Even those who have never read the Cervantes masterpiece are familiar with the image of its titular hero, Don Quixote, tilting at a windmill he believes is a giant. While this juxtaposition of perception and reality—the ambiguity of truth—is an issue usually associated with Don Quixote, Eric Mayer believes it is present throughout Cervantes' work. "I plan to examine how and why his characters come to hold certain things as true even though the reader sees no basis for this knowledge to be accepted as true," Eric says. "What used to be known as truth suddenly depends on who you are."

Eric is analyzing a collection of Cervantes' short stories called Novelas Ejemplares (Exemplary Novels). "La Gitanilla" (The Little Gypsy) provides "a prime example of how deft Cervantes was at creating entertaining stories oriented toward greater social and philosophical themes," he says. In a narrative not unusual for the time, the title character, Preciosa, is revealed at the end of the tale to be the daughter of the town councilman. An old gypsy says she kidnapped the infant, now a grown woman, and reveals her true identity.

Traditional readings of this story accept the revelation, which neatly ties up all the story's narrative threads. Eric asks a further question: "Throughout the story, the gypsies are manipulating the townspeople, telling tall tales, and feeding their voracious appetite for anything having to do with magic. Why should we suddenly accept the gypsies as bearers of truth, when we've been told by the author not to trust the gypsies from the very start?"

Eric thinks Cervantes is saying that "people will frequently subordinate what might be true to what their personal needs are"—in "La Gitanilla," for example, the revelation makes everybody happy: from Preciosa, to the gypsies, to the town councilman and his wife. "I'm really appreciating how sophisticated and modern Cervantes was," Eric says.

The other stories offer numerous instances when "the narrator's voice suddenly disappears at moments when we'd like to have key information," Eric says. "Instead, we're left with different characters' ideas of what they take to be true."

In creating such situations, Cervantes not only created fascinating literature, he also reflected the skeptical movement that was changing European intellectual life during his time, Eric says. "He dramatizes the types of questions being asked by skeptical thinkers." Doing so in novels, rather than polemical tracts, was far safer in the climate of counterreformation Spain, which was hostile to any thinking at odds with Catholicism.

Eric came to his graduate work at UCLA by a route almost as circuitous as Don Quixote's travels. As an undergraduate at UC Irvine, he had a double major in economics and political science. He reasoned that he was good with numbers, and both subjects had social significance. "It was not a very well-informed approach to choosing a major," Eric says. "I'm the first person in the family to go to the university so it was hard to get advice."

A crucial turning point came when he spent his last undergraduate year at the University of Granada in Spain, absorbing the culture, history, and literature at the same time he completed social science requirements. When he came home, he got his master's degree in Latin American Studies at UC San Diego and planned to continue for a doctorate in Hispanic languages and literatures at UCLA's Department of Spanish and Portuguese.

But that was before he gave Don Quixote "a very close and steady reading" the summer before he began his doctoral studies. By the time classes began, he knew he would study Cervantes, and by the end of the first year, he had found a perfect adviser in Professor Carroll B. Johnson. "He's very much a friend as well as a mentor," Eric says. "I can't overstate how important his teaching has been to my approach to studying literature."

Professor Johnson says Eric is "one of those people who take in the existing scholarship and conventional wisdom, chew on it for a while, and then come up with something nobody had thought of." While Professor Johnson has a different view of "La Gitanilla," he says, "I have to say I find Eric's take on it convincing."

Eric has just completed the qualifying process for a doctoral degree, writing two papers that are essentially drafts of dissertation chapters as well as a prospectus for the finished work—more than 100 pages in all. He finds writing "a rewarding but difficult process. . . . You think you have your ideas so clearly formed, but when you start to put them on paper, they never look quite right. I have to go through numerous drafts of everything I do."

Nevertheless, Eric hopes to finish his dissertation by June, spend a year on fellowship studying at the National Library in Madrid, and then find a job that combines research and teaching. "I can't imagine finding a job better than one where I can read books that interest me and talk about them with students—and get paid for it."

While first-generation scholars are sometimes encouraged by family to pursue more pragmatic careers, Eric says, "My parents have never questioned my desire to go on and do an MA and PhD. Provided you find something you like and show passion for studying it, they're wholeheartedly supportive."

Published in Winter 2003, Graduate Quarterly