Part 8/14:
The speaker identifies his personal commitment to these ideals as a response to what he perceives as the end of the modern era. Modernism, postmodernism, and now what he terms “post-postmodernism” mark the decline of a worldview grounded in moral and artistic truth. The modern novel, beginning with Don Quixote, is characterized by satire and illusion—dreams of knighthood that clash with reality. Don Quixote fights windmills, mistaking them for dragons, embodying an ideology of romantic chivalry detached from real life.