Cervantes, Anti-Romance, and the Novella

Abstract

This chapter looks at how Miguel de Cervantes' writing influenced the genesis and development of the English novel. His most influential writings, Don Quijote and the Novelas ejemplares of 1613, were published at a time of exceptional English interest in Spanish culture — a country reopened to diplomatic relations in 1604 after nearly half a century of continuous rivalry and warfare. In destroying the enchantment of romance, Cervantes Saavedra's El ingenioso hidalgo don Quijote de la Mancha (1605–15) fatally undermined those values upon which the glory of the Spanish Golden Age rested, and ushered in an era of decadence and decline. However, he was not the first writer to parody knight-errantry. Nevertheless, a persuasive case can be made that the publication of Don Quijote was one crucial factor in the creation of an early modern sense of what medievalism was.