Miguel de Cervantes

Miguel de Cervantes (1547–1616) was a Spanish novelist, poet and dramatist whose Don Quixote became foundational to the modern novel. The book sends a reader of chivalric romances into a world that refuses to obey inherited plots, pairing Don Quixote's idealism with Sancho Panza's practical intelligence. Their journey is comic, but the comedy keeps changing direction: delusion can expose cruelty, and apparent common sense can prove morally narrow. Competing narrators, discovered manuscripts and stories within stories make truth a problem shared by characters and readers. The novel also asks what happens when a person chooses a literary identity more compelling than ordinary life. Don Quixote is therefore both an adventure and a book about reading; its early episodes provide the clearest route into Cervantes's play with authorship, reality and freedom.