“For neither good nor evil can last for ever; and so, it follows that as evil has lasted a long time, good must now be close at hand” Don Quixote

Miguel de Cervantes, the son of a surgeon was born in Spain in 1547. After living in Italy for a short while as an adult, he spent five miserable years as a slave following his capture by Algerian corsairs, ironically during the crucial victory by a united naval force over Ottoman forces at Lepanto. Then with four escape attempts under his belt, Cervantes was freed in 1580 by the Trinitarians, a religious charity specialising in the ransoming of Christian captives. Returning to Madrid, his creative work began to encapsulate his trauma, and in 1597 Cervantes was once more imprisoned in Seville due to money disputes with his government. These experiences of civic and political life, alongside the growing individualism taking foothold in Europe could not help but feed into his literary preoccupations.

Cervantes now composed a masterpiece. Firmly rooted in the Renaissance, his mock heroic tale of a wandering knight with an outsize imagination, Don Quixote,  is now considered to be the first great modern novel. Influenced by the growing Humanism taking root in Europe, and the politics surrounding him, the plot revolves around the lives and adventures of Alonso Quijano and the simple farm labourer, Sancho Panza. The nature of their dual adventures, and the romantic filter they place upon them, lead not only to a fuller exploration of the self, but through the contrasting of the popular romances of the period against the harsh realities of life in the era of the Spanish Renaissance, Cervantes manages to explore the core societal debates of the epoch in a way that is light and evades censor.

His critique of the hypocrisy of the aristocracy and church are a warning against blind faith, and any sort of religious zeal that might result in destruction (such as that utilised in the destruction of the Islamic culture of Spain). Don Quixote is a novel where the marginalised are shown mercy, and where the central question remains whether it is always better to see the world as it is.