The scrutiny of Don Quixote’s library is a comic inquest into the books blamed for his chivalric delusion—and a more discerning literary judgment than the household’s proposed bonfire suggests. While Don Quixote sleeps, the curate and the barber inspect his library at the urging of his niece and housekeeper. Their verdicts range from preservation to destruction and even editorial revision, making the scene both an attempted intervention in his life and a debate about what different kinds of books are worth.

Background and Entry into the Library

The scrutiny follows Don Quixote’s return home. The curate has heard from the peasant who brought him back about the nonsense Don Quixote spoke on the journey, and that account strengthens the curate’s resolve to act. The next day he summons his friend the barber, Master Nicholas, and goes to Don Quixote’s house. Don Quixote is still asleep, so the examination proceeds in his absence, with his niece and the housekeeper accompanying the visitors.

The room contains more than a hundred large, well-bound volumes as well as smaller books. The housekeeper immediately treats the collection as a supernatural danger: she fetches holy water and a sprinkler, asking the curate to protect the room from magicians who might take revenge for the books’ expulsion. Her fear gives physical form to the household’s conviction that the books have bewitched Don Quixote. The curate laughs at her simplicity, but he does not simply dismiss the problem. He asks the barber to hand him the books one by one, because some may not deserve the fire.

That distinction sets the terms of the episode. Don Quixote’s niece wants every volume thrown out of the window and burned in the yard; the housekeeper agrees, eager to begin the pile. The curate refuses to condemn the collection sight unseen, insisting at least on reading the titles. The planned purge becomes a sequence of separate judgments, in which fear of the books’ effects competes with attention to their literary merits.

The Chivalric Books on Trial

The first volume presented is the four books of Amadis of Gaul. The curate identifies it as the first book of chivalry printed in Spain and the source from which the others derive. Its foundational status makes it seem, by the curate’s initial reasoning, especially liable for the genre’s supposed harm. The barber counters that it is the best of its kind and deserves exceptional treatment. The curate accepts this argument and spares it for the present. The book that appears to bear the greatest responsibility for the genre’s influence is therefore also judged too distinguished to destroy.

The next title, Sergas de Esplandian, is identified as the lawful son of Amadis. Here the curate reverses the previous decision: the father’s merit, he says, cannot be credited to the son. He sends the volume out of the window to begin the bonfire pile, and the housekeeper carries out the order with satisfaction. In the contrast between these two books, the scrutiny makes its method plain: lineage and influence alone do not secure a book’s survival; each must answer for its own perceived quality.

The judgments remain mixed rather than categorical. Palmerin de Oliva is ordered to be burned, while Palmerin of England is preserved as a singular work. The curate praises its quality, its polished and clear language, and the way its speakers’ styles suit their characters. He also invokes the report that it was written by a wise and witty king of Portugal, and singles out the adventures at the Castle of Miraguarda as especially well contrived. Amadis of Gaul and Palmerin of England are thus granted reprieve for distinct reasons: one as the exceptional representative of its kind, the other for its craft and authority.

Don Belianis of Greece and its second, third, and fourth parts receive neither immediate pardon nor immediate execution. The curate judges them excessive in their affectations and proposes that they be purged of material such as the Castle of Fame before a later decision. Until they improve, the barber is to keep them at his house and allow no one to read them. The sentence is deliberately provisional: books can be confined, revised, and reconsidered rather than simply burned or acquitted.

Disposal, Exceptions, and the Work That Falls Free

The curate also distinguishes among books grouped by their subject matter. French romances, he argues, have lost much of their natural force through translation into Castilian. He proposes that such books be placed in a dry well until a later decision, while naming Bernardo del Carpio and Roncesvalles as exceptions that should be sent straight to the fire if they come into his hands. The barber accepts the curate’s judgments as sound and faithful, an assent that gives the curate’s literary authority practical force in the room.

The process then becomes more physical. Tiring of further examination, the barber tells the housekeeper to take the large books into the yard. She is delighted by the task and throws them out in batches of about eight. One slips from her grasp and falls at the barber’s feet. Its title is the History of the Famous Knight, Tirante el Blanco, and this accident interrupts the movement toward indiscriminate destruction: the barber picks it up to find out what it is, and the curate claims it as a treasure of enjoyment and recreation.

The curate praises the book’s lively particulars, including Don Kyrieleison of Montalvan and his brother Thomas, the knight Fonseca, Tirante’s fight with a mastiff, Placerdemivida’s wit, the widow Reposada’s intrigues, and the empress’s love for the squire Hipolito. He values its difference from other romances: its knights eat and sleep, die in their beds, and make their wills before dying. Those ordinary details make the book seem more convincing and entertaining to him than works that omit such everyday circumstances. His judgment is pointedly ambivalent, however. He calls the work the best book in the world by virtue of its style, yet jokes that its author deserves lifelong service in the galleys for deliberately composing such follies. The book survives because its very mixture of realism and extravagance gives it a distinctive literary life.

Poetry and the Limits of the Cure

The smaller volumes prompt a different question. The curate supposes that they are poetry rather than chivalry and identifies one as the Diana of Jorge de Montemayor. He initially distinguishes pastoral and poetic works from the books of chivalry, judging them entertaining and incapable of causing the same harm. The niece objects that, once cured of his knightly obsession, Don Quixote might take up shepherding in the woods and fields, or become a poet—a supposedly incurable and infectious affliction. Her protest extends the household’s effort beyond one delusion: any book that might inspire another imaginative life becomes suspect.

The curate partly accepts her concern but still refuses a blanket verdict. He proposes that the Diana should not be burned, while recommending the removal of the material about the sage Felicia and the magic water, along with almost all of its longer passages of verse. Its prose may remain, as may its distinction as the first book of its kind. This ending to the available scrutiny preserves the scene’s central tension: the household seeks to eliminate the books as a source of danger, while the curate repeatedly separates harmful or excessive elements from qualities he considers worth saving. The library is subjected to a cure by selection, restraint, and attempted correction—not simply by fire.