Don Quixote (El ingenioso hidalgo don Quixote de la Mancha), Part I (1605)
An hidalgo maddened by chivalric romances sets out as a knight-errant with his squire Sancho Panza
Literature · Novelists
Miguel de Cervantes
1547–1616 · Spanish
Spanish Golden Age (Siglo de Oro); picaresque and chivalric parody
Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra was the greatest writer of the Spanish Golden Age and the author of Don Quixote (1605 and 1615), widely regarded as the first modern novel. A soldier wounded at Lepanto and a captive in Algiers, he also wrote plays, poetry and the Exemplary Novels. Spanish is often called "the language of Cervantes".
How to spot them
- ▸Don Quixote, Sancho Panza, Rocinante, Dulcinea del Toboso and tilting at windmills
- ▸'El manco de Lepanto': lost the use of his left hand at the Battle of Lepanto (1571)
- ▸Five years a captive in Algiers after capture by Barbary corsairs (1575–1580)
- ▸Died in Madrid in April 1616, days apart from Shakespeare; 23 April is World Book Day
- ▸Born in Alcalá de Henares; namesake of the Instituto Cervantes and the Cervantes Prize
Key works
Don Quixote, Part II (1615)
Sequel in which characters have read Part I; written partly in response to Avellaneda's spurious 1614 continuation
Exemplary Novels (Novelas ejemplares) (1613)
Twelve short novels, including Rinconete y Cortadillo and The Dialogue of the Dogs
La Galatea (1585)
His first published book, a pastoral romance
Journey to Parnassus (Viaje del Parnaso) (1614)
Long satirical poem reviewing the poets of his day
The Travails of Persiles and Sigismunda (Los trabajos de Persiles y Sigismunda) (1617 (posthumous))
Byzantine-style romance of travel and adventure, finished just before his death
Key ideas
- Don Quixote parodies chivalric romance while exploring illusion versus reality, and plays with its own fictionality through the invented Moorish chronicler Cide Hamete Benengeli
- The contrast of idealist knight and earthy squire became a lasting literary archetype
- Gave English the adjective 'quixotic' and the phrase 'tilting at windmills'
Quick-fire facts
- •Wounded aboard the Marquesa at the Battle of Lepanto in 1571, he lost the use of his left hand
- •Captured by Barbary pirates in 1575, he spent five years in Algiers, attempting escape several times before being ransomed in 1580
- •Worked as a commissary for the Spanish Armada and as a tax collector, and was jailed in Seville, where Don Quixote was supposedly conceived
- •Don Quixote's horse is Rocinante; Sancho's donkey is usually called Dapple (el rucio)
- •Don Quixote's own name for himself is 'the Knight of the Sorrowful Countenance' (el Caballero de la Triste Figura)
- •He died in Madrid on 22 April 1616 and was buried on 23 April; bones thought to be his were identified in the Convent of the Trinitarians, Madrid, in 2015
- •The Premio Miguel de Cervantes, the most prestigious prize for Spanish-language literature, has been awarded since 1976
- •Richard Strauss wrote a tone poem Don Quixote (1897); the musical Man of La Mancha is based on the novel
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Sources
- Jean Canavaggio — Cervantes: A Biography
- Edith Grossman — Don Quixote (trans. Edith Grossman), introduction by Harold Bloom