Cervantes (1547 - 1616)
Related: Don Quixote (1605 - 1615) - 1600s - fiction - novel - literature - modern novel - postmodern novel - chivalric romance - Spain
Contemporaries: El Greco - Hendrik Goltzius - Elizabeth Bathory - Shakespeare -
Biography
Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra (September 29, 1547 - April 23, 1616), was a Spanish author, best known for his novel Don Quixote de la Mancha. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miguel_de_Cervantes [Jan 2005]Don Quixote (1605) - Cervantes
It is ironic that Cervantes's Don Quixote is described as the first novel (an extended work of prose fiction, written in "vulgar Latin", i.e. the people's language), the first modern novel (due to its focus on the psychological evolution of a single character) and the first postmodern novel (due of its use of self-reflexivity in the second volume).
The novel also introduced Sancho Panza, the first use of the sidekick stock character.
Origin of the modern European novel
The picaresque novel and the famous Don Quixote de la Mancha (1605) are generally considered to be the origin of the modern European novel, characterized by realism. For example:- Anon, Lazarillo de Tormes (Spanish, 1554).
- Mateo Alemán, Guzmán de Alfarache (Spanish, 1599).
- Cervantes, Don Quixote (Spanish, 1605).
- Francisco de Quevedo, El buscón (Spanish, 1626), masterpiece of the picaresque subgenre.
- Grimmelshausen, Simplicissimus (German, 1669), the most important of the non-Spanish picaresque novels.