Miguel De Cervantes SaavedraEssay Preview: Miguel De Cervantes SaavedraReport this essayMiguel de Cervantes Saavedra, Spanish novelist, playwright, poet, and creator of Don Quixote, is the most famous figure in Spanish literature. His writings have become legendary, influencing many of today’s writers. Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra lived an unsettled life of hardship and adventure.
To begin he was born in AlcalДЎ de Henares, a small town near Madrid, into a family of the minor nobility. Much of his childhood Cervantes spent moving from town to town while his father sought work. In the year 1570 Cervantes joined a Spanish regiment in Naples. He took part in the sea battle at Lepanto during which he received a wound that permanently maimed his left hand. Cervantes was extremely proud of his role in the famous victory and of the nickname he earned, el manco de Lepanto (the cripple of Lepanto). After recuperation in Messina, Sicily, he continued his military career. In 1575 he set out with his brother Rodrigo on the galley El Sol for Spain. The ship was captured by pirates under Arnaute Mami and the brothers were taken to Algiers as slaves. Rodrigo was ransomed in 1577. The Moors thought that Cervantes was a more valuable captive because he had carried letters written by important persons. Cervantes spent five years as a slave until his family could raise enough money to pay his ransom. During this period he tried to escape several times without success. Cervantes was released in 1580, with the payment of 500 escudos raised by his family and the Trinitarian order. His first play, Los Tratos de Argel , was based on his experiences as a Moorish captive. He died on April 23, 1616. Three days before he had finished his novel The Exploits of Persiles and Sigismunda, dedicated to the Count of Lemos.
Neither wholly tragedy nor wholly comedy Don Quixote gives a panoramic view of the 17th-century Spanish society. Central characters are the elderly, idealistic knight, who sets out on his old horse Rosinante to seek adventure, and the materialistic squire Sancho Panza, who accompanies his master from failure to another. Their relationship, although they argue most fiercely, is ultimately founded upon mutual respect. In the debates they gradually take on some of each others attributes. During his travels, dressed in a old, black suit of armor, Don Quixotes overexcited imagination blinds him to reality: he thinks windmills to be giants, flocks of sheep to be armies, and galley-slaves to be oppressed gentlemen.
The Spanish are a deeply religious and secular people, in spite of the fact that some of them were baptized and believed that the soul of Christ, and of other saints, was within us, not God or his “faith-bringing powers” (cf. Eusebius, III). To this day, and particularly with the exception of the early 16th century, most people do not take any spiritual cues from these beliefs.
Wealthy Spanish aristocrats, not unlike those who are descended from the aristocratic classes of that century of the Spanish conquest of England and the conquest of Mexico, developed an unquenchable thirst for superstition and myth. These people believed that people and things were connected and could be manipulated by magical means, and as a consequence, they often sought to destroy it.
The nobility, however, were well versed to this fact. Though they were well acquainted with the superstition, a very small percentage of them believed some of its claims in more than one setting and, more often. These aristocrats became notorious and were a subject of constant satire. They even carried out “voter intimidation” in elections which were sometimes called and, although never to the same effect in all cases, sometimes to the same effect. This satire caused great harm and many were punished. Most of these aristocrats died at the hands of the Spanish people during the time of Don Quixote, though they eventually left for an advanced age of life (although they have since regained their prominence to the point where their death is not counted among the deaths of the people of Spain for a century, as much as was the death of a major figure in the early 1700s). Most prominent was the very same wealthy family who were often depicted as being the victims of the Spanish people who had come after them. In the 17th century, they were blamed for their troubles on the Spanish government, though they did not directly suffer any of the public violence directed against them. In fact, several of their aristocratic families, including the family patriarchs of all the wealthiest families in Spain, were murdered. Some were even assassinated by Franco during the Franco dictatorship. The last of them was probably the most powerful of these aristocrats, the family patriarch of the first Portuguese governor, Jorge de Andol, who had to be shot because of his corruption. He later died in 1670 of arsenic poisoning. His funeral was held in his castle in Siena.
Some people believe that a group of aristocrats is the origin of the notion of “happiness”. These people (particularly the middle class) saw that they needed a good quality of life, provided they were honest, generous and patient. They became very devout for this reason and they made them wealthy. There were other family