Miguel de Cervantes: The father of Don Quixote

By 50Minutes

Keen to learn but short on time? Find out everything you need to know about the life and work of Miguel de Cervantes in just 50 minutes with this straightforward and engaging guide!

Miguel de Cervantes is often considered to be the greatest Spanish-language writer of all time, and continues to inspire writers over 400 years after his death. He is best known for his monumental novel Don Quixote, but also wrote novellas, poetry and plays. Cervantes lived and worked during the Spanish Golden Age, an incredibly vibrant and exciting period for culture and the arts, and lived a tumultuous life marked by multiple stints in prison. He took inspiration from his experiences when writing his fiction, resulting in an incredibly rich and varied body of work featuring colourful and memorable characters from all strata of society.

In this book, you will learn about:
• The major cultural and artistic developments of the Spanish Golden Age
• Cervantes’s major works, including Don Quixote and the Novelas ejemplares
• The impact of Cervantes’s writing and his influence on later writers

ABOUT 50MINUTES.COM | Art & Literature
The Art & Literature series from the 50Minutes collection aims to introduce readers to the figures and movements that have shaped our culture over the centuries. Our guides are written by experts in their field and each feature a full biography, an introduction to the relevant social, political and historical context, and a thorough discussion and analysis of the key works of each artist, writer or movement, making them the ideal starting point for busy readers looking for a quick way to broaden their cultural horizons.

• Language: English
• Publisher: 50Minutes.com
• Release date: Nov 23, 2017
• ISBN: 9782808005203

Book preview

Miguel de Cervantes

Name: Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra.

Born: around 29 September 1547 in Alcalá de Henares, near Madrid.

Died: buried on 23 April 1616 in Madrid.

Context: during Cervantes’s time, Spain was undergoing a period of political decline, but this was offset by a flourishing cultural scene, with considerable developments across all the arts and particularly in literature.

Notable works:

The Siege of Numantia (1585), play

La Galatea (1585), pastoral romance

Don Quixote (first volume 1605; second volume 1615), novel

Novelas ejemplares (1613), collection of novellas

The Trials of Persiles and Sigismunda (1617), novel

Miguel de Cervantes is a towering figure of 16th- and 17th-century Spanish literature, and is widely considered to be the country’s greatest ever writer. In spite of his relatively humble origins, his life was almost as adventure-packed as those of his heroes, with stints as the secretary of a future cardinal, a soldier, a prisoner of war, a tax collector and a fugitive suspected of murder. Even so, he somehow found the time to produce a vast body of work, comprising poems, plays, novellas and novels, between 1569 and his death in 1616.

It is worth mentioning that Cervantes was working in a context that provided no shortage of inspiration: the Spanish Golden Age. Although the country was declining politically, its artistic output was thriving. Painters, writers, architects and musicians reached dizzying heights of creativity and produced some of Spain’s greatest masterpieces. In spite of his undeniable talent for theatre and poetry, Cervantes could not match the innovations of his contemporaries in these fields; instead, he left his mark on literature with his novels and novellas. By parodying earlier forms, in particular the chivalric romance, he left his mark on the genre of the picaresque