To contrast: that where Don Quixote’s Spiritual Vision occurs in the depths of the earth in the Cave of Montesino, Sancho Panza’s Vision occurs high over the earth, as he supposes, on the enchanted wooden horse Clavileño.
“Sancho, as you would have us believe what you saw in heaven, I require you to believe me as to what I saw in the Cave of Montessinos. I say now more.” (The contrast of earth and air, master and servant, argues for the artful construction of the book, particularly Part II.)
To grow obsessive over: the color green in Don Quixote, particularly Part II.
The observation that Don Quixote, without being a manifestly pious book, has a much more pro-Christian attitude than, say, the works of Shakespeare, which feel more skeptical and secular. One can certainly see in Don Quixote, knight errant, believer in enchantments, scorned and beaten for his beliefs, Don Quixote the Christian believer in miracles.
This passage in particular brought that out for me recently (Don Quixote speaking):
“I conjure thee, phantom, or whatever thou art, tell me what thou art and what thou wouldst with me. If thou art a soul in torment, say so, and all that my powers can do I will do for thee; for I am a Catholic Christian and love to do good to all the world, and to this end I have embraced the order of knight-errantry to which I belong, the provinence of which extends to doing good even to souls in purgatory.”
Tristram Shandy, too, though bawdy, seems also a lot more Christian in its underlying assumptions than does Shakespeare.
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