tilting at windmills

TILTING AT WINDMILLS

MIGUEL DE CERVANTES

MIGUEL DE CERVANTES

• The exact date of his birth is not known, but it is probable that he was born on September 29, the feast day of Saint Michael the Archangel, given the tradition to name a child with the name of the feast day of his birth.

• His father was Rodrigo de Cervantes, a surgeon of Galician descen

• While in Tomar, Portugal, in 1581, Cervantes was given money to accomplish a royal mission to Oran.

• On December 12, 1584, Cervantes married Doña Catalina de Palacios Salazar y Vozmediano, from Esquivias, in the old kingdom of Toledo, Spain.

• It is very probable that Cervantes was jailed again for financial reasons. Most of his time must have been taken up by the writing of Don Quixote. In January 1605 Don Quixote was published in Madrid. It was an immediate success. In the words of the German philosopher F. W. J. von Schellin

“TILTING AT WINDMILLS”

• Attacking imaginary enemies.

• The phrase derives from an episode in the novel Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes. In the novel, Don Quixote fights windmills that he imagines to be giants. Quixote sees the windmill blades as the giant's arms.

• Part I published in 1605; Part II in 1615.

• Don Quixote is considered the most influential work of literature from the Spanish Golden Age and the entire Spanish literary canon.

• Don Quixote was cited as the "best literary work ever written".

• As a founding work of modern Western literature, and one of the earliest canonical novels, it regularly appears high on lists of the greatest works of fiction ever published.

•TILTING AT WINDMILLS

STORY