Miguel de Cervantes
Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra was a Spanish novelist, poet, playwright and soldier who was born in 1547 and died in 1616. He is considered to be the most important writer of Spanish literature of all times and his masterpiece, El Quijote (published between 1605 and 1615) is often quoted as the first novel in the modern sense of the word.
Life
Born in Alcalá de Henares his father was a minor doctor and descendant of New Christians, meaning his family ancestor were Jews who has become Catholics to avoid the expulsion of Iberian Peninsula. In 1551, Cervantes and his family moved to Valladolid and them to Cordoba to scape from family debts and creditors. There is no certain information of Cervante's first studies but it's sure he didn't get to university and that he studied in a Jesuit school.
In 1566 he settled in Madrid were he studied in El Estudio de la Villa, a grammar school and he published two poems as part of a book whose main author was his teacher. While living in Madrid he started going often to theater plays and became interested in playwright. Between 1569 and 1570 Cervantes travelled to Italy where he got inbuhed in the cultural enviroment reading Ariosto's and other's poetry. That way, he was influence by neoplatonism, a philosophical view that can be found in many of his works, specially in those about love. After serving a Catholic Cardinal he enrolled in the Spanish Army and fought in the Battle of Lepanto where he losted the movility of his left hand. Taking part in this battle was a reason for pround and Cervantes wrotte in El Quijote that the battle has been the most noble and memorable event that past centuries have seen or future can ever hope to witness.
Five years later, while travelling from Napoli to Spain his ship was captured by muslim pirats and he spent five years imprisioned in Argel in very poor conditions. To show his heroic behavior while he was his imprisionent he wrotte Topografía, a book about his captivity of disputed authorship.[1]
Notes
External links
Further reading
- Castro, Américo: El pensamiento de Cervantes, Crítica, 1987
- Alvar, Carlos; Menéndez y Pelayo, Marcelino; Sevilla Arroyo, Florencio: Cervantes, cultura literaria, Centro de Estudios Cervantinos, Alcalá de Henares, España, 2001. ISBN 84-88333-15-3.