Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra[b] (/srvntez/ or /srvntiz/;[2] Spanish: [miel de erantes sa

ea]; 29 September 1547 (assumed) 22 April 1616),[3] often simply called Cervantes, was a
Spanish novelist, poet, and playwright.
His major work, Don Quixote, considered to be the first modern European novel,[4] is a classic
of Western literature, and is regarded amongst the best works of fiction ever written.[5] His
influence on the Spanish language has been so great that the language is often called la lengua
de Cervantes ("the language of Cervantes").[6] He was dubbed El Prncipe de los Ingenios ("The
Prince of Wits").[7]
In 1569 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 Algerian corsairs. 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. 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 theNovelas ejemplares (Exemplary Novels) in 1613, the Journey to
Parnassus (Viaje al Parnaso) in 1614, and in 1615 theOcho comedias y ocho entremeses and
the second part of Don Quixote.
Contents
[hide]

1 Birth and early life

2 Military service and captivity

3 Life after his return to Spain

4 Literary pursuits

5 Death

6 Works
o

6.1 Don Quixote

6.2 Novelas ejemplares (Exemplary Novels)

6.3 Los Trabajos de Persiles y Sigismunda (The Labors of Persiles and Sigismunda)

6.4 Poetry

6.5 Viaje del Parnaso

6.6 Plays

6.7 La Numancia

7 Legacy

8 Ethnic and religious heritage

9 Likeness

10 See also

11 Notes

12 References

13 Further reading

14 External links

Birth and early life[edit]

The Church of Santa Mara la Mayor(background) where Cervantes was baptized in Alcal de Henares. The
square in front of it is now called Plaza Cervantes

It is assumed that Cervantes was born in Alcal de Henares, a Castilian city about 35 kilometres
(22 mi) northeast from Madrid, probably on 29 September (the feast day of Saint Michael the
Archangel) 1547. The probable date of his birth was determined from records in the church
register, given the tradition of naming a child after the feast day of his birth. He was baptized in
Alcal de Henares on 9 October 1547[8] at the parish church of Santa Mara la Mayor. The register
of baptisms records the following:

On Sunday, the ninth day of the month of October, the year of our Lord one thousand five
hundred forty and seven, Miguel, son of Rodrigo Cervantes and his wife Leonor, was baptised;
his godfathers were Juan Pardo; he was baptised by the Reverend Bachelor Bartolom Serrano,
Priest of Our Lady. Witnesses, Baltasar Vzquez, Sexton, and I, who baptised him and signed
this in my name. Bachelor Serrano.[9]
Miguel at birth was not surnamed Cervantes Saavedra. He adopted the "Saavedra" name as an
adult. By Spanish naming conventions his second surname was that of his mother, Cortinas.
Miguel's father, Rodrigo, was a barber-surgeon from Crdoba, who set bones, performed
bloodlettings, and attended "lesser medical needs"; [10] at that time, it was common for barbers to
do surgery, as well. His paternal grandfather, Juan de Cervantes, was an influential lawyer who
held several administrative positions. His uncle was mayor of Cabra for many years.
His mother, Leonor de Cortinas, descended from Jewish "Conversos", was a native of Arganda
del Rey and the third daughter of a nobleman, who lost his fortune and had to sell his daughter
into matrimony in 1543. This led to a very awkward marriage and several affairs by Rodrigo.
[11]

Leonor died on 19 October 1593.

Little is known of Cervantes' early years. It seems he spent much of his childhood moving from
town to town with his family. During this time, he met a young barmaid named Josefina Catalina
de Parez. The couple fell madly in love and plotted to run away together. Her father discovered
their plans and forbade Josefina from ever seeing Cervantes again, perhaps because of the
young man's poor prospects of ever rising from povertyMiguel's own father was embargoed for
debt. The court records of the proceedings show a very poor household. While some of his
biographers argue that he studied at the University of Salamanca, there is no solid evidence for
supposing that he did so.[c] There has been speculation also that Cervantes studied with
the Jesuits in Crdoba or Seville.[12]
His siblings were Andrs (1543), Andrea (1544), Luisa (1546), Rodrigo (1550), Magdalena (1554)
and Juanknown solely because he is mentioned in his father's will.

Military service and captivity[edit]

The Battle of Lepanto byPaolo Veronese (c. 1572, oil on canvas, 169 x 137 cm,Gallerie dell'Accademia,Venice).

The reasons that forced Cervantes to leave Spain remain uncertain. Whether he was a "student"
of the same name, a "sword-wielding fugitive from justice", or fleeing from a royal warrant of
arrest, for having wounded a certain Antonio de Sigura in a duel, is unclear.[13] Like many young
Spanish men who wanted to further their careers, Cervantes left for Italy: in Rome he focussed
his attention on Renaissance art, architecture, and poetry knowledge of Italian literature is
discernible in his work. He found "a powerful impetus to revive the contemporary world in light of
its accomplishments".[14][15] Thus, Cervantes' stay in Italy, as revealed in his later works, might be in
part a desire for a return to an earlier period of the Renaissance. [16]
By 1570, Cervantes had enlisted as a soldier in a regiment of the Spanish Navy
Marines, Infantera de Marina, stationed in Naples, then a possession of the Spanish crown. He
was there for about a year before he saw active service. In September 1571 Cervantes sailed on
board the Marquesa, part of the galley fleet of the Holy League (a coalition of Pope Pius V, Spain,
the Republic of Venice, the Republic of Genoa, the Duchy of Savoy, the Knights
Hospitaller based in Malta, and others, under the command of Philip II of Spain's illegitimate half
brother, John of Austria) that defeated the Ottoman fleet on October 7 in the Battle of Lepanto, in
the Gulf of Patras. Though taken down with fever, Cervantes refused to stay below, and asked to
be allowed to take part in the battle, saying he would rather die for his God and his king than
keep under cover. He fought on board a vessel, and received 3 gunshot wounds 2 in the chest,
and one which rendered his left arm useless. In Journey to Parnassus he was to say that he "had
lost the movement of the left hand for the glory of the right" (he was thinking of the success of the
first part of Don Quixote). Cervantes looked back on his conduct in the battle with pride: he
believed he had taken part in an event that would shape the course of European history.
"What I cannot help taking amiss is that he[d] charges me with being old and onehanded, as if it had been in my power to keep time from passing over me, or as if the
loss of my hand had been brought about in some tavern, and not on the grandest
occasion the past or present has seen, or the future can hope to see. If my wounds
have no beauty to the beholder's eye, they are, at least, honourable in the estimation of
those who know where they were received; for the soldier shows to greater advantage
dead in battle than alive in flight."

After the Battle of Lepanto, Cervantes remained in hospital in Mesina, Italy, for about 6 months,
before his wounds were sufficiently healed to allow his joining the colors again. [17] From 1572-75,
based mainly in Naples, he continued his soldier's life: he participated in expeditions
to Corfu and Navarino, and saw the fall of Tunis and La Goulette to the Turks in 1574.[18]:220
On 6 or 7 September 1575 Cervantes set sail on the galley Sol from Naples to Barcelona, with
letters of commendation to the king from the Duke of Sessa.[19] On the morning of September 26,
as the Solapproached the Catalan coast, it was attacked by Algerian corsairs under the
command of Arnaut Mami, an Albanian renegade and terror of the narrow seas.[20] After significant
resistance, in which the captain and many crew members were killed, the surviving passengers
were taken to Algiers as captives.[18]:236 After 5 years spent as a slave in Algiers, and 4
unsuccessful escape attempts, he was ransomed by his parents and the Trinitarians and returned
to his family in Madrid. Not surprisingly, this traumatic period of Cervantes' life supplied subject
matter for several of his literary works, notably the Captive's tale in Don Quixote and the two
plays set in Algiers El trato de Argel (Life in Algiers) and Los baos de Argel(The Dungeons of
Algiers) as well as episodes in a number of other writings, although never in straight
autobiographical form.[8]

Life after his return to Spain[edit]

Cervantes led a middle-class life after his return to Spain. Like almost all authors of his day, he
was unable to support himself through his writings. Two periods of his life that are very well
documented are his years of work in Andaluca as a purchasing agent for the Spanish navy (i.e.,
the King). This led to his imprisonment for a few months in Seville after a banker where he had
deposited Crown funds went bankrupt. (Since Cervantes says that Don Quixote was
"engendered" in a prison, that is presumably a reference to this episode.) Also he worked as a tax
collector, travelling from town to town collecting back taxes due the crown. He applied
unsuccessfully for "one of four vacant positions in the New World", one of them as an accountant
for the port of Cartagena. At the time he was living in Valladolid, then briefly the capital (1601
1606), and finishing Don Quixote Part One, he was presumably working in the banking industry,
or a related occupation where his accounting skills could be put to use. He was turned down for a
position as secretary to Pedro Fernndez de Castro y Andrade, the Count of Lemos, although he
did receive some type of pension from him, which permitted him to write full-time during his final
years (about 1610 to 1616). His last known written words the dedication to Persiles y
Sigismunda were written, he tells us, after having received Extreme Unction. He died in 1616 of
type II diabetes.[21] His burial place in Madrid was reportedly rediscovered in March 2015, but his
unpublished manuscripts were mostly lost.[citation needed]

Literary pursuits[edit]

This section is written like a personal reflection or opinion essay that states the
Wikipedia editor's particular feelings about a topic, rather than the opinions of
experts. Please help improve it by rewriting it in an encyclopedic style. (March 2015)
Main article: Don Quixote

"The pen is the language of the soul; as the concepts that in it are generated, such will be its writings." Miguel
de Cervantes at the Biblioteca Nacional de Espaa (National Library of Spain).

In Esquivias, Toledo, on 12 December 1584, he married the much younger Catalina de Salazar y
Palacios (born Esquivias d. 31 October 1626), [8] 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.[citation needed] 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.[8] Between 1596 and 1600, he lived primarily in Seville. In 1606, Cervantes settled in
Madrid, where he remained for the rest of his life.[22]
In 1585 Cervantes published his first major work, La Galatea,[8] 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.
[citation needed]

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. [citation needed] 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. [8]
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 in prison at Argamasilla de Alba in La Mancha. 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.[8] Although it did not make
Cervantes rich, it brought him international appreciation as a man of letters.

The statue of Miguel de Cervantes at the harbour ofNaupactus (Lepanto).

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 Fernndez de Avellaneda.
[8]

Cervantes produced his own continuation, or Second Part, of Don Quixote, which made its

appearance in 1615.[8] 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 Avellanda'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.[23]
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.[8]
In 1613 he published a collection of tales, the Exemplary Novels, some of which had been written
earlier.[8] 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
the Rinconete y Cortadillo. In 1614, he published the Viage del Parnaso and in 1615, the Eight
Comedies and Eight New Interludes.[8] 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. [8]

Death[edit]

Cervantes was buried at theConvent of the Barefoot Trinitarians in Madrid

While 23 April 1616 was recorded as the date of his death in some references, and the date on
which his death was widely commemorated, he in fact died in Madrid the previous day, 22 April.
[24]

He was buried on 23 April.[25] The cause of his death, according to Antonio Lpez Alonso, a

modern physician who has examined the surviving documentation, was Diabetes 2, a result of a
cirrhosis of the liver. This is the best explanation for the intense thirst he complained of. The
cirrhosis was not caused by alcoholism; Cervantes was too productive, especially in his final
years, to have been an alcoholic.[26]
William Shakespeare died on 23 April 1616. To honor this, UNESCO established 23 April as
the International Day of the Book.[27] However, these dates refer to different days: Spain had
adopted the Gregorian calendar in 1582, but England was still using the Julian calendar.
Shakespeare's death on 23 April 1616 (Julian) was equivalent to 3 May 1616 (Gregorian). This
was 10 days after Cervantes was buried and 11 days after he died.
In accordance with Cervantes' will, he was buried in the neighboring Convent of the Barefoot
Trinitarians, in central Madrid.[28] His bones went missing in 1673 when building work was done at
the convent, and were known to have been taken to a different convent and were returned later. A
project began in 2014 to rediscover his remains.[29]
In January 2015 it was reported that researchers searching for Cervantes's remains had found
part of a casket bearing his initials at the convent. Francisco Etxeberria, the forensic
anthropologist leading the search, said: "Remains of caskets were found, wood, rocks, some
bone fragments, and indeed one of the fragments of a board of one of the caskets had the letters
M.C. formed in tacks." The first significant search for Cervantes' remains had been launched in

May 2014 and had involved the use of infrared cameras, 3D scanners and ground-penetrating
radar. The team had identified 33 alcoves where bones could be stored. [30]
On 17 March 2015 it was reported that Cervantes' remains had been discovered, along with
those of his wife and others, at the Convent of the Barefoot Trinitarians. [31] Through documentary
research, archaeologists stated that they had identified the remains as those of Cervantes. Clues
from Cervantes' life, such as the loss of the use of his left hand at age 24 and the fact that he had
taken at least one bullet to the chest, were hoped to help in the identification. Historian Fernando
de Prado had spent more than four years trying to find funding before Madrid City Council had
agreed to pay. DNA testing would now be carried out in an attempt to confirm the findings. [32]
On 11 June 2015 Cervantes was given a formal burial at a Madrid convent, containing a
monument holding bone fragments that were believed to have been of the author. The city
mayor Ana Botella and military attended the event.[33]

Works[edit]
This section needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this
article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be
challenged and removed. (March 2015)

Cervantes' La Galatea(1585), original title page.

El ingenioso hidalgo Don Quixote de la Mancha (1605): First volume of Don Quixote.

Novelas ejemplares (1613): a collection of 12 short stories of varied types about the
social, political, and historical problems of Cervantes' Spain:

"La gitanilla" ("The Gypsy Girl")

"El amante liberal" ("The Generous Lover")

"Rinconete y Cortadillo" ("Rinconete & Cortadillo")

"La espaola inglesa" ("The English Spanish Lady")

"El licenciado Vidriera" ("The Lawyer of Glass")

"La fuerza de la sangre" ("The Power of Blood")

"El celoso extremeo" ("The Jealous Man From Extremadura") [8]

"La ilustre fregona" ("The Illustrious Kitchen-Maid")

"Novela de las dos doncellas" ("The Novel of the Two Damsels")

"Novela de la seora Cornelia" ("The Novel of Lady Cornelia")

"Novela del casamiento engaoso" ("The Novel of the Deceitful Marriage")

"El coloquio de los perros" ("The Dialogue of the Dogs")

Segunda Parte del Ingenioso Cavallero [sic] Don Quixote de la Mancha (1615): Second

volume of Don Quixote.

Los trabajos de Persiles y Sigismunda (1617). Persiles, as it is commonly known, is the

best evidence not only of the survival of Byzantine novel themes but also of the survival of
forms and ideas of the Spanish novel of the second Renaissance. In this work, published
after the author's death, Cervantes relates the ideal love and unbelievable vicissitudes of a
couple, who, starting from the Arctic regions, arrive in Rome, where they find a happy ending
to their complicated adventure.

La Galatea, the pastoral romance, which Cervantes wrote in his youth, is an imitation of
the Diana of Jorge de Montemor and bears an even closer resemblance to Gil Polo's
continuation of that romance. Next to Don Quixote and the Novelas ejemplares, it is
particularly worthy of attention, as it manifests the poetic direction in which Cervantes moved
at an early period of life.

Don Quixote[edit]
Main article: Don Quixote
Gustave Dor'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, also known as the knight or man
of La Mancha, a hero who carries his enthusiasm and self-deception to unintentional and comic
ends. On one level, Don Quixote works 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."[34] 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 nobleminded, 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.

Statuettes of Don Quixote (left) and Sancho Panza (right).

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 Encyclopdia 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".[35] 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 pao), 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)[edit]

Main article: Novelas ejemplares
Cervantes intended they should be to Spanish nearly what the novellas of Boccaccio were to
Italians.[36] 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 seora Cornelia, Las dos doncellas, and La espaola 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 extremeo. 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 engaoso, 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, Rincn and Cortado, Lieutenant Campuzano, a
student Toms 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, Cipin 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.

Los Trabajos de Persiles y Sigismunda (The Labors of Persiles and

Sigismunda)[edit]

Title page of Persiles and Segismunda.

Cervantes finished the romance of Persiles and Sigismunda, shortly before his death. The idea of
this romance was not new and Cervantes appears to imitate Heliodorus.[37] The work is a romantic
description of travels, both by sea and land. Real and fabulous geography and history are mixed
together; and in the second half of the romance the scene is transferred to Spain and Italy.

Poetry[edit]
Some of his poems are found in La Galatea. He also wrote Dos Canciones la Armada
Invencible. His best work however is found in the sonnets, particularly Al Tmulo del Rey Felipe
en Sevilla. Among his most important poems, Canto de Calope, Epstola a Mateo Vzquez, and
the Viaje del Parnaso (Journey to Parnassus 1614) stand out. The latter is his most ambitious
work in verse, anallegory which consists largely of reviews of contemporary poets. Compared to
his ability as a novelist, Cervantes is often considered a mediocre poet.

Viaje del Parnaso[edit]

Frontispiece of the Viaje(1614).

The prose of the Galatea, which is in other respects so beautiful, is occasionally overloaded with
epithet. Cervantes displays a totally different kind of poetic talent in the Viaje del Parnaso, an
extended commentary on the Spanish authors of his time.

Plays[edit]
Comparisons have diminished the reputation of his plays; but two of them (El Trato de
Argel and La Numancia 1582) made an impact. El Trato de Argel, is written in 5 acts; based on
his experiences as a captive of the Moors, the play deals with the life of Christian slaves in
Algiers. La Numancia is a description of the siege of Numantia by the Romans. It details the
horrors of the siege, and has been described as devoid of the requisites of dramatic art.
Cervantes's output published in his lifetime consists of 16 dramatic works including 8 full-length
plays:

El gallardo espaol,

Los baos de Argel,

La Gran Sultana, Doa Catalina de Oviedo,

La casa de los celos,

El laberinto de amor,

La entretenida,

El rufin dichoso,

Pedro de Urdemalas, a sensitive play about a picaro, who joins a group of Gypsies for
love of a girl.

He also wrote 8 short farces (entremeses):

El juez de los divorcios,

El rufin viudo llamado Trampagos,

La eleccin de los Alcaldes de Daganzo,

La guarda cuidadosa (The Vigilant Sentinel),

El vizcano fingido,

El retablo de las maravillas,

La cueva de Salamanca, and El viejo celoso (The Jealous Old Man).

These plays and entremeses made up Ocho Comedias y ocho entire messes nuevos, nunca
representados (Eight Comedies and Eight New Interludes, Never Before Performed) which
appeared in 1615. The dates and order of composition of Cervantes' entremeses are unknown.
Faithful to the spirit of Lope de Rueda, Cervantes endowed them with novelistic elements, such
as simplified plot, the type of descriptions normally associated with a novel, and character
development. Cervantes included some of his dramas among the works he was most satisfied
with.

La Numancia[edit]
Main article: The Siege of Numantia

Miguel de Cervantes in a late and idealized portrait of the 18th century (Retratos de Espaoles Ilustres-Portraits
of Illustrious Spanish, 1791).

Cervantes: Image from a 19th-century German book on the history of literature.

This play is a dramatization of the long and brutal siege of the Celtiberian town
Numantia, Hispania, by the Roman forces of Scipio Africanus. Cervantes invented, along with the
subject of his piece, a peculiar style of tragic composition; and, in doing so, he did not pay much
regard to the theory of Aristotle. His object was to produce a piece full of tragic situations,
combined with the charm of the marvellous. In order to accomplish this goal, Cervantes relied
heavily on allegory and on mythological elements. The tragedy is written in conformity with no
rules, save those which the author prescribed for himself, for he felt no inclination to imitate the
Greek forms. The play is divided into four acts, jornadas; and no chorus is introduced. The
dialogue is sometimes in tercets, and sometimes in redondillas, and for the most part in octaves
without any regard to rule.

Legacy[edit]

During his life Cervantes was primarily known as a writer of a funny book, which was how Don
Quixote Part I was viewed in his day.[citation needed] His Exemplary Novels were better received[citation
needed]

than was Don Quixote, and allowed him to publish his plays and entremeses, Viaje del

Parnaso, Part II of Don Quixote, and (by his widow) Persiles y Sigismunda. He then faded into
semi-obscurity.[citation needed] The revival of interest in him was born in England in the eighteenth
century, first by the deluxe edition of Tonson, for which the first biographical sketch was written
(1738), and then by the scholarly editor John Bowle (writer), who was the first to call Cervantes a
"classic" author.[citation needed] His influence on other novelists began in eighteenth-century England,
and was followed by an intense interest by the German romantics in the late eighteenth and early
nineteenth centuries.[citation needed] In 1805 (the bicentennial of the publication of Don Quixote Part I),
and 1816 (the bicentennial of his death), nothing happened. The tricentenial, 1905, saw a great
wave of celebrations in Spain.[citation needed]
Cervantes' novel Don Quixote has had a tremendous influence on the development of prose
fiction. It has been translated into all major languages and has appeared in 700 editions. The first
translation was in English, made by Thomas Shelton in 1608 (Part I only[38]), but not published
until 1612. Shelton renders some Spanish idioms into English so literally that they sound
nonsensical when translated.[citation needed] As an example Shelton always translates the
word dedos as fingers, not realizing that dedos can also meaninches. (In the original Spanish, for
instance, a phrase such as una altura de quince dedos, which makes perfect sense in Spanish,
would mean "fifteen inches high" in English, but a translator who renders it too literally would
translate it as "fifteen fingers high".
Carlos Fuentes raised the possibility that Cervantes and Shakespeare were the same person, in
the sense that Homer, Dante, Defoe, Dickens, Balzac, and Joyce are all the same writer whose
spirit wanders through the centuries.[39] Fuentes noted that, "Cervantes leaves the page open
where the reader knows himself read and the author written." [40][41]
Don Quixote has been the subject of a variety of works in other fields of art, including operas by
the Italian composer Giovanni Paisiello, the French Jules Massenet, and the Spanish Manuel de
Falla, a Russian ballet by the Russian-German composer Ludwig Minkus, a tone poem by the
German composer Richard Strauss, a German film (1933) directed by G. W. Pabst, a Soviet film
(1957) directed by Grigori Kozintsev, a 1965 ballet (no relation to the one by Minkus) with
choreography by George Balanchine, an American musical Man of La Mancha (1965) by Dale
Wasserman, Mitch Leigh, and Joe Darion. which was made into a film in 1972, directed by Arthur
Hiller, and a song by Brazilian tropicalia-pioneers Os Mutantes. Don Quixote's influence can be
seen in the work of Smollett, Defoe, Fielding, and Sterne, as well as in the classic 19th-century
novelists Scott, Dickens, Flaubert, Melville, Twain, and Dostoevsky, and in the 20th -century
works of James Joyce, Giannina Braschi, and Jorge Luis Borges. The theme of the novel also
inspired the 19th-century French artists Honor Daumier and Gustave Dor.[citation needed]

Sigmund Freud was greatly influenced by "El coloquio de los perros," which has been called the
origin of psychoanalisis. In it only one character tells his story; the other listens, occasionally
making comments. At the center of the dog's story is a sexual event. Freud stated that he learned
Spanish so as to read Cervantes in the original, and he signed 55 letters with the name of the
character (dog) Cipin.[42][43][44]
The Biblioteca Virtual Miguel de Cervantes, the largest digital archive of Spanish-language
historical and literary works in the world, is named after the author.

Ethnic and religious heritage[edit]

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.[45] Prof.
Leandro Rodriguez of the University of Lausanne (Don Miguel, Judo 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. Rodriguez also says that "Saavedra" is
believed to refer to the area of Spain known as La Mancha, but was rather set near Zamora,
Spain and that la mancha (the stain) refers to his converso ("forced convert from Judaism")
background.[46] Advocates of the New Christian theory, first set forth by Amrico 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. [47] It has been
supported by authors such as Anthony Cascardi[48]and Eisenberg.[49] Others, such as Claudio
Snchez-Albornoz (or Francisco Olmos Garcia, who considers it a "tired issue" and only
supported by Amrico Castro, which is not true) reject the theory strongly.[50]

Likeness[edit]

Bust of Cervantes erected in 1905, Burgos.

Although the portrait of Cervantes attributed to Juan de Juregui is the one most associated with
the author, the fact is that there is no known portrait that is a true likeness. [51][52]

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. [53]
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 Espaa.[54]
The Spanish euro coins of 0.10, 0.20, and 0.50 bear a bust of Cervantes.[55]