Miguel de Cervantes

Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra (September 29, 1547 – April 23, 1616), was a Spanish novelist, poet and playwright, best known for his immortal masterpiece Don Quixote de la Mancha, which is considered by many to be the first modern novel, one of the greatest works in Western literature and certainly the greatest of the Spanish language. It is one of the Encyclopedia Britannica's "Great Books of the Western World" and the Russian author Dostoyevsky called it "the ultimate and most sublime word of human thinking".

Cervantes' Historical Importance and Influence

Cervantes's masterpiece Don Quixote has had a tremendous influence on the development of prose fiction; it has been translated into all modern languages and has appeared in some 700 editions. The first translation in English, and also in any language, was made by Thomas Shelton in 1608, but not published till 1612.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Don Quixote has been the subject of a variety of works in other fields of art, including operas by the Italian composer Giovanni Paisiello, the French Jules Massenet, and the Spanish Manuel de Falla; a tone poem by the German composer Richard Strauss; a German film (1933) directed by G. W. Pabst and a Soviet film (1957) directed by Grigori Kozintzev; a ballet (1965) by George Balanchine; and an American musical, Man of La Mancha (1965), by Mitch Leigh.

Related Topics:
Giovanni Paisiello - Massenet - Manuel de Falla - Richard Strauss - Man of La Mancha

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Its influence can be seen in the work of Smollett, Defoe, Fielding, and Sterne, as well as in the classic 19th-century novelists Scott, Dickens, Flaubert, Melville, and Dostoyevsky. The theme also inspired the 19th-century French artists Honoré Daumier and Gustave Doré.

Related Topics:
Smollett - Defoe - Fielding - Sterne - Scott - Dickens - Flaubert - Melville - Dostoyevsky - Honoré Daumier - Gustave Doré

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~