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Miguel
de Cervantes Saavedra
1564-1616
Cervantes is considered to be one of the greatest figures of both Spanish and world literature. He was born in Alcala in 1564, the same year as Shakespeare, to an unsuccessful physician who moved from city to city to improve his fortune. Cervantes received little formal education and early in his life found employment in a cardinal's home in Rome. Later he became a soldier, distinguished himself in the Battle of Lepanto where he was wounded, leaving his left hand permanently crippled.
In 1575, he sailed for Spain, was captured by pirates, sold into slavery, and ransomed in 1580. It was during this period that he began writing his first verses. After returning to Madrid, Cervantes married and worked at various jobs including that of tax collector, collecting grain and oil for the Spanish Armada. He often got in trouble over illegal seizures of property and irregularities in his accounts and landed in jail. These period of relative quiet gave him an opportunity to develop his ideas for Don Quixote, the story which had been in the back of his mind for years and which he began writing in 1602.
Don Quixote was written to mock the popular novels of chivalry which glorified the ideals of courtesy, constancy, bravery and loyalty. Their heroine was usually a young, unmarried woman. Their stereotypical plots were unreal and extravagant, made up of the hero's battles with other knights, beasts, giants, and magicians. The hero always won the battles and claimed the love of the maiden on whose behalf he was fighting. Don Quixote is also a picaresque novel, a biography of a wandering rogue (picaro) who undertakes a series of adventures.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge said that Don Quixote was designed "to represent personified the two elements of human nature: Soul and sense, poetry and prose." There are some irregularities in style, but the characters are carefully drown. They include the knight-errant, Don Quixote, his assistant, Sancho Panza, Rozinante, the horse, and Dulcinea, the lady. The work has come to mean more than Cervantes intended and carries a universal message. It has been translated into nearly all languages. Once critic said, "Cervantes ranks with Shakespeare and Homer as a citizen of the world, a man of all times an countries, and Don Quixote, with Hamlet and the Iliad, belongs to universal literature. Its influence can never be traced even approximately, but one can confidently say that no other novel has so served to make the world better." From the novel, the word quixotic has come into the English language, meaning like or befitting Don Quixote--extravagantly chivalrous or romantically idealistic, visionary, impractical.
Cervantes died in Madrid in 1616, the same year as Shakespeare. The French artist Gustave Doré created striking black and white illustrations of scenes from the novel, one of the most famous of which is Don Quixote in His Library.
Cervantes Links
* indicates site is in Spanish
- Biography of Cervantes*
- Cervantes' Complete Works*
- Cervantes Project
- Cervantes Society of America
- Miguel
de Cervantes Saavedra*
Don Quixote
La Mancha- Comarca de La Mancha Toledana: Consuegra*
- Consuegra*
- Don Quixote Sites in La Mancha
- La Mancha en la Red*
- La Mancha Province
- The Route of Don Quixote
- Rutas y Lugare de la Mancha*
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