Miguel de Cervantes

Miguel de Cervantes (1547–1616) was a Spanish writer whose novel Don Quixote became a landmark of early modern European literature.

Don Quixote: A novel by Miguel de Cervantes about a would-be knight whose adventures blur idealism and reality. Cervantes’s best-known work, published in two parts in 1605 and 1615.
Spanish Golden Age: A flourishing of Spanish arts and letters spanning roughly the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Cervantes wrote amid the period’s major transformations in Spanish literature.
Lope de Vega: A prolific Spanish playwright and poet who dominated the commercial theater of the Spanish Golden Age. His theatrical success and poetic reputation formed a prominent point of comparison for Cervantes.
Exemplary Novels: A collection of twelve short prose works by Cervantes, published in 1613. The collection shows Cervantes developing fiction beyond the world of Don Quixote.
History of the novel: The development of long-form prose fiction across literary traditions and historical periods. Don Quixote became a central reference point in accounts of the novel’s development.
Picaresque novel: A prose narrative following a socially marginal rogue through episodic adventures and satirical encounters. Its episodic storytelling and social satire illuminate traditions surrounding Cervantes’s fiction.
Battle of Lepanto: A 1571 naval battle in which a Holy League fleet defeated the Ottoman fleet near Greece. Cervantes fought in the battle and sustained wounds that permanently injured his left hand.
Avellaneda's Don Quixote: A 1614 continuation of Don Quixote published under the pseudonym Alonso Fernández de Avellaneda. Cervantes answered this unauthorized sequel directly in the second part of his novel.
The Siege of Numantia: A tragedy by Cervantes about the ancient Celtiberian resistance to Roman conquest. Its tragic treatment of resistance reveals a different mode in Cervantes’s writing.
Metafiction: Fiction that draws attention to its own status as an invented work. Don Quixote repeatedly reflects on authorship, storytelling, and its own earlier episodes.

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