Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra as the greatest writer in the Spanish language and one of the world’s pre-eminent novelist.

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Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra(/sərˈvɒnteɪz/ or /sərˈvæntiːz/; Spanish: [miˈɣel de θerˈβantes saˈβeðɾa]; sometimes Anglicized as Michael Cervantes; 29 September 1547 (assumed) – 22 April 1616), 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 major work, Don Quixote, considered to be the first modern novel, is a classic of Western literature, and is regarded amongst 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").

In 1569, in forced exile from Castile, Cervantes moved to Rome, where he worked as chamber assistant of a cardinal. He then enlisted as a soldier in a Spanish Navy infantry regiment and continued his military life until 1575, when he was captured by Barbary pirates. After five years of captivity, he was released by his captors on payment of a ransom by his parents and the Trinitarians, a Catholic religious order, and he subsequently returned to his family in Madrid.

In 1585, Cervantes published a pastoral novel named La Galatea. He worked as a purchasing agent for the Spanish Armada, and later as a tax collector for the government. In 1597, discrepancies in his accounts for three years previous landed him in the Crown Jail of Seville.

In 1605, he was in Valladolid when the immediate success of the first part of his Don Quixote, published in Madrid, signalled his return to the literary world. In 1607, he settled in Madrid, where he lived and worked until his death. During the last nine years of his life, Cervantes solidified his reputation as a writer; he published the Novelas ejemplares (Exemplary Novels) in 1613, the Journey to Parnassus (Viaje al Parnaso) in 1614, and the Ocho comedias y ocho entremeses and the second part of Don Quixote in 1615. His last work Los trabajos de Persiles y Sigismunda (The Works of Persiles and Sigismunda) was published posthumously, in 1617.

Literary pursuits

In Esquivias, Toledo, on 12 December 1584, he married the much younger Catalina de Salazar y Palacios (born Esquivias – d. 31 October 1626), daughter of Fernando de Salazar y Vozmediano and Catalina de Palacios. Her uncle Alonso de Quesada y Salazar is said to have inspired the character of Don Quixote. Over the next 20 years, Cervantes led a nomadic existence, working as a purchasing agent for the Spanish Armada and as a tax collector. He suffered bankruptcy and was imprisoned at least twice (1597 and 1602) for irregularities in his accounts. Between 1596 and 1600, he lived primarily in Seville. In 1606, Cervantes settled in Madrid, where he remained for the rest of his life.

In 1585 Cervantes published his first major work, La Galatea, a pastoral romance, at the same time that some of his plays, now lost – except for El trato de Argel (where he dealt with the life of Christian slaves in Algiers) and El cerco de Numancia – were playing on the stages of Madrid. La Galatea received little contemporary notice; and Cervantes never wrote the continuation for it, which he repeatedly promised to do. Cervantes next turned his attention to drama, hoping to derive an income from that source, but his plays failed.Aside from his plays, his most ambitious work in verse was Viage del Parnaso (1614) – an allegory which consisted largely of a rather tedious though good-natured review of contemporary poets. Cervantes himself realized that he was deficient in poetic talent.

If a remark which Cervantes himself makes in the prologue of Don Quixote is to be taken literally, the idea of the work (though hardly the writing of its First Part, as some have maintained) occurred to him while in jail. Cervantes' idea was to give a picture of real life and manners, and to express himself in clear language. The intrusion of everyday speech into a literary context was acclaimed by the reading public. The author stayed poor until January 1605, when the first part of Don Quixote appeared.

The popularity of Don Quixote led to the publication of an unauthorized continuation of it by an unknown writer, who masqueraded under the name of Alonso Fernández de Avellaneda. Cervantes produced his own continuation, or Second Part, of Don Quixote, which made its appearance in 1615. He had promised the publication of a second part in 1613 in the foreword to the Novelas ejemplares (Exemplary Novels), a year before the publication of Avellaneda's book. Don Quixote has been regarded chiefly as a novel of purpose. It is stated again and again that he wrote it in order to satirize the chivalric romance and to challenge the popularity of a form of literature that had been a favourite of the general public for more than a century.

Don Quixote certainly reveals much narrative power, considerable humour, a mastery of dialogue, and a forceful style. Of the two parts written by Cervantes, perhaps the first is the more popular with the general public – containing the famous episodes of the tilting at windmills, the attack on the flock of sheep, the vigil in the courtyard of the inn, and the episode with the barber and the shaving basin. The second part shows more constructive insight, better delineation of character, improved style, and more realism and probability in its action. Most people agree that it is richer and more profound.

In 1613 he published a collection of tales, the Exemplary Novels, some of which had been written earlier. The picaroon strain, already made familiar in Spain through the Picaresque novels of Lazarillo de Tormes and his successors, appears in one or another of them, especially in theRinconete y Cortadillo. In 1614, he published the Viage del Parnaso and in 1615, the Eight Comedies and Eight New Interludes. At the same time, Cervantes continued working on Los Trabajos de Persiles y Sigismunda, a novel of adventurous travel, completed just before his death, and appearing posthumously in January 1617.

Don Quixote

Main article: Don Quixote

Gustave Doré's first (of about 370) illustrations forDon Quixote.

Don Quixote (spelled "Quijote" in modern Spanish) is two separate volumes, now nearly always published as one, that cover the adventures of Don Quixote de la Mancha, a hero who carries his enthusiasm and self-deception to unintentional and comic ends. On one level, Don Quixoteworks as a satire of the romances of chivalry, which, though still popular in Cervantes' time, had become an object of ridicule among more demanding critics. The choice of a madman as hero also served a critical purpose, for it was "the impression of ill-being or 'in-sanity,' rather than a finding of dementia or psychosis in clinical terms, that defined the madman for Cervantes and his contemporaries." Indeed, the concept of madness was "associated with physical or moral displacement, as may be seen in the literal and figurative sense of the adjectives eccentric, extravagant, deviant, aberrant, etc."^[35] The novel allows Cervantes to illuminate various aspects of human nature. Because the novel, particularly the first part, was written in individually published sections, the composition includes several incongruities. Cervantes pointed out some of these errors in the preface to the second part; but he disdained to correct them, because he conceived that they had been too severely condemned by his critics. Cervantes felt a passion for the vivid painting of character. Don Quixote is noble-minded, an enthusiastic admirer of everything good and great, yet having all these fine qualities accidentally blended with a relative kind of madness. He is paired with a character of opposite qualities, Sancho Panza, a man of low self-esteem, who is a compound of grossness and simplicity.

Don Quixote is cited as the first classic model of the modern romance or novel, and it has served as the prototype of the comic novel. The humorous situations are mostly burlesque, and it includes satire. Don Quixote is one of the Encyclopædia Britannica's Great Books of the Western World, while the Russian author Fyodor Dostoyevsky called it "the ultimate and most sublime work of human thinking".^[36] It is in Don Quixote that Cervantes coined the popular phrase "the proof of the pudding is in the eating" (por la muestra se conoce el paño), which still sees heavy use in the shortened form of "the proof is in the pudding", and "who walks much and reads much, knows much and sees much" (quien anda mucho y lee mucho, sabe mucho y ve mucho).

Novelas ejemplares (Exemplary Novels)

Main article: Novelas ejemplares

Cervantes intended they should be to Spanish nearly what the novellas of Boccaccio were to Italians.^[37] Some are anecdotes, some are romances in miniature, some are serious, some comic; they are written in a light, smooth, conversational style.

Four novelas, though favorites in Cervantes' day, are perhaps of less interest today than the rest: El amante liberal, La señora Cornelia, Las dos doncellas, and La española inglesa. The theme common to these is pairs of lovers (couples) separated by lamentable and complicated events; they are finally reunited and find the happiness they have longed for. The heroines are all beautiful and of perfect behavior; they and their lovers are capable of the highest sacrifices; and they try to elevate themselves to the ideal of moral and aristocratic distinction which illuminates their lives. In El amante liberal, the beautiful Leonisa and her lover Ricardo are carried off by Turkish pirates. Both fight against serious material and moral dangers. Ricardo conquers all obstacles, returns to his homeland with Leonisa, and is ready to renounce his passion and to hand her over to her former lover in an outburst of generosity; but Leonisa's preference naturally settles on Ricardo in the end.

Another group of "exemplary" novels is formed by La fuerza de la sangre, La ilustre fregona, La gitanilla, and El celoso extremeño. The first three offer examples of love and adventure happily resolved, while the last unravels itself tragically. Its plot deals with the old Felipe Carrizales, who, after traveling widely and becoming rich in America, decides to marry, taking all the precautions necessary to forestall being deceived. He weds a very young girl – and isolates her from the world, by having her live in a house with no windows facing the street. But in spite of his defensive measures, a bold youth succeeds in penetrating the fortress of conjugal honour; and one day Carrizales surprises his wife in the arms of her seducer. Surprisingly, he pardons the adulterers, recognizing that he is more to blame than they, and dies of sorrow over the grievous error he has committed. Cervantes here deviated from literary tradition, which demanded the death of the adulterers; but he transformed the punishment inspired, or rather required, by the social ideal of honour into a statement on the responsibility of the individual. Rinconete y Cortadillo, El casamiento engañoso, El licenciado Vidriera, and the untitled novella known today as El coloquio de los perros, four works of art which are concerned more with the personalities of the characters than with the subject matter, form the final group of these stories. The protagonists are, respectively, two young vagabonds, Rincón and Cortado, Lieutenant Campuzano, a student – Tomás Rodaja (who goes mad and believes he has become glass, and who makes many remarks on society and customs of the time) and finally two dogs, Cipión and Berganza, whose wandering existence serves to mirror the most varied aspects of Spanish life. El coloquio de los perros features even more sardonic observations on the Spanish society of the time.

Rinconete y Cortadillo is today considered one of the most delightful of Cervantes' works. Its two young vagabonds come to Seville, attracted by the riches and disorder that the 16th-century commerce with the Americas had brought to that metropolis. There they come into contact with a brotherhood of thieves, the Thieves' Guild, led by Monipodio, whose house is the headquarters of the Sevillian underworld. The solemn ritual of this band of ruffians is all the more comic for being presented in Cervantes' drily humorous style.

Likeness

Although the portrait of Cervantes attributed to Juan de Jáuregui is the one most associated with the author, there is no known portrait that is really a true likeness.

The oil painting Retrato de un caballero desconocido (Portrait of an Unknown Gentleman), painted by El Greco in Toledo between 1600 and 1605, and on display at the Museo del Prado, has also been cited as a possible portrait of Cervantes, based on the fact that he was living near Toledo in 1604 and that he knew people within El Greco's circle of friends.

The 1859 portrait by Luis de Madrazo, which the painter himself stated is based on his own imagination, is currently at the Biblioteca Nacional de España.

The Spanish euro coins of €0.10, €0.20, and €0.50 bear an image of a bust of Cervantes.