Don Quixote Essay -- English Literature

Anyone who reads wear Quixote for the first time inevitably has some preconceptions about 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 privatesoldier. He was maimed for life in the battle of Lepanto and was takencaptive by the Moors on his way home in 1575. After five years ofslavery, he was ransomed and two or three years later, he returned toSpain. He settled in Madrid and began a moderately successful literarycareer, in which he wrote poetry, published a pastoral 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 collector, a position that he helduntil 1597, when he was imprisoned 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 completed 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. Loose in mental synthesis and unevenin workmanship, it remains unsurpassed as a masterpiece of wittyhumor, as a picture of Spanish life, as a heading of immortalportraits. It has in the highest degree the mark of all great art, thesuccessful combination of the particular and the universal it is veritableto the life of the country and age of its production, and true also togeneral human nature everywhere and always. With reference to thefiction of the Middle Ages, it is a triumphant satire with referenceto modern novels, it is the first and the nearly widely enjoyed. In itsauthors words It is so conspicuous and void of difficulty thatchildren whitethorn handle it, youths may read it, men may understand it, andold men may celebrate it.