The cave of
Medrano (also known as the
casa de Medrano) in
Argamasilla de Alba, which has been known since the beginning of the 17th century, and according to the tradition of Argamasilla de Alba, was the prison of Miguel de Cervantes and the place where he conceived and began to write his famous work "
Don Quixote de la Mancha."
Sources Sources for
Don Quixote include the Castilian novel
Amadis de Gaula, which had enjoyed great popularity throughout the 16th century. Another prominent source, which Cervantes evidently admires more, is
Tirant lo Blanch, which the priest describes in Chapter VI of
Quixote as "the best book in the world." (However, the sense in which it was "best" is much debated among scholars. Since the 19th century, the passage has been called "the most difficult passage of
Don Quixote".) The scene of the book burning provides a list of Cervantes's likes and dislikes about literature. Cervantes makes a number of references to the Italian poem
Orlando furioso. In chapter 10 of the first part of the novel, Don Quixote says he must take the magical helmet of
Mambrino, an episode from Canto I of
Orlando, and itself a reference to
Matteo Maria Boiardo's
Orlando innamorato. The interpolated story in chapter 33 of Part four of the First Part is a retelling of a tale from Canto 43 of
Orlando, regarding a man who tests the fidelity of his wife. Another important source appears to have been Apuleius's
The Golden Ass, one of the earliest known novels, a picaresque from late classical antiquity. The wineskins episode near the end of the interpolated tale "The Curious Impertinent" in chapter 35 of the first part of
Don Quixote is a clear reference to Apuleius, and recent scholarship suggests that the moral philosophy and the basic trajectory of Apuleius's novel are fundamental to Cervantes' program. Similarly, many of both Sancho's adventures in Part II and proverbs throughout are taken from popular Spanish and Italian folklore. Cervantes' experiences as a
galley slave in Algiers also influenced
Quixote. Medical theories may have also influenced Cervantes' literary process. Cervantes had familial ties to the distinguished medical community. His father, Rodrigo de Cervantes, and his great-grandfather, Juan Díaz de Torreblanca, were surgeons. Additionally, his sister, Andrea de Cervantes, was a nurse. He also befriended many individuals involved in the medical field, in that he knew medical author Francisco Díaz, an expert in urology, and royal doctor
Antonio Ponce de Santa Cruz who served as a personal doctor to both Philip III and Philip IV of Spain. Apart from the personal relations Cervantes maintained within the medical field, Cervantes' personal life was defined by an interest in medicine. He frequently visited patients from the Hospital de Inocentes in Sevilla.
Spurious Second Part by Avellaneda It is not certain when Cervantes began writing
Part Two of
Don Quixote, but he had probably not proceeded much further than Chapter LIX by late July 1614. In about September, however, a spurious Part Two, entitled
Second Volume of the Ingenious Gentleman Don Quixote of La Mancha: by the Licenciado (doctorate) Alonso Fernández de Avellaneda, of Tordesillas, was published in
Tarragona by an unidentified
Aragonese who was an admirer of
Lope de Vega, rival of Cervantes. It was translated into
English by William Augustus Yardley, Esquire in two volumes in 1784. Some modern scholars suggest that Don Quixote's fictional encounter with Avellaneda's book in Chapter 59 of Part II should not be taken as the date that Cervantes encountered it, which may have been much earlier. Avellaneda's identity has been the subject of many theories, but there is no consensus as to who he was. In its prologue, the author gratuitously insulted Cervantes, who took offense and responded; the last half of Chapter LIX and most of the following chapters of Cervantes's
Segunda Parte lend some insight into the effects upon him; Cervantes manages to work in some subtle digs at Avellaneda's own work, and in his preface to Part II, comes very near to criticizing Avellaneda directly. In his introduction to
The Portable Cervantes,
Samuel Putnam, a noted translator of Cervantes' novel, calls Avellaneda's version "one of the most disgraceful performances in history". The second part of Cervantes'
Don Quixote, finished as a direct result of the Avellaneda book, has come to be regarded by some literary critics as superior to the first part, because of its greater depth of characterization, its discussions, mostly between Quixote and Sancho, on diverse subjects, and its philosophical insights. In Cervantes's
Segunda Parte, Don Quixote visits a printing-house in Barcelona and finds Avellaneda's
Second Part being printed there, in an early example of
metafiction. Don Quixote and Sancho Panza also meet one of the characters from Avellaneda's book, Don Alvaro Tarfe, and make him swear that the "other" Quixote and Sancho are impostors.
Setting Location Cervantes' story takes place on an unspecified place in the plains of
La Mancha, with some authors suggesting that a more precise location would be that of the
comarca of
Campo de Montiel, located in what is nowadays the
province of Ciudad Real. The location of the village to which Cervantes alludes in the opening sentence of
Don Quixote has been the subject of debate since its publication over four centuries ago. Indeed, Cervantes deliberately omits the name of the village, giving an explanation in the final chapter: In 2004, a team of academics from
Complutense University, led by Francisco Parra Luna, Manuel Fernández Nieto, and Santiago Petschen Verdaguer, deduced that the village was that of
Villanueva de los Infantes. Their findings were published in a paper titled "'''El Quijote' como un sistema de distancias/tiempos: hacia la localización del lugar de la Mancha
", which was later published as a book: El enigma resuelto del Quijote''. The result was replicated in two subsequent investigations: "La determinación del lugar de la Mancha como problema estadístico" and "The Kinematics of the Quixote and the Identity of the 'Place in La Mancha'". Translators of
Don Quixote, such as
John Ormsby, have commented that the region of
La Mancha is one of the most desertlike, unremarkable regions of Spain, the least romantic and fanciful place that one would imagine as the home of a courageous knight. On the other hand, as Borges points out: The story also takes place in
El Toboso where Don Quixote goes to seek
Dulcinea's blessings.
Historical context Don Quixote is said to reflect the Spanish society in which Cervantes lived and wrote.
Spain's status as a world power was declining, and the Spanish national treasury was bankrupt due to expensive foreign wars. Spanish cultural dominance was also waning as the
Protestant Reformation had put the Spanish Roman Catholic Church on the defensive, which had led to the establishment of the
Spanish Inquisition. Meanwhile, the
hidalgo class was losing relevance because of changes in Spanish society which made the high ideals of
chivalry obsolete. ==Legacy==