Fiction: Robin Chapman's charming new novel, an imaginative extension of Cervantes's masterpiece, Don Quixote, is somewhat unique in the world of modern narrative.
The vast majority of contemporary fictional "homages" to Cervantes view his work as a precocious anticipation of postmodernist poetics in which a variety of narrative voices and a questioning of the relationship between literature and life dominate over considerations of plot. Not so Chapman. His aim, in both this and an earlier novel, The Duchess's Diary, is to recreate in a most genial fashion the tone and structure of Cervantes's art whilst retaining a sense of its playful teasing of the reader. Cervantes was no post-structuralist, retaining a firm belief in God as the anchor of the world, and correspondingly of the author, as the central focus of the literary text. So, while he may have created a plethora of narrators, translators, and editors who apparently contributed to the construction of the Quixote, the reader is never let forget that the true hand at work behind the text is that of a Renaissance genius displaying the full extent of his wit and erudition.
Sancho's Golden Age is a combination of the Quixote and Cervantes's earlier novella, The Dog's Colloquy, in which two mutts who have been granted the gift of speech proceed to dissect the sordid world of their 17th-century masters. Chapman draws on this by imagining a dialogue between Don Quixote's horse, Rocinante, and Sancho Panza's ass, Rucio. They narrate Sancho's adventures following the death of his master, and the upshot is a slapstick comedy which serves to shift the balance from the interpretation of Cervantes as a quasi-Derridean philosopher to an appreciation of him as a carnivalesque satirist. To say much more would be to give away the plot, but Chapman knows how to draw the threads of his story to a hilarious conclusion which is also, in its cosy marrying off of the various characters, something of a parody of Renaissance drama. This is not all, however, for anyone wishing to understand fully Cervantes's neo-Aristotelian approach to narrative will find in Chapman's novel such a clear and accessible account that he could just render the classic academic studies redundant.
Sancho's Golden Age By Robin Chapman Aris & Phillips, 159pp. £14.95