Continuing from Episode 8 in this series, today’s topic is Part 2 of Miguel de Cervantes’ Don Quixote (1615). 

A Spanish aristocrat, imitating the wandering knights of medieval romance, undertakes his continuing adventures. Along the way, he meets those who have read an unauthorized continuation of Part 1 recounting false adventures, and takes pains to refute them. Finally Quixote returns to his village, repudiates his beliefs in chivalric romances, and dies -- prompting us to recognize that novels, unlike romances, end in any way that the novelist determines.