El ingenioso hidalgo don Quijote de la Mancha / Don Quixote de la Mancha
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Autor:
Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
Country:
Italy (IT)
Book Theme:
European writers “without borders”
Publisher:
Bompiani
Publishing Year:
2012
Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra lived from 1547 until 1616 in a period that spanned the climax and decline of Spain’s golden age.When he was twenty, Miguel was in the retinue of the Cardinal Nuncio Acquaviva and spent his service in Rome. Joining the army, he participated in the battle of Lepanto where the Spanish established superiority of seapower against the Turks. Sick below decks, Cervantes insisted on joining the battle in a most exposed position.He fought bravely, receiving two shots in his chest and a wound that rendered his left hand useless the rest of his life.In 1580, Cervantes returned to Spain.Cervantes married the daughter of a well-to-do farmer, Catalina Salaza. Bookkeeping was complicated he was twice imprisoned for owing money to the treasury from a shortage in his accounts.
National Award for Children’s and Young People’s
Abstract
Don Quixote is a middle-aged gentleman from the region of La Mancha in central Spain.
Obsessed with the chivalrous ideals touted in books he has read, he decides to take up his lance and sword to defend the helpless and destroy the wicked. After a first failed adventure, he sets out on a second one with a somewhat befuddled laborer named Sancho Panza, whom he has persuaded to accompany him as his faithful squire. In return for Sancho’s services, Don Quijote promises to make Sancho the wealthy governor of an isle. On his horse, Rocinante, a barn nag well past his prime, Don Quixote rides the roads of Spain in search of glory and grand adventure. He gives up
food, shelter, and comfort, all in the name of a peasant woman, Dulcinea del Toboso, whom he
envisions as a princess.On his second expedition, Don Quixote becomes more of a bandit than a savior, stealing from and hurting baffled and justifiably angry citizens while acting out against what he perceives as threats to his knighthood or to the world. Don Quixote abandons a boy, leaving him in the hands of an evil farmer simply because the farmer swears an oath that he will not harm the boy. He steals a barber’s basin that he believes to be the mythic Mambrino’s helmet, and he becomes convinced of the healing powers of the Balsam of Fierbras, an elixir that makes him so ill that, by comparison, he later feels healed. Sancho stands by Don Quixote, often bearing the brunt of the punishments that arise from Don Quixote’s behavior.
