Don Quixote Essay -- English Literature

Anyone who reads gull Quixote for the first time inevitably has some preconceptions closely it, beginning with the dictionary defMIGUEL DE CERVANTES SAAVEDRA was born in Alcala de Henares in Spainnear capital of Spain in 1547. Nothing is certainly known about his education,but by the age of twenty-three, he enrolled in the army as a mysticalsoldier. He was maimed for life in the battle of Lepanto and was takenprisoner by the Moors on his way home in 1575. After five-spot eld ofslavery, he was ransomed and two or three years after, he returned toSpain. He settled in Madrid and began a passably successful literarycareer, in which he wrote poetry, published a verdant romance, LaGalatea(1585), and had some twenty to thirty plays performed without,as he puts it, offerings of cucumbers or other throwable matter. Failing to attain financial success, he obtained an employment in theGovernment office as a commissioner of food supplies for the Armadaexpedition. He later became a tax col lector, a position that he helduntil 1597, when he was jailed for a shortage in his accounts dueto the dishonesty of an associate. The imprisonment on this occasionlasted until the end of the year, and, after a period of obscurity, heissued, in 1605, his masterpiece, El Ingenioso Hidalgo Don Quijote deLa Mancha (The Ingenious Hidalgo Don Quixote of La Mancha). Cervantesconfesses to having engendered Don Quixote in the prison. Itssuccess was great and immediate, and its reputation soon spread beyondSpain. The enthusiastic reception of Part spurred him to uncheckedliterary activity until his death- a gloriously creative old age inwhich he spotless Don Quixote Part (1615), his twelve ExemplaryNovels (1613), ... ... position, the femalecharacters such as Marcella and Dorothea in Don Quixote speakforcefully in defense of womens rights. secrete in structure and unevenin workmanship, it remains unsurpassed as a masterpiece of wittyhumor, as a picture of Spanish life, as a gallery of immortalportraits. It has in the highest degree the goal of all great art, thesuccessful combination of the particular and the universal it is consecutiveto the life of the country and age of its production, and true also togeneral humans nature everywhere and always. With reference to thefiction of the Middle Ages, it is a lordly satire with referenceto modern novels, it is the first and the most widely enjoyed. In itsauthors words It is so conspicuous and void of bar thatchildren may handle it, youths may read it, men may generalize it, andold men may celebrate it.