Don Quixote (part I; 1605; part II 1615) - Often called the first modern novel, originally conceived as a comic satire against the chivalric romances. The work has been interpreted in many ways since its appearance. It has been seen as a veiled attack on the Catholic Church or on the contemporary Spanish politics, or symbolizing the duality of the Spanish character. Cervantes himself had believed in uplifting rhetoric, fought for Spain, and when he returned to Madrid after slavery, he found out that the government ignored his services. The English writer Ford Madox Ford stated in The March of Literature (1938) that Cervantes did with his book to the world a disservice: "The gentle ideal of chivalry is the one mediaeval trait which, had it survived as an influence, might have saved our unfortunate civilization."
"Every one is as God made him and oftentimes a good deal worse."
Neither wholly tragedy nor wholly comedy Don Quixote gives a panoramic view of the 17th-century Spanish society. Central characters are the elderly, idealistic knight, who sets out on his old horse Rosinante to seek adventure, and the materialistic squire Sancho Panza, who accompanies his master from failure to another. Their relationship, although they argue most fiercely, is ultimately founded upon mutual respect. In the debates they gradually take on some of each other's attributes.
"It seems to me," said Sancho, "that the knights who did all these things were driven to them... but... why should you go crazy? What lady has rejected you...? "That is exactly it," replied Don Quixote, "that's just how beautifully I've worked it all out - because for a knight errant to go crazy for good reason, how much is that worth? My idea is to become a lunatic for no reason at all..."
Before the good Knight of La Mancha dubs himself Don Quixote, his name is Quijida or Quesada. His is a country gentleman, around fifty. During his travels, dressed in a old, black suit of armor, Don Quixote's overexcited imagination blinds him to reality: he thinks windmills to be giants, flocks of sheep to be armies, and galley-slaves to be oppressed gentlemen. Sancho is named governor of the isle of Barataria, a mock title, and Don Quixote is bested in a duel with the Knight of the White Moon, in reality a student of his acquaintance in disguise. Don Quixote is passionately devoted to his own imaginative creation, the beautiful Dulcinea. "Oh Dulcinea de Tobosa, day of my night, glory of my suffering, true North and compass of every path I take, guiding star of my fate..." The hero returns to La Mancha, and only at his deathbed Don Quixote confesses the folly of his past adventures. – Cervantes's influence is seen among others in the works of Sir Walter Scott, Charles Dickens, Gustave Flaubert, Herman Melville, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, also in the works of James Joyce and Jorge Luis Borges, who wrote a short story about an author, Pierre Menard, who undertook to compose Don Quixote – not another Quixote, but the Quixote. After studies of Spanish, history, and the Catholic faith, he writes the novel, word for word. " Cervantes's text and Menard's are verbally identical, but the second is almost infinitely richer. (More ambiguous, his detractors will say, but ambiguity is richness.)" - Borges in 'Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote