Having just begun the Second Volume, I’ve a bit of a nag. In the First, Quixote returns home with Sancho, the Barber, and the Curate. At the beginning of the Second Volume, we are informed that the Barber and Curate leave Don Quixote to convalesce for a month. So far, so good. But, in that time the first volume is published and subsequently read widely by the people of Spain. And we know that there was translation of the First Volume from arabic. That’s quite an accelerated schedule!
There are a few possibilities:
One, I’m completely wrong. I missed some marker of time passing.
Two, the explanation is still to come, and it owes to some distortion on the part of Sanson.
Three, that all of Volume One is nothing but a creation of a Volume Two, that the Quixote of V. 2, has just now sprung into being. That Volume One is a pure fiction, in the “real” narrative of Volume Two.
Four, it’s an oversight of the author or printer (like the theft of Sancho’s donkey), yet it’s not noted by either Smollet or Grossman. This, I find improbable.
Five, Cervantes is having it both ways: since some fifteen years elapsed between writing Volumes One and Two for the author, but only one month for the characters (of course the history which forms Volume II would not be “written” until later by the book’s “author.”)
Six, see item “one” above.
