D O N Q U I X O T E A N D T H E L I A R 'S P A R A D O X 

EM I LY CERSONSKY 

" l A M L Y I N G . " IT M I G H T BE S A I D T H A T T H I S STATE M ENT IS, I M P L I C I T LY, T H E S I N G L E 

REAL T R U T H OF T H E FICT I O N - F O R M I N G A U T H O R , A N D ITS C O M P L I C A T I O N S ARE B O T H 

T H E E M B L E M A N D B A N E OF A L L N O V E L S . I N H I S EPIC DON QUIXOTE, M I G U E L DE CER-

V A N T E S E X P L O I T S T H E P R O B L E M OF M A K I N G LIES REAL BY I N T R I C A T E L Y W E A V I N G T O -

G E T H E R S U C H Dl SPA RATE E L E M E N T S AS A U T O B I O G R A P H Y A N D H I G H F A N T A S Y W I T H I N 

T H E U N R E L I A B L Y U N R E L I A B L E V O I C E S OF SEVERAL SUBJECTIVE S T O R Y T E L L E R S. A N D 

H I S C O N C L U S I O N , IT S E E M S , IS D O N Q U I X O T E H I M S E L F , A M A N W H O C O M B A T S T H E 

P R O T E A N S T R A N G E N E S S OF T H E W O R L D BY R E P L A C I N G IT W I T H A DELI BERATE REALITY 

OF H I S O W N . AT T H E CUSP OF T H E E U R O P E A N R E N A I S S A N C E , C E R V A N T E S ' D O N 

Q U I X O T E M A K E S T H E C H O I C E W H I C H W I L L BE CO ME A NECESSITY FOR P O S T - C A R T E S I A N 

T H I N K E R S , N A M E L Y , A P E R S O N A L D E T E R M I N A T I O N , A N A U T H O R S H I P OF " T H E REAL" 

I N A W O R L D W H E R E I N C O N S I S T E N C I E S A N D S U B J E C T I V I T I E S C O N S T A N T L Y T H R E A T E N 

TO C H A I N T H E T R U T H - S E E K I N G M A N , L IKE P R O M E T H E U S , TO T H E C O N F U S I O N OF T H E 

LIAR'S P A R A D O X . 



"In a literary work, is reality secreted or is reality secreted? 

I n the late twentieth century two sociologists, Bruno 

Latour and Steve Woolgar, spent several months in an 

eventually Nobel Prize-winning biology laboratory in an at-

tempt to study how scientists' social interactions construct 

the reality which their science purports. The conclusion 

from the study was a seemingly simple one: "Reality is se-

creted."1 Their intended implication was that the fact of 

science is as much authored as fiction, but curiosity pro-

vokes the question, what i f this idea is applied to actual, ac-

knowledged fiction? I n a literary work, is reality secreted or 

is reality secreted} 

Miguel de Cervantes' Don Quixote de la Mancha is "the 

child of [his] brain" (15), a masterwork of fiction that laces 

together an unprecedented tapestry of these two aspects, 

both secreted and secreted reality. As such, it is an emblem 

of a great conundrum of humanity and the especial fasci-

nation of the European Renaissance, the problem of real-

ity and fiction. 

I . 

I think of cinemas, panoramic sleights 

With multitudes hent toward some flashing scene 

Never disclosed, but hastened to again, 

Foretold to other eyes on the same screen.11 

Centuries before Pirandello's Six Characters in Search of 

an Author, Don Quixote first introduced the problem of 

reality and fiction through ambiguity of authorship. Its 

narrative consists of a diagram-worthy lineage, beginning 

(or ending) with Cervantes himself and following to the 

book's narrator, who claims to learn his story from several 

sources but mostly (from P9 on) through the further 

remove of a Castilian translation of Cid Hamet ben 

Engeli's Moorish chronicle. It is worth noting, too, that al-

though Cervantes' Spanish text does exist, many an 

American reader is obliged to encounter it through an 

English translation.1 1 1 

Don Quixote's authorial lineage is porous as a sponge and 

saturated with equivocations that combine to drown out 

any concept of "truth." At the base is straightforward autho-

rial suspicion: although Ben Engeli is a self-designated 

"Arabian historiographer" and the narrator says that "histo-

rians ought to be precise, faithful, and unprejudiced," by 

the next page he, himself a historian, voices his own preju-

dice that "the author was an Arab, those of that nation being 

E L E M E N T S S P R I N G 06 



not a little addicted to lying" ( 6 8 - 6 9 ) . Ben Engeli, for his 

own part, readily admits his plethora of sources - including 

other historians, hearsay and his own opinions - further 

complicating the quest for an Ur-text of Don Quixote's 

story. The unreliability of the chronicle is enough to con-

fuse even the identities of the characters themselves: 

Sancho introduces himself as "Sancho Panza, am I , unless 

I was changed in the cradle, I mean the press" (663). 

Such interaction between different levels of the authorial 

lineage form the supreme complication of Don Quixote's 

telling. Ben Engeli's omniscience poses a problem because 

it is not merely a device of fiction; Sancho and Don Quixote 

are aware of his omniscience and wonder "how the histo-

rian who wrote [the book], could come to know" of "things 

which passed between [them] only" (483). Although this 

might lead the reader to posit "Ben Engeli" as a penname 

for Don Quixote (or Sancho), the fact that neither character 

gives any hint of authorship and further, that Ben Engeli at 

times states his own judgment and conjectures because he 

lacks knowledge of the story's details (cf. the name of 

"Barataria" on 753), proves otherwise. Thus, Ben Engeli's 

tale seems neither completely autobiography-worthy truth 

nor fully-fashioned fiction, and in Pascal's words, its imag-

ination is "all the more deceptive for not being invariably 

so."i v As the characters' consciousness "infiltrates" every 

level of authorship (except for that of the primary narrator), 

even Cervantes' identity is complicated by the priest's cita-

tion of h i m as "a great friend" whose Galatea is in Don 

Quixote's library (53). This meta-confusion gives us a first-

hand insight into how the inherent, inescapable blurring of 

fiction and reality in "foolish books" is enough to instigate 

the madness of that "unhappy gentleman," Don Quixote 

(262). Further, it proves problematic for us as well, because 

though we "cannot persuade [ourselves] it is a true story: 

and i f it be a fiction, the author has erred against probabil-

ity: for it cannot be imagined, [...] there is something impos-

sible to i t " (321). As Pascal says, such fiction "would be an 

infallible criterion of truth i f it were infallibly that of lies. 

Since, however, it is usually false, it gives no indication of its 

quality, setting the same mark on true and false alike."v 

I I . 

Much madness is divinest sense 

To a discerning eye; 

Much sense the starkest madness. 

'T is the majority 

In this, as all, prevails. 

Assent, and you are sane; 

Demur,—you're straightway dangerous, 

And handled with a chain. Vl 

However we might believe his various authors, the deepest 

fissure of complication splits open when we address the au-

thorship of Don Quixote's self. Is he truly, unconsciously 

mad, the product of the "inventions and lies" and the "style 

and manner of his foolish books" (262)? Or is he genuinely 

sane and the author of his own mind, a knight whose "pro-

fession [...] requires [him] to understand everything" (204) , 

even what the seemingly-sane cannot understand? 

D O N Q U I X O T E A N D T H E L IAR'S P A R A D O X 



To claim Don Quixote as mad, we would require some con-

textual measure for sanity. Yet we can only call his madness 

relative - he is "but mad north-north-west" - for his Castle 

Ellsinore is peopled by characters of such questionable san-

ity that they must not only distrust "all that the enamoured 

poets tell [them] for truth" (300), but distrust their very 

selves. Cid Hamet avers that "the mockers [of Don Quixote] 

were as mad as the mocked; and that the duke and duchess 

were within two fingers' breadth of appearing to be mad 

themselves, since they took so much pains to make a jest of 

two fools" (919). Tom Cecial points out to Sampson 

Carrasco, "Don Quixote is mad and we think ourselves 

wise: he gets off sound and laughing, and your worship re-

mains sore and sorrowful. Now, pray, which is the greatest 

madman, he who is so because he cannot help it, or he who 

is so on purpose?" (560). 

I n such a world where all sense of sanity is relative, Don 

Quixote's only recourse is to create a system of sanity in 

which he can live himself; where reality is secreted, he se-

cretes his own reality. Though this may make h i m seem 

conventionally mad, his reality is of no more or less verity 

than the "reality" that is assumed by others, and indeed it 

may be worth more, as it at least allows Quixote to trust in 

something within the "Cave of Montesinos" that is the ap-

parent world. Unlike others, Don Quixote can claim that 

"the coherent discourse I made to myself, convinced me, 

that I was then and there the same person I am now here" 

and not some "empty and counterfeit illusion" (614). And 

unlike others who have "done amiss in suffering [them-

selves] to be carried away by the current of those, who take 

it for granted [chivalric stories] are not true" (564), Quixote 

at least chooses his own beliefs. 

Thus, Don Quixote forsakes the search for reality in favor 

of the creation of contentedness. He evades the "unex-

pected accidents" that "perpetually befall those who live in 

this miserable world" (824) by recasting them as "enchant-

ments." As a self-made knight, he is "able to penetrate into 

the designs of the enemy, to form stratagems, overcome 

difficulties, and prevent dangers which threaten: for all of 

these things are acts of the understanding" (338). When 

faced with adversity, he must merely turn to the self that he 

has created and say, " I n truth [the situation] is so frightful, 

that, were I not who I am, I should be afraid myself" (555). 

By the end of his story, Don Quixote's method of reality-

construction (Latour and Woolgar would call it "agonistic" 

activityv i i) has spread to others, including the duke and 

duchess, who, "having executed their design so ingeniously 

and happily," realize that "nothing real could have afforded 

them more pleasure" (703). In the end, the world's chosen 

reality becomes the "madness" of Don Quixote himself. 

Don Alvaro Tarfe, for one, negates the reality of his own self 

- he becomes "persuaded he must needs be enchanted" 

(932) - in favor of believing the self-asserted reality of Ben 

Engeli's Don Quixote. Further, Don Antonio admonishes 

Sampson Carrasco for "the injury [he has] done the whole 

world" in "endeavoring to restore to his senses the most di-

verting madman in i t . " By the end of Don Quixote, it might 

be said that the reader and even Cervantes are ready to pro-

claim with Don Antonio: "May Don Quixote never be recov-

ered!" v i i i (895). 

I I I . 

J no longer strive to strive towards such things 

(Why should the aged eagle stretch its wings?) 

Why should I mourn 

The vanished power of the usual reign ? i x 

Don Quixote is an emblematic work of the Renaissance be-

cause the agnostic method which facilitates Don Quixote's 

mad, self-created "reality" becomes the relief, liberation, 

and final recourse of an era which, in emerging from the 

medieval religious tradition, must discover a new opiate. 

Thus, Renaissance literature is marked by the intellectual-

ity of reality-construction, at first as a necessary remedy to 

the human being's inability to understand or derive certain 

happiness from the apparent "reality," and later as the only 

option when "reality" is defined by Descartes as defined 

solely by the human mind. 

ELEM ENTS : : S P R I N G 06 



Of any Renaissance literature, William Shakespeare's plays 

best represent the progression from the insufficiency of ap-

parent "reality" to a compensatory reality-construction. 

Richard I I ( i 595) x presents the king as at the mercy of his 

situation's supposed reality which he assumes is beyond 

his control. He tries i n the "Pomfret Castle soliloquy" (V.v) 

to make his "brain [...] the female to [his] soul" yet he gener-

ates only "still-breeding thoughts"; "no thought is con-

tented" because he fails to prepare a womb, a world in 

which to construct his mind. The "hard world" and its 

"rugged prison walls" still exist for h i m as fact, and they 

preclude self-mastery, leaving his thoughts only to "flatter 

themselves | That they are not the first of fortune's slaves." 

In King John (1596), Shakespeare implies a hope for 

Richard i f only he could attain it: cries grief-stricken 

Constance, " I am not mad; - I would to heaven I were! [...] 

too well, too well, I feel | The different plague of each 

calamity" (IILiv). I n Hamlet ( 1600), the prince partially ac-

tualizes this idea. Hamlet "put[s] an antic disposition on" 

(I.v), indeed, yet he fails to find relief in his madness-altered 

reality because he does not believe it. Still on his mind is the 

absolute of "is" ("To be, or not to be") that arms h i m against 

"outrageous fortune" and "the thousand natural shocks | 

That flesh is heir to" (III.i) only with death (an out for which 

King Richard ultimately opts).x l 

Shakespeare's great change of his characters' minds comes 

with King Lear (1605), where several characters set out to 

fight nature by their art of reality-construction. Here, "the 

excellent foppery of the world" and the "admirable evasion 

of whoremaster man" is acknowledged so that "fortune," 

which is "often the surfeit of our own behaviour," may no 

longer be allowed to excuse "villains by necessity; fools by 

heavenly compulsion" (I.ii). Lear appears mad as he first 

radically alters the custom of primogeniture and posthu-

mous inheritance and then, when the "reality" becomes 

that his premature-heiresses forsake h im, he has the satis-

faction of condemning them in an imaginary court of law. 

Edmund, for his part, seems not mad but devious in his " in-

vention" of a world where the gods might change the real-

ity of birthright and "stand up for bastards" (I.ii). Like Don 

Quixote's duke and duchess, Edmund consciously flouts 

the nonexistent rules of the universe to construct the real-

ity that he desires. Though Shakespeare is the final decider 

of their destiny, Lear and Edmund both strive to fare better 

along the path to tragedy by achieving not only self-con-

struction but world-construction. 

Through all of this, though, the question nags: what i f Don 

Quixote is ultimately right, and "art cannot exceed nature" 

(568)? What i f the secreted reality cannot be fully or whole-

heartedly replaced? Constance claims, " I have reason to be 

fond of grief" because it seems that "Grief fills the room up 

of my absent child, | Lies in his bed, walks up and down 

with me, | Puts on his pretty looks, repeats his words, | 

Remembers me of all his gracious parts, | Stuffs out his va-

cant garments with his form" (IILiv). Thus, self-inflicted 

"reason" yokes her to an insufficient "reality," almost iden-

tical to that of Jan Kochanowski in his Laments. 

Kochanowski, for his part, does attempt the agonistic ap-

proach by deifying and devoting himself to "Wisdom," yet 

such an approach leaves h i m unconsoled, and he is 

"hurled, like all the rest, from the topmost stair" ("Tren 9" ) . 

Yet i f he made the effort, why does his secreted reality fail? 

I V . 

Everything I say is a lie...except that...and that... 

and that, and that, andthatandthatandthat...and...x™ 

The failure of reality-construction is revealed in 

Kochanowski as it proceeds from the intrusion of the liar's 

paradox, the self-defeat of perpetual disbelief that Pascal 

cites in his criticism of skeptics.™1 Such is the problem that 

complicates the fictionality of Don Quixote both within the 

tangled lineage of authorship and the uncertainty of 

Quixote's madness, and such is the problem that makes 

such construction-attempts as Quixote's, Lear's, and 

Kochanowski's ultimately unsuccessful in achieving happi-

ness. At some point the rules set out by a self-constructed 

reality - a reality created i n deliberate disbelief of the appar-

ent "reality" - wi l l either be disbelieved themselves (in the 

case of Kochanowski) or wi l l be so fully believed that they 

D O N Q U I X O T E A N D T H E LIAR'S P A R A D O X 



trip the constructionist right back into slavery of an appar-

ent "reality." Like Don Quixote, the intellectual is brought 

into "so many disadventures" that he does "not know which 

is [his] right foot" (126) but that it is shackled to his self-cre-

ated fate. This outcome is the case for Lear, as his inheri-

tance-scheme backfires by his daughters' ingratitude and 

cruelty, and also for Don Quixote, as chivalry finally re-

quires h i m to surrender to Sampson Carrasco and end his 

career as a knight-errant. 

The failure of agnosticism leaves the Renaissance with one 

of its greatest quandaries. By the time of Descartes' "cogito," 

such declarations as Montaigne's "Nature always gives us 

happier laws than those we give ourselves" cannot be 

adopted as resolutions because no two views of nature (the 

apparent "reality") are the same. Man seems doomed to 

Jansenism's sentence of "subterranean conduct" regard-

less of whether he has "supercelestial thoughts" or no, be-

cause "[j]ustice and truth," the bases of happiness, "are two 

points so fine that our instruments are too blunt to touch 

them exactly. " X 1 V In short, reality-construction becomes 

not only a remedy but an inevitability. Kochanowski 

defines the problem in "Tren 1": "What is not vain, 

by God, in lives of men?" 

"In short, reality-construction 
becomes not only a remedy 

but an inevitability.77 

Yet the key to the Renaissance's resolution hides at the cen-

ter of this. After the melancholia of the intellectual agonis-

tic and after the failure of Panglossially-optimistic "reason, 

the sport of every w i n d , " x v there is faith and there is God. 

The difference between the Renaissance's choice of faith to 

that of the medieval tradition, though, is that faith cannot 

be taken on faith alone. Faith's obstacle is that, like Milton's 

Satan, we "novel, [...] monstrous, [...] chaotic, [...] paradoxi-

cal, [and] prodigious"x v l humans find that our "wonted 

pride" and "proud imaginations" persuade us that we can 

"seek | Our own good from ourselves." Our "[v]ain wisdom" 

excites the "[fallacious hope" that "[a]s [God provides] our 

darkness, cannot we his Light | Imitate when we please?" 

The snag is that we and our constructed world " i l l become 

this Throne" x v n of wisdom, and like Satan and 

Kochanowski, we soon tumble "from the topmost stair." 

The consequence of our prideful intellectuality is that we 

are left little better than melancholy Hamlet, saddled either 

with Satan's choice "rather than be less, [...] not to be at all" 

or the implied alternative - "to be." Yet how can we happily 

"be" when we cannot sustain an agonistic, when (in 

Wallace Stevens' words) we cannot "be one thing and be it 

long"? x v , r ' As Pascal wi l l tell us, we "must wager;" we must 

gamble on whether to stake our reality-construction in God 

and, concomitantly, on whether to have faith. Laid on the 

betting table are life's little trivialities: "the true and the 

good [...] [our] reason and [our] wi l l , [our] knowledge and 

[our] happiness."x i x 

In wagering for faith, we must realize that, because invisi-

ble faith trumps more tangible forms of salvation i n the 

post-Lutheran Renaissance, we are merely choosing an-

other agonistic; such a choice is inescapable, for "[c]ustom" 

- abidance to a created reality - "is our nature." Yet in this 

wager "there is an infinity of infinitely happy life to be 

won," and even i f we can never know truth, we can recog-

nize Don Quixote's claim that "where truth is, there God 

himself is, so far as truth is concerned" (489), and as Pascal 

adds, " i f men are capable of any truth this is i t . " x x What re-

mains, then, is to put this newly adopted reality of faith to 

the test and find whether it provides the happiness which 

eludes all other intellectual constructions. Are we "yet hap-

piest i f [we] seek | No happier state, and know to know no 

more"? x x l The resounding answer, at least in the literature 

of the Renaissance, is "Yes." 

The affirmation of a reality of faith comes from all quarters. 

Kochanowski finally asks himself "Why is your mind a 

E L E M E N T S S P R I N G 06 



burning candlewick | Wasting itself?" then consents to the 

reality that "[t]he Lord's ways are not ours. | Our task is sim-

ply to accord with them" and "try to live on | Consoled by 

changeless heaven's certainty" ("Tren 19 albo: Sen"). In 

King Lear, Gloster gives over his "proud wi l l " and believes 

his life has been saved by "the clearest gods, who make 

them honours | Of men's impossibilities" (IV. vi). With such 

reassurance, he then dies peacefully as his "flaw'd heart | 

'Twixt two extremes of passion, joy and grief, | Burst[s] smil-

ingly" (V.iii). Lear, for his part, finally dies calling "Look 

there, look there," leaving us to wonder whether he has 

seen truth or God or both, but unequivocally leaving us 

with a better "inheritance" in the recognition that he has 

had some spiritual vision (V.iii).™ 

Don Quixote, though, offers the paragon of affirmations. 

Sancho, who like so many other characters (fictional and 

otherwise) has been wooed to the trust of Don Quixote's 

"mad" reality, argues fervently with his master that "the 

greatest madness a man can commit in this life is to suffer 

himself to die, without [...] being brought to his end by any 

other hand than that of melancholy™1 1" (941)-

Unfortunately for Sancho, though, his pleas fall on 

changed ears. Don Quixote - now "Alonso Quixano" - re-

nounces his previous "folly" through "the mercy of God," 

(940) and dies " i n so composed and Christian a manner" 

that the notary does not recognize h i m for a knight-errant 

(943)-

Thus, choosing faith over his intellectual melancholy, Cid 

Hamet ben Engeli's "true and genuine Don Quixote" (944) 

exits the final world which he has created. With h i m departs 

the chance of innocently following an intellectual agonistic 

scheme of reality-construction. Yet what he bequeaths to us 

is a distinctly Renaissancian nuance in the tradition of 

faith; whether or not God's supremacy is the true secreted 

reality, insofar as secreted realities are our only recourse, it 

is still the most fulfilling. After all of our intellectual pur-

suits, we must "descend now therefore from this top | Of 

Speculation" and simply begin to "cultivate our 

gar dens.' , X X 1 V 

E N D N O T E S 

i Latour and Woolgar, 206. 
i i Crane, Hart. "Proem: To Brooklyn Bridge." The Complete 
Poems of Hart Crane: Centennial Edition. Ed. Marc Simon. 
New York: Liveright, 2001. 
i i i Such as that of Charles Jarvis, f rom whose edition I w i l l 
quote Don Quixote. 
v Ibid. [Italics are my own.] 
v i Dickinson, Emily. " X I . " Emily Dickinson: The Complete 
Poems. Boston: Little, Brown, 1924. Quoted f rom 
<http://www.bartleby.com/113/1011.html>. New York: 
Bartleby.com, 2000. 
v i i The "agonistic f ield" is where "reality is the consequence 
rather than the cause of this construction." p. 204. 
v i i i Is the translator speaking here merely about healing Don 
Quixote's sanity or f inding his character? The wordplay exists 
i n English, however i n Spanish the verb is sanar, which means 
"recover" exclusively i n the connotation of "healing" [not "f ind-
ing"] . Don Quijote de la Mancha. 
<http://www.intratext.com/IXT/ESL0027>. Intratext/Eulogos, 
2002. 
ix Eliot, T.S. "Ash Wednesday." Collected Poems: 1909-1962. 
New York: Harcourt Brace, 1991. 
x These dates are of the believed first performance. 
<http://wwwshakespeare-
online.com/keydates/playchron.html>. 
xi I am indebted i n the selection of these three plays to Stephen 
Greenblatt's essay "The Death of Hamnet and the Making of 
Hamlet." 
x i i "Episode 15: Save the Children." Family Guy. 
x i i i Pascal, 34. 
xiv Montaigne, 107 and 135; Pascal, p. 12. 
xv Pascal, p. 10. 
xvi Pascal, p. 34. 
xvii Mi l ton, 21, 30, 37, 45, 37, and 42, respectively. 
xvii i Mil ton, p. 31. Stevens is quoted f r o m "The Comedian as the 
Letter C." 
xix Pascal, p. 123. 
xx Pascal, p. 125,123, and 124, respectively. 
xxi Mil ton, p. 106. 
xxii "With a sudden intensity, as i f she saw it clear for a second, 
she drew a line there, i n the centre. I t was done; it was finished. 
Yes, she thought, laying down her brush i n extreme fatigue, I 
have had my vision." Woolf, Virginia. To the Lighthouse. 
xxii i The Spanish word here is indeed "melancholia." Thus, we 
can legitimately relate the text to Albrecht Diirer's depiction of 
deep intellectual melancholy i n his woodcut "Melencolia I . " It is 
followed i n Diirer's sequence by "St. Jerome i n his Study," a 
work depicting the acceptance of the human lot through faith. 
xxiv Mil ton, 306. Voltaire,. 328. 

D O N Q U I X O T E A N D T H E L IAR'S P A R A D O X 

http://www.bartleby.com/113/1011.html
http://Bartleby.com
http://www.intratext.com/IXT/ESL0027
http://wwwshakespeare-online.com/keydates/playchron.html
http://wwwshakespeare-online.com/keydates/playchron.html


REFERENCES 
Cervantes, Miguel de. Don Quixote. Trans. Charles Jarvis. New 
York: Oxford University Press, 1992. 

Don Quijote de la Mancha.. 
<http://www.intratext.com/IXT/ESL0027>. Intratext/Eulogos, 
2002. 

Greenblatt, Stephen. "The Death of Hamnet and the Making of 
Hamlet." The New York Times Review of Books. 21 October 
2004, Vol. 51, No. 16. 

Latour and Woolgar. "The Social Construction of Scientific 
Facts." Readings i n the Philosophy of Science: From Positivism 
to Postmodernism. Ed. Theodore Schick. New York: McGraw-
H i l l , 1999. 

Milton, John. Paradise Lost. Ed. Merritt Y. Hughes. New York: 
Odyssey Press, 1962. 

Montaigne, Michel. Selections f r o m the Essays. Ed. and transl. 
Donald M . Frame. Arl ington Heights, 111.: Harlan Davidson, 
J973-

Pascal, Blaise. Pensees. Transl. A.J. Krailsheimer. New York: 
Penguin Putnam, 1995. 

Voltaire. Candide. The Portable Voltaire. Ed. Ben Ray Redman. 
New York: Penguin, 1977. 

E L E M E N T S : : S P R I N G 06 

http://www.intratext.com/IXT/ESL0027