(Widely regarded as one of the funniest and most tragic bo...)
Widely regarded as one of the funniest and most tragic books ever written, Don Quixote chronicles the adventures of the self-created knight-errant Don Quixote of La Mancha and his faithful squire, Sancho Panza, as they travel through sixteenth-century Spain.
(Composed throughout Cervantes's writing life and mentione...)
Composed throughout Cervantes's writing life and mentioned in Don Quixote, his Exemplary Stories are among the first and finest Spanish short stories: ranging from traditional tales of love to incisive moral fables.
Miguel de Cervantes was a Spanish writer who is widely regarded as the greatest writer in the Spanish language and one of the world's pre-eminent novelists. His masterpiece Don Quixote has been translated into more languages than any other book except the Bible.
Background
Miguel de Cervantes was born in the university city of Alcalá de Henares in the old kingdom of Toledo. His baptismal record is preserved (he was christened on October 9, 1547), but his birth date is unknown. It is generally surmised, however, because of the Christian name he was given, that he was born on Michaelmas (September 29).
He was the second son and the fourth of seven children of the apothecary-surgeon Rodrigo de Cervantes and his wife, Leonor de Cortinas. On his father's side he was of Andalusian extraction, and Castilian on his mother's side. Rodrigo de Cervantes was not very successful in his profession, and he traveled quite frequently.
In 1552 he was imprisoned in Valladolid for debts (a familiar lot, later on, for his most famous offspring), and in 1564 he was in Seville. It is possible, however, that the family had moved to Madrid in 1561, when Philip II made it the capital of his empire. His siblings were Andrés (1543), Andrea (1544), Luisa (1546), Rodrigo (1550), Magdalena (1554) and Juan - known solely because he is mentioned in his father's will.
Education
Nothing is known of Miguel's life until 1569. In that year the humanist Juan López de Hoyos brought out a commemorative volume to mark the death of Queen Isabel de Valois in 1568. Cervantes contributed three indifferent poems to this work, and López de Hoyos wrote of him as "nuestro caro y amado discípulo" (our dear and beloved pupil). López de Hoyos was a reader and admirer of the humanist Erasmus, and a connection has been drawn between this fact and some critical attitudes about religion later shown by his beloved pupil. This is all that is known about Cervantes' education. It is reasonable, however, to conjecture that he studied in Seville with the Jesuits, since some statements in El coloquio de los perros (one of the Novelas ejemplares, 1613) would bear this out.
Career
Cervantes was in Rome by December 22, 1569, (the date of a certificate made out by his father attesting to his son's legitimate birth and Christianity). In the dedication of his Galatea (1585), Cervantes states that he had been chamberlain to Cardinal Giulio Acquaviva. It has therefore been surmised that he traveled to Italy in 1569 in the cardinal's retinue, when Acquaviva returned to Italy from Spain, where he had been papal legate.
In 1570 Cervantes joined the company of Diego de Urbina in the Spanish forces at Naples. As a soldier, he participated in the great naval victory of Lepanto (October 7, 1571), in which the armada commanded by John of Austria destroyed the Turkish fleet. Cervantes was aboard the Marquesa in the thick of the battle, and in spite of being ill, he obtained permission to fight in the most dangerous spot. He was wounded three times, twice in the chest and once in the left hand; the last wound maimed his hand for life.
With justifiable pride, Cervantes often mentioned this momentous victory in his works. The triumphant fleet returned to Messina, and there Cervantes convalesced. He saw action again in 1572, this time in the company of Don Lope de Figueroa (famous in Spanish literature as one of the protagonists of Calderón's El alcalde de Zalamea. With his younger brother Rodrigo he participated in a naval battle off Navarino (October 1572).
In early 1573 he was on garrison duty in Naples, but later that year, again under the command of John of Austria, he took part in the capture of Tunis (October 8-10). Tunis was shortly after recaptured by the Turks, and Cervantes participated in the unsuccessful expedition of relief in autumn 1574. That November he was on garrison duty in Palermo. By this time he felt ready for a promotion to captain, and in order to negotiate in the Madrid court he got letters of recommendation from John of Austria and the Duke of Sessa, one of his generals, and obtained leave to sail back to Spain. With his brother Rodrigo he sailed from Naples on the Sol in September 1575.
On September 26 the Sol was assailed by three Turkish galleys, in a place that has traditionally been identified as off the coast near Marseilles but which was more likely off the Costa Brava in Catalonia. The ship was captured with its crew and passengers, who were taken as captives to Algiers. Cervantes lived in slavery for 5 years; he was closely watched since his letters of recommendation suggested that he was a high-ranking person. In captivity he demonstrated an unbreakable will and exemplary courage, and he led an abortive escape attempt in 1576.
In 1577 some priests of the Order of Mercy arrived in Algiers with 300 escudos sent by his family for his ransom, but this sum proved insufficient. Cervantes suggested that the money be used to rescue his brother, as was done on August 24, 1577. A month later Cervantes once more led a group in an attempt to escape but again met with no success. He remained undaunted by punishments and threats, and the captives looked to him for inspiration. While in captivity Cervantes reached near-legendary stature, as is attested by the narrative of his exploits written by Fray Diego de Haedo, Archbishop of Palermo.
On September 19, 1580, Cervantes was rescued on board the ship that was to take him to Constantinople, his master's new destination. On October 10, before leaving Algiers, Cervantes wrote his Información, which described his conduct while in captivity. He sailed for Spain at the end of that month, and on December 18 in Madrid, he signed a statement about his release. He had proved himself to be a true Christian soldier, equally heroic in battle and in captivity.
In 1581 Cervantes was in Portugal, which had been annexed to Spain the year before. On May 21, 1581, in Tomar, he was advanced 50 ducats to accomplish a royal mission to Oran. This he did, but the royal service, whatever its nature, was not very rewarding. In an autograph letter, addressed to the royal secretary and dated Madrid, February 17, 1582, Cervantes tells of his misfortunes in trying to obtain a post in the Peninsula and states that he is ready to apply for some post in the Indies. He also reports some progress in the composition of the Galatea. This pastoral novel was to be his first published book, but it did not appear until 1585.
About this same time, Cervantes turned to writing for the theater, an activity that guaranteed a certain income if the plays were successful. In the Adjunta to his Viaje del Parnaso (1614) and in the prologue to his Ocho comedias y ocho entremeses (1615), he tells of his dramatic successes and his eventual downfall, caused by Lope de Vega's increasing popularity. Of these early plays only two have survived, in a manuscript discovered in 1784: Los tratos de Argel and La Numancia.
In 1587 Cervantes was in Seville. The preparation of the Armada for its disastrous expedition against England was going on in a grand scale, and Cervantes had come to help in the enterprise. But his new post as commissary to the navy brought him only grief, shame, and discomfort. He was excommunicated by the dean and chapter of the Cathedral of Seville for requisitioning their grain in Ecija.
On May 21, 1590, he petitioned the King for one of four vacant posts in the Indies. The petition was denied with the note, "Let him look around here for a job." As once before, he turned for financial help to the theater, and on September 5, 1592, he signed a contract in Seville with the producer Rodrigo Osorio. Cervantes agreed to write six plays at 50 ducats each, but payment would be withheld if Osorio did not find each of the plays to be "one of the best ever produced in Spain."
Nothing is known of the outcome of this extraordinary contract. Shortly after, Cervantes was jailed in Castro del Río, again for overzealous requisitioning. He was by now in dire financial straits, a situation considerably complicated by his unhappy handling of official accounts and by dealings with fraudulent bankers. Thus he landed back in jail in September 1597 in Seville. He was released in December.
In 1598 he seems to have remained in Seville, but his government employment seems to have come to an end, although the officials in Madrid summoned him twice (1599 and 1601) to clear up his accounts. The summonses were not obeyed. The documentation for the years from 1600 to 1603 is scanty. It is very probable that Cervantes was jailed again in Seville in 1602, once more for financial reasons. But most of his time must have been taken up by the composition of Don Quixote.
In 1603 he was in Valladolid, where the new king, Philip III, had moved the capital. There Cervantes started negotiations for the publication of his manuscript, and the license was granted on September 26, 1604.
In January 1605 Don Quixote was published in Madrid; it was an immediate success, receiving the dubious honor of having three pirated editions appear in Lisbon in that same year. In the words of the German philosopher F. W. J. von Schelling, Don Quixote is "the most universal, the most profound and the most picturesque portrait of life itself."
But Cervantes did not bask in his success for long; on June 27, 1605, a Navarrese gentleman, Don Gaspar de Ezpeleta, was killed outside Cervantes' house in Valladolid. The novelist and his family were taken to jail on suspicion of murder but were soon released.
Once more Cervantes sought escape from Spain, and in 1610 he tried to go to Naples in the retinue of its newly appointed viceroy, the Count of Lemos. He was turned down, but nevertheless he displayed a lifelong affection for the Count of Lemos, to whom he dedicated five books, including the second Quixote.
About this time Cervantes entered a period of extraordinary literary creativity, all the more admirable because he was close to 65 years of age. His Novelas ejemplares were published in Madrid in 1613. They are 12 little masterpieces, with which Cervantes created the art of short-story writing in Spain, as he readily admitted in the prologue. Even if Cervantes had not written Don Quixote, the Novelas ejemplares would suffice to give him a prominent place in the history of fiction.
The year 1614 saw the publication in Madrid of Cervantes' burlesque poem Viaje del Parnaso, a lively satire of the literary life of his time. But that year also saw the publication in Tarragona of a spurious continuation of Don Quixote, signed with the pseudonym Alonso Fernández de Avellaneda. The identity of this author remains the greatest riddle of Spanish literature. Cervantes' rhythm of composition was unaffected by the insults Avellaneda piled on him, and in 1615 he published in Madrid his Ocho comedias y ocho entremeses, concrete proof of his early and lasting devotion to the theater. Some of the plays are from his early period, but he polished them for publication. He added eight one-act humorous plays (entremeses). Later in 1615 Cervantes published in Madrid his own second part of Don Quixote. The only fitting praise of the authentic second part of Don Quixote is to say that it is even better than the first part.
Cervantes then put all his energy into finishing Los trabajos de Persiles y Sigismunda, a novel of adventures along the lines of the Byzantine novel. He had probably begun it at the turn of the century; he signed the dedication to the Count of Lemos (dated April 19, 1616) on his deathbed. He died 4 days later in Madrid. It was left to his widow to publish his last work, and the book appeared in Madrid in 1617.
Achievements
Miguel de Cervantes's major work, Don Quixote, sometimes considered the first modern novel, is a classic of Western literature, regarded among the best works of fiction ever written. His influence on the Spanish language has been so great that the language is often called la lengua de Cervantes ("the language of Cervantes"). He has also been dubbed El príncipe de los ingenios ("The Prince of Wits").
Modern scholars have suggested that he may have descended from a New Christian or Converso background, i. e. , that his ancestors, prior to 1492, had been Jews. Leandro Rodriguez of the University of Lausanne (Don Miguel, Judío de Cervantes, 1992) has written that the places, foliage, distances and sounds in the city of Cervantes, Lugo prove that the setting for the Don Quixote story took place there.
Advocates of the New Christian theory, first set forth by Américo Castro, often suggest Cervantes' mother was a converso as well. The theory rests almost exclusively on circumstantial evidence but would explain some mysteries of Cervantes' life.
Views
Quotations:
"How will he who does not know how to govern himself know how to govern others?"
"Maybe the greatest madness is to see life as it is rather than what it could be."
"Love not what you are but only what you may become."
Personality
Quotes from others about the person
William Faulkner: "Cervantes, Don Quixote - I read that every year, as some do the Bible."
Connections
On December 12, 1584, Cervantes married Doña Catalina de Palacios Salazar y Vozmediano, from the wine-making town of Esquivias, in the old kingdom of Toledo. She brought him a modest dowry, and being 18 years his junior, she survived the novelist (she died in 1626). The marriage had no issue. But it was probably a year or two before his wedding that Cervantes had an affair with Ana Franca de Rojas, with whom he had a daughter, Isabel de Saavedra, who figured prominently in his later years. His daughter died in 1652, the last of his line.
Miguel De Cervantes
A book by Harold Bloom presents biographical information along with critical analysis of the themes, symbols, and ideas that appear in the author's works.
Cervantes: A Biography
A book by William Byron recounts the life, adventures, misadventures, and checkered career of the hapless genius, impoverished Renaissance man, and mysterious public figure who created Don Quixote.
1978
Cervantes: The Writer and Painter of Don Quijote
A book by Helena Percas discusses Cervantes' point of view in Don Quixote, identifies the pictorial level of the novel, and describes similarities in his style to that of modern art.
Cervantes
A book by Jean Canavaggio traces Cervantes's life as a soldier, as a tax collector, his time as a prisoner of war of the Turks, and finally the publication of Don Quixote in 1605.
1986
Cervantes
A book by Melveena McKendrick describes the life and times of the man who created one of literature's best-known characters focuses equally on Cervantes's troubled early life and his later period of great literary productivity.
1980
Miguel's Brave Knight: Young Cervantes and His Dream of Don Quixote
Award-winning author Margarita Engle’s distinctive picture book depiction of the childhood of the father of the modern novel, told in a series of free verse poems, is enhanced by Raúl Colón’s stunning illustrations.
2017
Miguel De Cervantes
A book by Jake Goldberg examines the eventful life of the sixteenth-century Spanish novelist, poet, and spy, who is best known as the author of the timeless classic Don Quixote, the story of a self-deluded knight-errant and his long-suffering squire.
