Ideal

"With these words and phrases the poor gentleman lost his mind, and he spent sleepless nights trying to understand them and extract their meaning, which Aristotle himself, if he came back to life for only that purpose, would not have been able to decipher or understand."
-Don Quixote, Miguel de Cervantes, pg. 20
Anyway, this kind of touches on two topics. The intentions or meaning of the author, which according to class discussion, means nothing to the critic and, according to Cervantes, is inscrutable, and the ideal reader, ideal insomnia thing.
Ideal reader and ideal insomnia. I've been musing over this particular phrase for the last several hours and am still somewhat stuck. The ideal reader and his or her ideal insomnia where the person can never "sleep and, perchance, to dream?" Sorry, had to get it out of my system. Anyway the idea of the critic as an insomniac was simply too quirky for me to pass up. Our dear Don gets too caught up in the meaning behind Feliciano de Silva's work and looses his objectivity and his mind all in one go. Well, at least he had the insomnia part down.
I think I'll quit there because I'm not making much sense to myself.