Cervantes: The Man and The Legend

Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra was a great Spanish novelist, dramatist, and poet who lived in a period that spanned the climax and decline of Spain's golden age. He was known as the Father of The Novel and as the outstanding writer in Spanish literature. His most famous masterpiece, Don Quixote, was ranked as one of the greatest novels of all time. During his life Cervantes was a wounded veteran of a ferocious naval battle, and a captive of a eastern potantate. The incidents of his captivity later became episodes in Don Quixote. His writings showed the influence of literary theory, pastoral novels, and romances of chivalry.1

Cervantes was born on September 29?, 1547 in the university town of Alcala de Henares. His family lived at 2 Calle de la Imagen, a street in a quarter of the city heavily settled by Maravos and Moriscos. Cervantes was the fourth son in a family of seven children. He was the son of a surgeon and a daughter of the small landowners in nearby Arganda, but a surgeon in 16th century Spain was closer to a barber or a butcher than a doctor. For this reason poverty dogged the Cervantes family throughout Miguel's youth and also because none of the wealth or property acquired by his father's family was shared with Miguel's family, who was looked upon as an incompetent provider.2 When he was twenty, Cervantes was in the retinue of the Cardinal Nuncio