DON QUIXOTE

Spanish in full El Ingenioso Hidalgo Don Quijote De La Mancha, novel published in two parts (Part I, 1605; Part II, 1615) by Miguel de Cervantes, one of the most widely read classics of Western literature. Originally conceived as a comic satire against the chivalric romances then in literary vogue, it describes realistically what befalls an elderly knight who, his head bemused by reading romances, sets out on his old horse Rosinante, with his pragmatic squire Sancho Panza, to seek adventure. Widely and immediately translated (first English translation in 1612), the novel was a great and continuing success. Modern English translations include those by J.M. Cohen (1950) and Samuel Putnam (2 vol., 1959).