Phantom Pre-Texts and Fictional Authors: Sidi Hamid Benengeli, Don Quijote and the Metafictional Conventions of Chivalric Romances‪.‬

ONE Of THE MOST interesting aspects of 'Don Quijote, and one that most endears Cervantes' work to us at the beginning of the theoretically hip twenty-first century, is the simultaneous presence in the text of a fiction (the story of Don Quijote and Sancho and their adventures) and a metafiction (the story of the book itself, how it comes into existence and what its ontological status and concrete properties are). Chivalric romance has a well-defined metafictional tradition. Virtually all the books of chivalry recount the story of their own origins and how they came to be in the hands of the reader. The Castilian romances all purport to be the work of a trustworthy historian who has found a pre-existing manuscript written in a foreign language, which contains the fiction itself, which he then either translates himself or causes to be translated, and then presents to the reader in the reader's language.