Don Quixote
Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
Don Quixote
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An elderly gentleman reads so many chivalric romances that he decides to become a knight, names a farm horse Rocinante, recruits a neighbouring labourer as his squire and rides out to right the wrongs of a world that stopped having them centuries ago. Often called the first modern novel, and still the funniest and the saddest.
About the book
Published in two parts, in 1605 and 1615, Don Quixote begins with a country gentleman of about fifty who has sold land to buy books of chivalry and read himself out of his senses. He polishes his great-grandfather’s armour, renames his horse Rocinante and a farm girl he has barely seen Dulcinea del Toboso, and rides out to revive knight-errantry, taking as his squire a neighbouring labourer who has been promised an island to govern. The second part is the stranger one: its characters have read the first, and the Quixote is now famous, so a duke and duchess stage elaborate entertainments at his expense and Sancho gets his island. Cervantes wrote it partly in answer to a rival sequel published under someone else’s name. It is commonly called the first modern novel, and it is the first book to be about the reading of books.
Characters
Don Quixote — Protagonist
Alonso Quijano of La Mancha, who reads himself into a knight-errant and refuses every correction.
Sancho Panza — Squire
An illiterate labourer with a proverb for everything, following for the promise of an island to govern.
Dulcinea del Toboso — The lady
A farm girl from a nearby village, elevated to peerless beauty and never actually met in the book.
Rocinante — The horse
A bony old nag renamed over four days of thought, and treated throughout as a warhorse.
Samson Carrasco — Student
A young graduate who takes up arms as a rival knight, twice, in order to send the old man home.
The priest and the barber — Neighbours
Friends from the village who burn the library, then follow him across Spain in a succession of disguises.
Teresa Panza — Sancho’s wife
Sceptical of every promise her husband brings home, and the only one asking what the island pays.
About the author
Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra (1547–1616) was a Spanish soldier, tax collector and novelist who had lived most of an eventful life before he wrote the book he is known for. He was shot three times at the battle of Lepanto and lost the use of his left hand; on the way home he was captured by corsairs and spent five years enslaved in Algiers, attempting escape four times. Back in Spain he requisitioned grain for the Armada and was jailed over the accounts. He published the first part of Don Quixote at fifty-seven, and wrote the second after another author brought out a spurious sequel.