Why does Don Quixote believe inns are castles?

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Engraving of Miguel de Cervantes, shown with a mustache and beard, wearing a ruffled collar and cloak, based on works by Gregorio Ferro and Fernando Selma. — Miguel de Cervantes Miguel de Cervantes, engraving by E. Mackenzie after Gregorio Ferro and Fernando Selma; from *The Imperial Dictionary of Universal Biography* (1863).

Don Quixote believes that inns are castles because his mind has been "bemused" and overwhelmed by his obsessive reading of [chivalric romances]. These books, which were in literary vogue during the 17th century, depicted a world of knights-errant, heroic quests, and grand fortresses.123

As an aging country gentleman who decides to become a knight-errant himself, Don Quixote attempts to impose the idealized, adventurous reality of these stories onto the mundane Spanish countryside. Consequently, he suffers from delusions of grandeur that cause him to misinterpret ordinary locations and objects—such as mistaking an inn for a castle or a field of windmills for giants—to fit the narrative of the chivalric life he is determined to lead.13