Don Quixote

In a village of La Mancha, the name of which I have no desire to call to mind, there lived not long since one of those gentlemen that keep a lance in the lance-rack, an old buckler, a lean hack, and a greyhound for coursing.

Part I sallies and Part II meta-aware hoaxes satirize chivalric plot while inventing the modern novel's self-consciousness, closing in penitence and death, so plot scores 92.

By this time Don Quixote had recovered from his swoon; and in the same tone of voice in which he had called to his squire the day before when he lay stretched "in the vale of the stakes," he began calling to him now, "Sancho, my friend, Sancho, my son."

Don Quixote the sublime madman, Sancho the earthy squire, Dulcinea unseen, and Cide Hamete Benengeli became permanent literary types, so cast scores 97.

The history relates that the outcry Don Quixote, the curate, and the barber heard came from the niece and the housekeeper exclaiming to Sancho, who was striving to force his way in to see Don Quixote while they held the door against him.

Two parts and 126 chapters of episodic misadventures and interpolated tales demand patience despite early windmills, so pace scores 75.

In a village of La Mancha, the name of which I have no desire to call to mind, there lived not long since one of those gentlemen that keep a lance in the lance-rack, an old buckler, a lean hack, and a greyhound for coursing.

Cervantes's ironic warmth balances high style with Sancho's proverbs; the famous withholding and hidalgo portrait carry instant myth, so prose scores 90.

that most certainly they were windmills and not giants he was going to attack. He, however, was so positive they were giants that he neither heard the cries of Sancho, nor perceived, near as he was, what they were, but made at them shouting, "Fly not, cowards and vile beings, for a single knight attacks you."

La Mancha's plains, inns mistaken for castles, and the chivalric library burned overlay Spain real and imagined on Amadis of Gaul, so world scores 91.

In a village of La Mancha, the name of which I have no desire to call to mind, there lived not long since one of those gentlemen that keep a lance in the lance-rack, an old buckler, a lean hack, and a greyhound for coursing.

Ch.I's famous withholding plus the hidalgo who reads chivalry till reason departs creates instant myth, so hook scores 94.

Cide Hamete Benengeli, in the Second Part of this history, and third sally of Don Quixote, says that the curate and the barber remained nearly a month without seeing him, lest they should recall or bring back to his recollection what had taken place.

Birth of the modern novel: unreliable narrator, metafiction, characters who read their own genre, Part II responding to Part I's publication, so innov scores 98.

I am no longer Don Quixote of La Mancha, but Alonso Quixano, whose way of life won for him the name of Good. Now am I the enemy of Amadis of Gaul and of the whole countless troop of his descendants; odious to me now are all the profane stories of knight-errantry.

Ch.LXXIV renunciation, will, and 'yielded up his spirit' with notarial witness against false resurrection—comedy ending in lucid death, so ending scores 90.