Miguel de Cervantes: Life and Literary Legacy

Miguel de Cervantes: A Life of Trouble

Early Life: Youth in Spain, the trip to Italy, and his return home.

• Lived in Valladolid, Cordoba, Seville, and Madrid, where he trained under the Erasmian writer Lopez de Hoyos.
• In 1569, he moved to Italy and participated in the Battle of Lepanto, where he lost the use of his left hand.
• Cervantes and his brother were taken captive to Algiers, where he remained a prisoner for five years.
• He tried his luck in various jobs.
• He was jailed twice; during his second stay in prison, Don Quixote was engendered.

Cervantes as a Novelist

Cervantes wrote many poems but realized he lacked a gift for poetry, as seen in The Journey of Parnassus (1614), which praises Spanish poets. Theater was his great vocation, resulting in eight comedies and eight interludes (1613).

La Galatea

This is a pastoral novel consisting of six books. The first part appeared in 1585. Cervantes promised a second part but never managed to write it. La Galatea contains all the essential ingredients of the pastoral genre.

Exemplary Novels (1613)

This collection consists of twelve short novels. Cervantes gave them this name for two reasons:

• They possess a moral purpose, in the style of medieval exempla.
• The Italian word novella referred to short stories, whereas longer works were called treatises or books.

Types of Novels:

• Realistic: Rinconete and Cortadillo, The Licentiate Vidriera, and The Dialogue of the Dogs.
• Idealist: The Illustrious Spanish Maid, The Little Gypsy, and others.

Characteristic features of these narrations:

• The importance of dialogue as an innovative element.
• The absence of detailed urban landscape descriptions.
• The exemplary nature of Cervantes' work, which highlights faults and vices for rejection.

The Works of Persiles and Sigismunda

This is a Byzantine novel written in clean, careful prose. Persiles and Sigismunda follows a prince and a beautiful, virtuous princess traveling tirelessly as siblings. Cervantes built the work upon three novel concepts:

• The Byzantine form: Allowed characters to move through diverse geographical areas and attractions.
• The structure of the chain of being: The novel follows a structure where all creation is a link in a chain, with each element larger than its predecessor but smaller than its successor.
• Pilgrimage as a symbol: The transience of life, where the pilgrim becomes a central literary character.