Laura on Cervantes and Don Quixote

Miguel de Cervantes and Don Quixote (Laura Laudeman)

            Miguel de Cervantes was born in 1547 in Spain near Madrid. Today, he is regarded by many academics and critics as the greatest Spanish-language writer in history and one of the world’s greatest novelists. Cervantes is best-known for writing Don Quixote, a novel that is now recognized as a critical classic of the Western literary cannon. Don Quixote is considered the most influential novel of the Spanish Golden Age and became so widely popular that it has been translated into more languages than any other book, with the exception of the Bible. The novel often appears on lists of the greatest works of fiction ever published.

            Miguel de Cervantes grew up in relative poverty. His father was a barber-surgeon, a lower-middle class occupation at the time. As a young man, Cervantes was employed as a solider, and he was known for his fearlessness in battle. As a result of his daring, he suffered two severe abdominal wounds and mangled his left hand.

During this time he was captured by Turks and imprisoned for five years.

            Following his military career, Miguel de Cervantes published a pastoral romance, La Galatea (1585). This first attempt at a novel, however, was not terribly successful, and did not attract much notice. Cervantes also tried to succeed as a playwright. Theatre was a major form of entertainment in Golden Age Spain, and writing plays could prove to be lucrative if audiences liked your work. Cervantes did not find acclaim as a playwright either, though.

            After his initial lack of literary success, Cervantes took a job as a commissary for the Spanish Armada. This entailed collecting grain and other supplies from rural communities, who sometimes did not want to give up their resources. When Cervantes repeatedly failed to collect what he was supposed to, he was charged with mismanagement and put in prison. It was during this time, allegedly, that he conceived of and began writing Don Quixote.

            Don Quixote was first published in 1605. Centuries later, American literary critic Harold Bloom would call it “the first modern novel.” Don Quixote was meant to be a comic satire of the chivalric romances that were popular at the time.

With an episodic narrative structure, it relates the story of an elderly man who has read too many of these romances, losing his mind as a result. He assumes the identity of Don Quixote de la Mancha, a knight errant who seeks to right the world’s wrongs and exert justice on villains. He recruits a poor farmer, Sancho, to be his squire, and an old work horse becomes his trusty steed. Don Quixote transforms the realities of the world into analogues for his medieval fantasy: a simple inn is a castle, and prostitutes are high-born ladies of the court. He famously fights a windmill, imagining it to be a giant. He exhibits other strange behavior too, sometimes speaking in such elevated, flowery language that nobody understands him. Throughout the story, Don Quixote’s friends try to cure him of his madness by burning his books and otherwise discouraging his reading.

            One notable feature of Don Quixote is Cervantes’ suggestion that the events of the novel are true. He writes that some of the novel was transcribed from the “archives of La Mancha,” and that the rest of the text was translated from Arabic accounts of his adventures. The narrator alleges to have found manuscripts verifying the details of various episodes in Don Quixote. 

            Ten years after the original publication of Don Quixote, Cervantes published a second part to the novel. This additional text takes place a number of years after the first one, in a world in which every literate Spanish-speaking person has read the original novel, and Don Quixote is recognized when he goes out as somewhat of a celebrity. These two parts are now published together as one novel.

            Though it was originally conceived as and received by the public as a comic novel, Don Quixote has been interpreted in a number of different ways throughout the years— some have viewed it as a tragedy of idealism and as a critical social commentary. But regardless of how the novel is interpreted, it has left an indelible mark on global society and literature. The word “quixotic” has entered our lexicon to describe one who relentlessly pursues virtuous ideals to the point of impracticality and foolishness. The phrase “tilting at windmills,” too, has become common parlance for one who battles imaginary or insignificant enemies.

Literature and popular culture abound with references to Cervantes’ masterpiece, also. Direct references to Don Quixote are made in other classic novels like The Three Musketeers and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. A myriad of adaptations of Don Quixote exist across all forms of media, including paintings by Picasso and Dali, as well as the 1965 stage musical The Man of La Mancha. Other novels, poetry, and plays written by Miguel de Cervantes have survived, but none of them come close to having the cultural impact that Don Quixote has had.