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 Spanish
novelist, playwright, and poet, the creator of Don Quixote, the
most famous figure in Spanish literature. Although Cervantes' reputation
rests almost entirely on his portrait of the gaunt country gentleman,
El ingenioso hidalgo, his literary production was considerable.
Cervantes lived an unsettled life of hardship and adventure. He
was born in Alcalá de Henares, a town near Madrid, into a family
of the minor nobility. His father was a doctor and much of his childhood
Cervantes spent moving from town to town while his father sought
work. After studying in Madrid (1568-69), where his teacher was
the humanist Juan López de Hoyos, he went to Rome in the service
of Guilio Acquavita. In 1570 he became a soldier and took part in
the sea battle at Lepanto (1571), during which he received a wound
that permanently maimed his left hand. Cervantes was extremely proud
of his role in the famous victory and of the nickname he earned,
el manco de Lepanto.
In 1575 he set out with his brother Rodrigo on the galley El
Sol for Spain. The ship was captured by the Turks and the brothers
were taken to Algers as slaves. Cervantes spent five years as a
slave until his family could raise enough money to pay his ransom.
Cervantes was released in 1580, and after the return to Madrid he
held several temporary administrative post. In 1584 he married 18
years younger Catalina de Salazar y Palacios. During the next 20
years he led a nomadic existence, also working as a purchasing agent
for the Spanish Armada and a tax collector. He suffered a bankruptcy
and was imprisoned at least twice (1597 and 1602) because of fiscal
irregularities. Between the years 1596 and 1600 he lived primarily
in Seville. In 1606 Cervantes settled permanently in Madrid, where
he remained the rest of his life. He died on April 23, 1616.
 Cervantes
started his literary career in Andalusia in 1580. His first major
work was the GALATEA (1858), a pastoral romance. It received little
contemporary notice and Cervantes never wrote the continuation for
it, which he repeatedly promised. In his play EL TRATO DE ARGEL,
printed in 1784, he dealt with the life of Christian slaves in Algiers.
Aside from his plays, his most ambitious work in verse was VIAJE
DEL PARNASO (1614), an allegory which consists largely of a rather
tedious though good-natured reviews of contemporary poets. Cervantes
himself realized that he was deficient in poetic gifts, a judgment
confirmed by later generations.
For if he like a madman lived,
At least he like wise old died.
(Don Quixote epitaph)
Tradition maintains, that he wrote Don Quixote in prison
at Argamasilla in La Mancha. Cervantes' idea was to give a picture
of real life and manners and to express himself in clear language,
"in simple, honest, and well-measured words," as he stated in the
prologue to Part I of Don Quixote. The intrusion of everyday
speech into a literary context was acclaimed by the reading public.
The author stayed poor until 1605, when the first part of Don
Quixote appeared. Although it did not make Cervantes rich, it
brought him international appreciation as a man of letters. Cervantes
also wrote many plays, only two of which have survived, short novels,
and the second part of Don Quixote (1615).
"The truth lies in a man's dreams... perhaps in this unhappy
world of ours whose madness in better than a foolish sanity."
Don Quixote (part I; 1605; part II 1615) - Often called
the first modern novel, originally conceived as a comic satire against
the chivalric romances. However, Cervantes did not destroy the chivalric
ideal of the romances he rejected - he transfigured it. The work
has been seen as a veiled attack on the Catholic Church or on the
contemporary Spanish politics, or symbolizing the duality of the
Spanish character.
"Every one is as God made him and oftentimes a good deal worse."
 Neither
wholly tragedy nor wholly comedy Don Quixote gives a panoramic
view of the 17th-century Spanish society. Central characters are
the elderly, idealistic knight, who sets out on his old horse Rosinante
to seek adventure, and the materialistic squire Sancho Panza, who
accompanies his master from failure to another. During his travels,
Don Quixote's overexcited imagination blinds him to reality: he
thinks windmills to be giants, flocks of sheep to be armies, and
galley-slaves to be oppressed gentlemen. Sancho is named governor
of the isle of Barataria, a mock title, and Don Quixote is bested
in a duel with the Knight of the White Moon, in reality a student
of his acquaintance in disquise. The hero returns to La Mancha,
and only at his deathbed Don Quixote confesses the folly of his
past adventures. - Cervantes's influence is seen among others in
the works of Sir Walter Scott, Charles Dickens, Gustave Flaubert,
Herman Melville, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, also in the works of James
Joyce and Jorge Luis Borges. - See also: Torquato Tasso, Anton Tammsaare.
For further reading: Refiguring Authority: Reading, Writing,
and Rewriting in Cervantes by Michael E. Gerli (1995); Miguel
de Cervantes: "Don Quixote" by A.J. Close (1990); A Critical Introduction
to Don Quixote by L.A.Murillo (1988); Cervantes and Ariosto by
Thomas R. Hart (1989); Don Quixote by E.C. Riley (1986); Cervantes
by Jean Canavaggio (1986); Cervantes by P.E. Russell (1985); Cervantes
by Manuel Duran (1974); Cervantes across the Centuries, ed. by
Angel Flores and M.J. Benardete (1969); The World of Don Quixote
by Richard L. Predmore (1967); Mimesis by Erich Auerbach (1953).
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