The Forest Fires of Amnesia

In the first part of Don Quixote, one of his misadventures involves mistaking wineskins for giants and slashing them with his sword. These wineskins, in what is often called “the first modern novel,” have a farflung ancestry: an ancient Roman novel by Apuleius, The Golden Ass. In that book, the protagonist comes home drunk and slashes three assailants, which turn out to be inflated goatskins. He finds out through an elaborate hoax carried out by the townspeople the next morning, a mock trial during which he thinks he has indeed committed murder. When he is confronted with his “victims,” everyone erupts in guffaws—the hoax has been part of a yearly festival “in honor of the god Risus,” the god of laughter. (Something of this hoax in Apuleius finds its way into the series of warmhearted, collaborative hoaxes that surround Don Quixote in Part II, courtesy of a sympathetic Duke and Duchess.)