Reference
- Don QuixoteImpoverished and nearing the end of the sixth decade of a hard and often disappointing life and of a sporadic and usually disappointing literary career, Miguel de Cervantes scored a minor victory. He managed to persuade a printer, Juan de la Cuesta and a bookseller publisher, Francisco de Robles, to offer for sale a shoddily printed volume, The Ingenious Gentleman Don Quixote de la Mancha. Certainly one of the most original novels ever written, Don Quixote has also proved to be the most enduring. Of all the books ever published in any Western European language, it has been more often translated and has appeared in more editions than any work other than the Bible...
- MIGUEL DE CERVANTES (b. 1547—d. 1616)Some 400 years ago Miguel de Cervantes wrote a book that made him the most important figure in Spanish literature to this day. Six editions of Don Quixote were printed in the first year after the publication of the first part (1605). Translations into foreign languages were begun almost immediately. It is one of the most popular books ever written...
- Credo Reference This link opens in a new window
This link opens in a new window
This link opens in a new window
Credo Reference is an easy-to-use tool for starting research. Gather background information on your topic from hundreds of full-text encyclopedias, dictionaries, thesauri, quotations, and subject-specific titles, as well as 500,000+ images and audio files and over 1,000 videos.
Don Quixote--The First of the Wannabes
- Kanopy This link opens in a new window
Turn next to Don Quixote, a wannabe knight-errant whose infamous exploits mark a pivotal moment in the history of literature. Explore his fantastic adventures and meet Sancho Panza, who is perhaps literature’s first antihero. See why this novel is so innovative and how it has influenced writers in the centuries since its publication.
Online Resources
- Cervantes Birthplace Museum: Comunidad de MadridEl Cervantes Birthplace Museum It is located in the place where the cervantist Luis Astrana identified the family home of Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra (1547-1616) and where the writer spent his early years. It recreates the housing of a wealthy family from the XNUMXth and XNUMXth centuries and allows an approach to the life of the Golden Age, to the customs, tastes and daily chores of its inhabitants...
- Don Quixote: BritannicaDon Quixote, Spanish in full, Part 1 El ingenioso hidalgo don Quijote de la Mancha (“The Ingenious Hidalgo Don Quixote of La Mancha”) and Part 2 Segunda parte del ingenioso caballero don Quijote de la Mancha (“Second Part of the Ingenious Knight Don Quixote of La Mancha”), novel published in two parts (part 1, 1605, and part 2, 1615) by Spanish writer Miguel de Cervantes, one of the most widely read classics of Western literature...
- Miguel de Cervantes: BritannicaMiguel de Cervantes, in full Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, (born September 29?, 1547, Alcalá de Henares, Spain—died April 22, 1616, Madrid), Spanish novelist, playwright, and poet, the creator of Don Quixote (1605, 1615) and the most important and celebrated figure in Spanish literature. His novel Don Quixote has been translated, in full or in part, into more than 60 languages...
- The remarkable life of Miguel de Cervantes and how it shaped his timeless tale, 'Don Quixote': John Hopkins UniversityDon Quixote mistook windmills for giants and attacked them with his lance. This episode in Spanish author Miguel de Cervantes' Don Quixote, first published in 1605, is the most comically iconic scene in the novel and often the only thing that springs to mind when thinking about it...
Museum of Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
- Films on Demand This link opens in a new window
Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra is born and first published in Alcalá de Henares. He is author of many poems and comedies, but Don Quixote de la Mancha is the world's most famous novel. The city offers many sites dedicated to the patrimony of Cervantes and other literary giants.
Perspectives
Don Quijote de la Mancha
Un éxito desde el mismo momento de su publicación en 1604, Don Quijote es una obra maestra no ya de la literatura española sino de la literatura universal. Cuenta la historia de este hidalgo quien, enloquecido por la lectura de libros de caballerías, recorre España espada en mano en busca de aventura, justicia y gloria. Las múltiples interpretaciones de esta historia son, simplemente, el reflejo de su riqueza de significados y contenidos: una crítica de las novelas de caballerías, la contraposición entre el realismo y el idealismo, la primera novela moderna o una sátira de las ilusiones caballerescas. Infinitas lecturas caben en las divertidas e increíbles andanzas del ingenioso hidalgo, que reflejan la complejidad de lo humano y muestran el arte literario en su más depurada expresión.
Cervantes, Literature and the Discourse of Politics
What is the role of literature in the formation of the state? Anthony J. Cascardi takes up this fundamental question in Cervantes, Literature, and the Discourse of Politics, a comprehensive analysis of the presence of politics in Don Quixote. Cascardi argues that when public speech is constrained, as it was in seventeenth-century Spain, politics must be addressed through indirect forms including comedy, myth, and travellers' tales. Cervantes, Literature, and the Discourse of Politics convincingly re-engages the ancient roots of political theory in modern literature by situating Cervantes within a long line of political thinkers. Cascardi notably connects Cervantes's political theory to Plato's, much as the writer's literary criticism has been firmly linked to Aristotle's. He also shows how Cervantes's view of literature provided a compelling alternative to the modern, scientific politics of Machiavelli and Hobbes, highlighting the potential interplay of literature and politics in an ideal state.
Don Quixote: the Ormsby translation, revised, backgrounds and sources, criticism
Hailed by Dostoyevsky as "The final and greatest utterance of the human mind," Don Quixote constitutes a founding work of modern Western literature. Cervantes' masterpiece has been translated into more than sixty languages, and the novel's fantasy-driven "knight," Don Quixote, and his loyal squire, Sancho Panza, rank among fiction's most recognized characters.
Cervantes; His Life, His Times, His Works
Explores Cervantes' life and work and situate them in the perspective of Spain's golden age. Brilliantly illustrated in full color with examples of the art of the time, of the countryside the author knew, and of the work of the illustrators who have taken their inspiration from Don Quixote, the book is completed by a generous anthology of passages from the novel.
Miguel de Cervantes
- Films on Demand This link opens in a new windowUsing drawings, paintings, letters, maps, and footage of notable landmarks, this program presents the adventures and tribulations of Miguel de Cervantes, arguably the best-known figure in Spanish literary history. In addition to Don Quixote, one of the most influential and widely read classics in Western literature, the program also introduces Cervantes’ Novelas Ejemplares, a group of short stories that he claimed were the first to be written in Castilian. (Spanish, 43 minutes)