parody of chivalric romance.
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