Level A1 · Chapter 9
Dulcinea of El Toboso
The knight is missing a lady. He picks a farm girl who knows nothing about him, and gives her a new name.
What you will learn
- Talk about your daily routine: when you get up, how you wash, how you get dressed.
- Say what someone is called, and what you are called.
- Recognise the little se that sits in front of so many Spanish verbs.
Before you read
Nearly every verb in this text has a two-letter word stuck in front of it: se. It is not a typo. It is today's lesson.The story in easy Spanish
Don Quijote se levanta muy temprano. Se lava, se viste y baja al corral.
Don Quixote gets up very early. He washes, gets dressed and goes down to the yard.
Todo está listo: las armas, la celada, el caballo y el nombre. Pero falta una cosa.
Everything is ready: the armour, the helmet, the horse and the name. But one thing is missing.
Un caballero andante se enamora siempre de una dama. Sin dama no hay caballero.
A knight-errant always falls in love with a lady. Without a lady there is no knight.
En un pueblo cerca de allí vive una labradora muy guapa. Se llama Aldonza Lorenzo.
In a village nearby there lives a very pretty farm girl. Her name is Aldonza Lorenzo.
Ella nunca habla con el hidalgo. Él se acuerda de ella y decide una cosa.
She never speaks to the gentleman. He remembers her and decides one thing.
Aldonza es su dama. Pero una dama no se llama Aldonza. Necesita un nombre musical.
Aldonza is his lady. But a lady is not called Aldonza. She needs a musical name.
Desde hoy se llama Dulcinea del Toboso, porque es del Toboso.
From today she is called Dulcinea of El Toboso, because she is from El Toboso.
Ella, claro, nunca oye ese nombre. Don Quijote se queda muy contento con su idea.
She, of course, never hears that name. Don Quixote is left very pleased with his idea.
Vocabulary
The daily routine
- levantarse
- to get up
- lavarse
- to wash (oneself)
- vestirse
- to get dressed
- llamarse
- to be called
- quedarse
- to stay, to be left
The knight's love
- la dama
- the lady
- enamorarse de
- to fall in love with
- acordarse de
- to remember
- guapo, guapa
- good-looking, pretty
People and place
- la labradora
- the farm girl
- el corral
- the yard
- listo, lista
- ready
Reflexive verbs and se
Don Quijote se levanta muy temprano.
Se lava, se viste y baja al corral.
Se llama Aldonza Lorenzo.
In se levanta, se lava, se viste, the action comes back to the person doing it: he raises himself, washes himself, dresses himself. In baja al corral it comes back to nobody: he just goes down.
The pronoun changes with the person, and it stands in front of the verb as a separate word:
| levantarse: to get up | |
|---|---|
| yo me levanto | nosotros nos levantamos |
| tú te levantas | vosotros os levantáis |
| él/ella se levanta | ellos/ellas se levantan |
In the infinitive the pronoun sticks on the end instead: levantarse, llamarse, enamorarse. That is why the dictionary lists them that way. The -se is part of the entry, not an extra.
Llamarse is the most useful of the lot: it is the ordinary way to give a name. Me llamo Alonso. ¿Cómo te llamas?, literally "I call myself Alonso. How do you call yourself?"
Courtly love
In the books Don Quixote reads, a knight without a lady is only half a knight. The lady is not there to be married: she is there to give the blows a meaning. The knight fights "in her name", sends her the giants he has beaten, and sighs at a distance. The greater the distance, the better.
This convention is called amor cortés, courtly love, and by 1605 it was already two centuries out of fashion, which is exactly why Cervantes uses it. Aldonza Lorenzo is a perfect and ridiculous choice at once: Don Quixote has seen her about four times, she has no idea he exists, and so the love runs no risk whatever of being spoiled by a conversation.
Cervantes in the original · «Vino a llamarla Dulcinea del Toboso…»
Vino a llamarla Dulcinea del Toboso, porque era natural del Toboso: nombre, a su parecer, músico y peregrino y significativo.
He came to call her Dulcinea of El Toboso, because she was a native of El Toboso: a name, in his view, musical, uncommon and meaningful.
The whole chapter is built on llamarse: the horse is called Rocinante, the gentleman Don Quixote, the farm girl Dulcinea. Cervantes writes llamarla, with the pronoun stuck on the end of the infinitive, the same trick you have just seen in llamarse.