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DULCINEA

"A knight errant without love entanglements would be like a tree without leaves or fruit, or a body without a soul"
(Cervantes 1.1, Raffel translation)

We never meet Dulcinea in Don Quixote.  She is a figment of his imagination.  Don Quixote believes the peasant girl Aldonza Lorenzo to be the Princess Dulcinea; yet he never speaks to her and only loves her from afar.

Dulcinea, however, plays an important role in Don Quixote as her presence is felt throughout the novel.  Every deed, every journey and every quest is made in her name.

Dulcinea is modeled in the tradition of the epic journey motif.  For Odysseus his Penelope, Aeneas his Latinia, Dante his Beatrice and Don Quixote his Dulcinea.  Cervantes mocks not only the tradition of courtly love but the entire genre of the epic where the masculine hero journeys forth to earn the love or capture the heart of a female figure who is always with him in thoughts, but remains unreachable until the end of the journey.

Since Dulcinea is an imaginary character, she is an important figure as the relationship between truth and fiction develops in Don Quixote.  In Volume Two Don Quixote and Sancho go in search of Dulcinea.   Sancho, knowing that Dulcinea is imaginary, points to the first peasant girl he comes across and claims her to be Dulcinea.  To his surprise, Don Quixote says that he sees her as a mere peasant and concludes that his enemies have laid a curse upon him--in his eyes Dulcinea has been transformed into a common wench.  Later, when the Don and Sancho meet the meddling Duke and Duchess who have read of the adventures of the Don and his squire, the Duchess is able to convince Sancho that the peasant girl really was Dulcinea and perhaps Sancho has fallen under the same spell that has been cast upon Don Quixote.  Fiction becomes fact and in Sancho's eyes, the lie has become reality

We, as readers, are momentarily convinced of Dulcinea's reality when Don Quixote returns from the Cave of Montesinos.  Don Quixote tells Sancho that within the cave he spoke to Dulcinea and for a moment, until we conclude that Don Quixote must have been dreaming, we are uncertain to the veracity of his story.

We believe that Don Quixote believes Dulcinea exists--or does he?  Even that is under speculation.  In 1.25, Don Quixote says to Sancho of Dulcinea/Aldonza, "For me, in the same way, it's enough to think and believe that your good Aldonza Lorenzo is beautiful and modest, and her ancestry doesn't make much difference either, because no one's going to come searching out her pedigree, in order to confer any titles on her, while as far as I'm concerned she's the loftiest princess in the whole world. . . . And so, to sum it all up, I perceive everything I say as absolutely true, and deficient in nothing whatever,and paint it all in my mind exactly as I want it to be, whether as to beauty or to nobility, so that Helen of Troy can't match her, and Lucretia can't come close, nor can any famous women in all history, whether Greek, Barbarian or Roman." 

Though Dulcinea is made of fiction, Don Quixote--the madman--recognizes Dulcinea as a creation; conversely in Volume Two, Sancho--the sane squire--is convinced of her reality.  Is Dulcinea a figure of truth or of imagination?

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