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In the Second Part it is the spirit rather than the incidents of the

chivalry romances that is the subject of the burlesque Enchantments of

the sort travestied in those of Dulcinea and the Trifaldi and the cave of

Montesinos play a leading part in the later and inferior ro feature is caricatured in Don Quixote's blind

adoration of Dulcinea In the romances of chivalry love is either a mere

animalism or a fantastic idolatry Only a coarse-minded man would care to

make merry with the former, but to one of Cervantes' humour the latter

was naturally an attractive subject for ridicule Like everything else in

these roeration of the real sentiance is probably due to the influence

of those masters of hyperbole, the Provencal poets When a troubadour

professed his readiness to obey his lady in all things, he made it

incumbent upon the next comer, if he wished to avoid the imputation of

tameness and commonplace, to declare himself the slave of her will, which

the next was coer declaration; and so

expressions of devotion went on rising one above the other like biddings

at an auction, and a conventional language of gallantry and theory of

love ca that in time permeated the literature of Southern

Europe, and bore fruit, in one direction in the transcendental worship of

Beatrice and Laura, and in another in the grotesque idolatry which found

exponents in writers like Feliciano de Silva This is what Cervantes

deals with in Don Quixote's passion for Dulcinea, and in no instance has

he carried out the burlesque round, andof whose very existence