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Starting from René Gerard’s theory of mimetic desire, this article analyzes the complex relation existing among the main character (Don Quijote), his own desire (the desire to be himself), and a mediating entity which evolves throughout the entire novel, adapting to the evolution of the hidalgo. In the second part of Don Quijote, driven by readers and determined by the new status of the protagonist, this mediating entity approaches the subject so closely that they end up overlapping. This article, therefore, illustrates another possibility of mediation, deduced from Girard’s theoretical construction, as well as a possible new reading of the idea of desire in Cervantes’s novel. The extreme situation introduced and analyzed in this article is a third type of mediation in the novel, exemplified by the overlapping of subject and mediator, a triangulation that can only end with the complete annihilation of one of its components.
