Don Quixote de La Mancha
SynopsisPlot
Widely regarded as the world's first modern novel, Don Quixote chronicles the famous picaresque adventures of the noble knight-errant Don Quixote de La Mancha and his faithful squire, Sancho Panza, as they travel through sixteenth-century Spain.
Story
About this book
Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra's novel follows an aging gentleman from La Mancha, a dry plain in central Spain, who reads so many tales of chivalry that he loses hold of ordinary life. He renames himself Don Quixote, declares himself a knight-errant, and rides out to right wrongs. Beside him goes Sancho Panza, a practical farmer serving as squire in hope of one day governing an island.
The book appeared in two parts, the first in 1605 and the second in 1615, and is widely described as the first modern novel. Cervantes gathers several kinds of storytelling into one frame: pastoral episodes, roadside comedy, and short tales told by people the pair meet. The knight's horse is bony and his armour improvised, and the giants he charges turn out to be windmills.
Set among the plains, inns, and rural roads of sixteenth-century Spain, the story keeps returning to the gap between what Don Quixote sees and what is there. The bond between knight and squire shifts as they travel, each taking on something of the other, and the comedy carries a steady question about idealism meeting the ordinary world.
