Don Quixote

By Miguel de Cervantes
Who is Miguel de Cervantes?
• Born: September 29, 1547
• Died: April 22, 1616
• Spanish novelist, playwright,
and poet.
Works
Alonso Quijano is a middle-aged
gentle man from the region of La
Mancha in central Spain. He is
obsessed in reading books about
chivalry. Quijano sells off a large
portion of his land and farming in
order to buy more books on the
subject of chivalry. His brain had
dried up from lack of sleep and
excessive reading, and he had
become mentally ill.
 He decides to become knight-errant,
he take up his lance and sword, and
he assumes the name Don Quixote.
He then declares that his old nag is
the noble steed Rocinante. According
to Don Quixote, a knight-errant also
needs a lady to love, and he selects a
peasant girl from a nearby town,
christening her Dulcinea del Toboso.
 He has already begun to travel and do
heroic deeds. He arrives in a boarding
house, which he believes is a castle, and
insists that the innkeeper knight him.
After being told that he must carry
money and extra clothes, Don Quixote
decides to go home. On his way, he
picks a fight with a group of merchants,
and they beat him. When he recovers,
he persuades the peasant Sancho Panza
to act as his squire with the promise
that Sancho will one day get an island
to rule.
• In their first adventure, Don Quixote
mistakes a field of windmills for giants
and attempts to fight them but finally
concludes that a magician must have
turned the giants into windmills.
• He later attacks a group of monks,
thinking that they have imprisoned a
princess, and also does battle with a
herd of sheep, among other
adventures, almost all of which end
with Don Quixote, Sancho, or both
being beaten.
• Eventually, Don Quixote acquires a
metal washbasin from a barber,
which he believes is a helmet once
worn by a famous knight, and he
later frees a group of convicted
criminals.
 Don Quixote encounters Cardenio,
who lives like wild man in the woods
that the woman he loves, Luscinda,
betrayed him. Don Quixote decides
to emulate him to prove his great
love for Dulcinea, and he sends
Sancho to deliver a letter to her.
When Sancho stops at a boarding
house he finds two of Don Quixote’s
old friends, a priest and a barber,
looking for him.
They decide that one of them should
pretend to be a maiden in distress to
try to lure Don Quixote to go home.
On the journey, they meet a young
woman, Dorotea, who is betrayed by
Don Fernando, who marries
Luscinda. Dorotea agrees to pretend
to be a princess whose kingdom has
been seized by a giant, and Don
Quixote is persuaded to help her.
• Later, the priest and the barber put
Don Quixote in a wooden cage and
persuade him that he is under an
enchantment that will take him to
Dulcinea. Eventually, they return him
home.
• He becomes convinced that Dulcinea is
under an enchantment that has turned
her into an ordinary peasant girl.
• Don Quixote meets a Duke and a
Duchess who conspire to play tricks on
him.
• In one such ruse, they persuade the
two men that Sancho must give
himself 3,300 lashes to break the
curse on Dulcinea.
• The duke later makes Sancho the
governor of a town that he tells
Sancho is the isle of Barataria.
• However, after a week in office and
being subjected to other pranks, he
decides to give up the governorship.
• Eventually, Don Quixote and Sancho
leave. Don Quixote decides to go to
Barcelona. Following various
adventures there, Don Quixote is
challenged by the Knight of the White
Moon and he is defeated.
• According to the terms of the battle,
Don Quixote is required to return
home.
• After they arrive home, Don Quixote
falls ill, renounces chivalry as foolish
fiction, and dies.