This experience was a turning point numerous references to the themes of freedom and captivity would later appear in Cervantes' work. During his return he was captured by pirates and was imprisoned in Algiers from 1575 to 1580. He was injured in the Battle of Lepanto (1571), losing the use of his left hand. After travelling to Italy in 1569 to serve in the household of a nobleman, he joined the Spanish Legion. The family finally settled in Madrid, where the young Cervantes received some early formal education. He fights giants that are simply windmills, rescues damsels who are simply whores, and courts Dulcinea del Toboso, who is not exactly a “lady.”Ĭervantes (1547–1616) was the son of an itinerant surgeon who struggled to maintain his practice and his family by travelling around Spain. Riding on his starved horse, Rocinante, and in the company of Sancho Panza (a fat peasant whom he takes for a squire), Don Quixote leaves on a journey in which he rewrites reality as a chivalrous utopia. The hero is a lean, elderly man who, impassioned by romantic reading, thinks himself a knight. Part I was published in 1605 as a burlesque of contemporary chivalric romances part 2 appeared in 1615 to counteract a plagiarized sequel. This masterpiece of world literature is considered to be the first modern novel. El ingenioso hidalgo Don Quijote de la Mancha ( Don Quixote), by Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, is rivalled only by the Bible for the number of languages into which it has been translated.
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