el ingenioso hidalgo don quixote de la mancha

After defeating the Ottoman Empire in the battle of Lepanto (and losing the use of his left hand, becoming “the one-handed of Lepanto”), Cervantes was captured and held for ransom in Algiers. He also served the Spanish crown in adventures that he would later include in the novel. Open-minded, well-travelled, and very well-educated, Cervantes was, like Don Quixote himself, an avid reader. The misguided hero is actually a man fighting against his own limitations to become who he dreams to be. However, Cervantes was also using Don Quixote’s insanity to probe the eternal debate between free will and fate. “His brain’s dried up” due to his reading, and he is unable to separate reality from fiction, a trait that was appreciated at the time as funny. It is a book about books, reading, writing, idealism vs. By imitating his admired literary heroes, he finds new meaning in his life: aiding damsels in distress, battling giants and righting wrongs… mostly in his own head.īut Don Quixote is much more. He becomes a knight-errant himself: Don Quixote de la Mancha. Published in two parts in 16, this is the story of Alonso Quijano, a 16th-century Spanish hidalgo, a noble, who is so passionate about reading that he leaves home in search of his own chivalrous adventures. This line, arguably the most famous in the history of Spanish literature, is the opening of The Ingenious Nobleman Don Quixote of La Mancha by Miguel de Cervantes, the first modern novel. Portrait of Miguel de Cervantes y Saavedra (1547-1615) is commonly attributed to Juan de Jáuregui, yet no portrait of Cervantes has ever been authenticated.

El ingenioso hidalgo don quixote de la mancha