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Definition of Dramatic Irony
Dramatic irony is a plot device often used in theater, literature, film, and television to highlight the difference between a character's understanding of a given situation, and that of the... read full definition
Dramatic irony is a plot device often used in theater, literature, film, and television to highlight the difference between a character's understanding of a given... read full definition
Dramatic irony is a plot device often used in theater, literature, film, and television to highlight the difference between a... read full definition
Part 1, Chapter 2
Explanation and Analysis—High-Born Maidens:
Cervantes employs dramatic irony repeatedly throughout the novel in order to highlight the gulf between Don Quixote’s expectations and reality. Often, he misinterprets the events occurring around him as a result of his obsession with chivalric literature, though the reader is able to perceive his absurd errors and mistakes. When, at the end of his first full day as an adventurer, he approaches an inn that he perceives as a castle, he encounters a group of women and believes that they are aristocratic maidens:
‘Flee not, nor fear the least affront; for in the order of knighthood which I profess it neither belongs nor behoves to offer any such, much less to high-born maidens, as your presence testifies you to be.’
The girls had been peering at him and trying to make out his face, hidden behind the ill-made visor; but when they heard themselves called maidens, a term so much at odds with their profession, they couldn’t contain their laughter [...]
Here, as at many other points in the novel, Don Quixote fails to see what is obvious to the reader. In the inn, he reassures the “high-born maidens” that he means them no harm nor insult. His strange manner and excessive formality provoke the women into laughter. The reader, unlike Don Quixote, understands that these women are not upper class maidens, as Don Quixote believes. Rather, they are likely sex workers who spend their evenings working at the inn. The gap between Don Quixote’s perception and the reader's is the source of a good deal of the novel’s humor.
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