Miguel Cervantes
Miguel Cervantes and William Shakespeare, two authors at the pinnacle of the cultural rebirth of Europe during the 1500s, ironically died on the same date (this fact is a bit confused by the distinction between the Julian and Gregorian calendar. Indeed they both died on the date of April 23, 1616, but England had not converted to the Gregorian Calendar, so they did not die on the same day, but they did on the same date, as Spain's Julian calendar correlated Cervantes' death to Shakepseare's). Shakespeare even read Cervantes' masterpiece The Delightful History of the Most Ingenious Knight Don Quixote of La Mancha, but it is probable that Cervantes never even heard of Shakespeare, let alone read one of his plays or poems. This distinction between two men of equal literary merit can be seen as an allegory for Miguel Cervantes' entire life: he lived in obscurity, while receiving much praise posthumously.
It took historians until the mid-1800s to discover where Don Miguel Cervantes de Saavedra was born. The setting is in the small Spanish town of Alcalá de Henares, close to the capital of Madrid. Miguel was born as the fourth child of seven, but the second son of Don Rodrigo de Cervantes y Saavedra in 1547. The date of Miguel's birth remains just as nebulous as the conditions of his death. It was common practice in Spain at the time of Miguel's birth to name a child after the Saint that enjoys the namesake of the date the child was born on. St. Michael's Feast is September 29th, though it was confirmed that Miguel was baptized on October 7th (in the same document that confirmed the location of his birth), so he could have realistically been born on any day in early October or late September. After his birth Migue...
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...e obscurity Cervantes embodied during his.
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Authors from Mexican decent are often know for their Chicano literature. It can be dated back to the 16th century written by Spanish explorer Alvar Nunez Cabeza de Vaca. Although, most Mexican American Literature is dated after 1848. During the Mexican-American war, when they annexed large parts of land that used to be Mexico. There are many trends to Chicano literature, most common theme of discrimination, finding identity, dealing with differences in culture and history. Especially emphasizing the Chicano culture and experience in the United States, many themes portrayed in most Chicano novels, consist of writing in “Spanglish” Spanish and English, involvement in migration, immigration and political stands.
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Poe, Edgar Allen. "The Cask of Amontillado." In An Introduction to Literature, by Sylvan Barnet, William Burto and William E. Cain, 180-185. New York: Pearson Longman, 2006.
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Don Quixote is a classic novel although now a days many may not be entirely familiar with it. The story of Don Quixote is filled with legendary actions that have survived our native tough. The phrase and labels that tell the title come from someone deeply impractical. Don Quixote at the age of fifty has not quite had what one would call a wild life, so far. He has never been married and still lives at home. He has however found his calling in life, the profession of knighthood: "he was spurred on by the conviction that the world needed his immediate presence..." (Book 1, Part 2). So the tales begin.
Ellis, Elizabeth Gaynor, and Anthony Esler. World History: The Modern Era. Boston: Pearson Prentice Hall, 2007. Print.
Don Quixote is one of the oldest forms of the modern novel. Written in the early 17th century it follows the adventures of Don Quixote and his sidekick Sancho Panza. In Don Quixote, Cervantes satirizes the idea of a hero. Don Quixote sees himself as a noble knight among the ignorant common folk, but everyone else sees him as a bumbling idiot who has gone mad. Therefore, the novel’s longevity in the western canon is due to the humorous power struggle and the quest of a hero Don Quixote faces throughout the story.
Miguel de Cervantes' greatest literary work, Don Quixote, maintains an enduring, if somewhat stereotypical image in the popular culture: the tale of the obsessed knight and his clownish squire who embark on a faith-driven, adventure-seeking quest. However, although this simple premise has survived since the novel's inception, and spawned such universally known concepts or images as quixotic idealism and charging headlong at a group of "giants" which are actually windmills, Cervantes' motivation for writing Don Quixote remains an untold story. Looking at late fifteenth- and early sixteenth-century Spain from the viewpoint of a Renaissance man, Cervantes came to dislike many aspects of the age in which he lived, and decided to satirize what he saw as its failings; however, throughout the writing of what would become his most famous work, Cervantes was torn by a philosophical conflict which pervaded the Renaissance and its intellectuals--the clash of faith and reason.