Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

Miguel de Cervantes (Known as "El Manco de Lepanto / Father of the Modern Novel")

Spanish Golden Age Novelist, Poet, Playwright, Soldier

Born 29 September 1547 (Baptism)

Alcalá de Henares (Madrid), Spain

Passed Away 22 April 1616 Madrid, Spain

Lifespan ~69 years old

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Notice / Correction

"When life itself seems lunatic, who knows where madness lies? To surrender dreams—this may be madness. To seek treasure where there is only trash. Too much sanity may be madness! And maddest of all, to see life as it is and not as it should be!"

Archival Overview

Titan of the Spanish Golden Age and creator of Don Quixote de la Mancha (1605/1615), universally revered as the first modern European novel and the eternal archetype of the noble dreamer tilting at windmills.

Biographical Record

Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra (1547–1616) lived a life as dramatic as any adventure romance. Enlisting in the Spanish naval infantry, he fought heroically in 1571 at the Battle of Lepanto, receiving three gunshot wounds that permanently crippled his left hand, earning him the nickname El Manco de Lepanto ('the One-Handed of Lepanto'). In 1575, captured by Ottoman corsairs, he endured five harrowing years of captivity and slave labor in Algiers before being ransomed.

Returning to Spain, impoverished and imprisoned for administrative debts, Cervantes conceived his crowning masterpiece: Don Quixote (published in two parts, 1605 and 1615). Juxtaposing the idealistic, gaunt knight-errant Don Quixote with his pragmatic, proverb-spouting squire Sancho Panza, Cervantes satirized chivalric romances while birthing the polyphonic modern novel, examining the boundary between illusion and reality with boundless humanity.

Key Life Milestones

16 January 1605 CE

Publication of El Ingenioso Hidalgo Don Quijote de la Mancha

Published Part I of Don Quixote in Madrid, creating an immediate global phenomenon and birthing the modern novel.

1615 CE

Publication of Don Quixote Part II

Published the second part of Don Quixote, introducing groundbreaking metafictional self-awareness into world literature.

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Final Resting Place

Perpetual Memorial

Convento de las Trinitarias Descalzas (Monastery of the Barefoot Trinitarians)
Madrid, Spain

                         GPS: 40.4131, -3.6961                    

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