The Secret of Cervantes’ Success

Featuring Henry Edward Watts

Previously on Cervantes' "Don Quixote" Reforms Literature. And now Henry Edward Watts

Time: 1605
Place: Spain



The adventure was one reserved for his single arm; and it was achieved with a completeness of success such as must have astonished our hero himself, as we know by many signs that it disgusted and irritated many of his literary rivals. The true nature of the service performed, as well as Cervantes' motive in undertaking it, has been greatly misrepresented. Nothing can be more certain than that his aim in Don Quixote was, primarily, to correct the prevailing false taste in literature. What moral and social results followed were the necessary consequences of the employment of his rare wit and humor on such a work. There is no reason to believe that Cervantes, at first, had any more serious intention than that which he avowed, namely, to give "a pastime to melancholy souls"[19] in destroying "the authority and influence which the books of chivalries have in the world and over the vulgar." That he was not impelled to this work by any antipathy to knightly romances as such--still less by any ambition to repress the spirit of chivalry, or to purge the commonwealth of social and political abuses--is abundantly proved by the whole tenor of his book, if not by the evidence of his life. His own tastes strongly inclined him to books of romance. Perhaps no one in that age had read more of those books, or was so deeply imbued with their spirit.

Comparing the Book “Don Quixote” to Other Books of the Period

Featuring Henry Edward Watts

Previously on Cervantes' "Don Quixote" Reforms Literature. And now Henry Edward Watts

Time: 1605
Place: Spain



To estimate the worth of the service performed by Cervantes--not in abolishing romance, as has been absurdly said, still less in discrediting chivalry, as with even a more perverse misconception of his purpose has been suggested, but in purging books of fiction of their grossness and their extravagance, and restoring romance to truth and to nature--we have to consider the enormous influence exercised by this pernicious literature over the minds of the people of Spain in the sixteenth century.

The Book “Don Quixote’s” Theme

Featuring Henry Edward Watts

Previously on Cervantes' "Don Quixote" Reforms Literature. And now Henry Edward Watts

Time: 1605
Place: Spain



Taking the object of Don Quixote to be, what Cervantes declared it--"the causing of the false and silly books of chivalries to be abhorred by mankind"--no book was ever so successful. The doughtiest knight of romance never achieved an adventure so stupendous as that which Miguel de Cervantes undertook and accomplished. With his pen, keener than the lance of Esplandian or Felixmarte, he slew the whole herd of puissant cavaliers, of very valiant and accomplished lovers. Before him went down the Florisandros and Florisels, the Lisuartes and Lepolemos, the Primaleons and the Polindos, and the whole brood of the invincible. Scarcely a single romance was printed, and not one was written, after the date of the publication of Don Quixote.[14] Such a revolution in taste was never accomplished by any single writer, in any age or country.

Critical and Public Reception of the Book “Don Quixote”

Featuring Henry Edward Watts

Previously on Cervantes' "Don Quixote" Reforms Literature. And now Henry Edward Watts

Time: 1605
Place: Spain



The reception which Don Quixote met with on its first appearance was cordial beyond all precedent, and such as must have convinced the author, who was evidently doubtful of his new experiment, that here at last his genius had found its true field of exercise. The persons of culture, indeed, received the book coldly. The half-learned sneered at the title as absurd and at the style as vulgar. Who was this ingenio lego--this lay, unlearned wit--"a poor Latin-less author," which is what they said of Shakespeare--outside of the cultos proper, of no university education--who had dared to parody the tastes of the higher circles? The envy and malice of all his rivals--especially of those who found themselves included in the satire--even the great Lope himself, the phoenix of his age, then at the height of his glory--spoke out, with open mouth, against the author. The chorus of dispraise was swelled by all those, persons chiefly of high station, whose fashion of reading had been ridiculed. A book, professing to be of entertainment, in which knights and knightly exercises were made a jest of--in which peasants, innkeepers, muleteers, and other vulgar people spoke their own language and behaved after their own fashion--was a daring innovation, all the more offensive because the laugh was directed at what was felt to be a national infirmity. Who was the bold man who, being neither courtier nor ecclesiastic, made sport for the world out of the weaknesses of caballeros? An old soldier of Lepanto, indeed! Lepanto was a name outworn. Spain was now in a new world. Crusades against the unbeliever, even those more popular ones which combined the saving of souls with the getting of gold, were long out of fashion. Lastly, the entire ecclesiastical body--the formidable phalanx of the endowed, with their patrons dependents, and dupes--though they were too dull to perceive and too dense to feel the shafts aimed at obscurantism and superstition, had something more than a suspicion that this book called Don Quixote was a book to be discouraged.

How Don Quixote Got Published

Featuring Henry Edward Watts

Previously on Cervantes' "Don Quixote" Reforms Literature. And now Henry Edward Watts

Time: 1605
Place: Spain



In 1601 Philip III, at the instance of the Duke of Lerma, removed the court to the old capital of Castile, Valladolid--by nature far better situated for a metropolis than Madrid, which had been the choice of his grandfather, Charles V. Thither Cervantes repaired, in 1603, doubtless with some hope of gleaning some crumbs of the royal favor. He was no more fortunate with the new King than he had been with the old. Despairing of place or patronage, he turned, with his brave spirit unquenched as by the record sufficiently appears, to completing this new thing among books.

Cervantes’ Severe Ordeal

Featuring Henry Edward Watts

Introduction to our series Cervantes' "Don Quixote" Reforms Literature:
The fame of the most celebrated Spanish author rests upon a far more solid basis than merely that of having written the most readable and tender of humorous romances. He reformed literature. He tilted at windmills as truly as ever his hero did. And now, Henry Edward Watts

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Time: 1605
Place: Spain



The accession of the new King, which had been hailed as "the light after darkness," had little effect on Cervantes' fortunes. Philip III, though he had some taste for letters, and was not without sprouts of kindliness in his heart, had been by education and by an over-strict regimen in youth debased, so that he was even more completely a slave to the priestly influence than his father had been, without any of his father's ability or force of character. The Duke of Lerma was "the Atlas who bore the burden of the monarchy."[1] He was a man, according to Quevedo, "alluring and dexterous rather than intelligent; ruled by the interested cunning of his own creatures but imperious with all others; magnificent, ostentatious; choosing his men only by considerations of his own special policy or from personal friendship." Under such a man, who ruled the King at his will, it was not likely that any portion of the royal benevolence should light on Miguel de Cervantes. Moreover, the crowd of suppliants at court was very great, their appetite stimulated doubtless by the flattering reports of the new King's liberal disposition.