Don Quixote

Don Quixote, or the full title The Ingenious Gentleman Don Quixote of La Mancha, is a satire novel written by Spanish novelist, poet and playwright Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, published in two volumes in 1605 and 1615. It is regarded as the most influential work of literature from the Spanish Golden Age. The story tells about adventures of Alonso Quixano, a hidalgo who reads so many chivalric novels, that loses his sanity and decides to begin a journey to bring justice to the world under the name Don Quixote. He hires a farmer named Sancho Panza as squire, who often deals with Quixote’s rhetorical orations with unique earthly wit. In the first part of the book Don Quixote doesn’t see the world as it is and imagines that he lives in the world of knighthood. The novel touches such themes as realism, intertextuality, metatheatre and literary representation.