Neoclassical Piece

Lexy Benjamin

Ms. Wilson

Brit Lit B

May 8, 2013

Neoclassical Piece

            Miguel de Cervantes wrote a fairy tale story about his hero. In his story the hero is the “knight in rusty armor”, this is because in real life he is poor, therefore he can’t buy new shinny armor or even pay off debts he has. Miguel de Cervantes is in debt because of his career in the army. When he was in the army he was captured by pirates and was held for 5 years and he was let free because his family had to pay a ransom.

In de Cervantes book, his hero portrays himself and his hero. The main character’s name in the book is Don Quixote. Don Quixote encounters battles throughout the book just like he encountered battles in the army. I read a short excerpt from “The Ingenious Gentleman of Don Quixote of La Mancha”, called “from Don Quixote Chapter 8” in this part of the story it is telling about one of knight’s battles he encountered. The battle that is described in the book Don Quixote is about to face giants, but they aren’t real giants. His side kick knows that they are really windmills that are in a field and tries to get his master to understand that. Miguel de Cervantes bases the side kick in his book off of one of his friends for real life.

   

Miguel de Cervantes was very interested in books, but fairy tales was his all-time favorite type of book. This is because they have a hero, a fair lady, a squire and battles. He was most interested in the hero part of the book especially if the hero has a strong military values along with Christian values. Once Cervantes returns home from being enslaved, he starts reading a ton of books. While reading these books, he ends up going mad/crazy. But when he writes his book, he uses impossible dreams for his readers to be able to compare themselves and relate to the main character in the book. He also uses parodies in his book the relate Don Quixote in his ridiculousness to something just a s ridiculous. In his writing he also uses irony, incongruity and a twisted imitation. He uses all of these to make a fun book out of a knight in a fairy tale with romance. Before the adventure begins to set the world’s wrong into rights, in both Cervantes real life and for Don Quixote’s life, their family and friends tricks them into going back home.

Even though Miguel de Cervantes writes this book to get money to pay his debt, it doesn’t work out that way. He becomes all famous and wrote a book for nothing but to give his audience a laugh and have a relationship to a main character. The book, “The Ingenious Gentleman of Don Quixote of La Mancha” was published in 1605. It wasn’t long after being published, there were fake copies of the book showing up. Not long after the fakes showed up, there were translated copies of the book in English and French. When Miguel de Cervantes died, just the day before Shakespeare, to his family he left them debts, but to readers and fellow writers, he was known as the father of the modern novel.

In a section of Chapter 8 he uses a unique word choose and literary devices. “… thirty or forty windmills which were standing on the plain there…” The word standing is personification, although the windmills are upright, people stand and windmills are places upright. There are many other examples of his unique word choice and literary devices. These make his book hard to understand but funny. Miguel did a very nice job sing both to his advantage at lease throughout the section of chapter 8.