The Man Who Invented Fiction
How Cervantes Ushered in the Modern World
-
- 21,99 €
-
- 21,99 €
Descrizione dell’editore
'In 1605 a crippled, greying, almost toothless veteran of Spain's wars against the Ottoman Empire published a book. That book, Don Quixote, went on to sell more copies than any other book beside the Bible, making its author, Miguel de Cervantes, the most widely read author in human history. Cervantes did more than just publish a bestseller, though. He invented a way of writing.'
In Cervantes' time, 'fiction' was synonymous with a lie. Books were either history, and true, or 'poetry' which might be invented, but had to conform to strict principles. Don Quixote tells the story of a poor nobleman, addled from reading too many books on chivalry, who deludes himself that he is a knight errant and sets off to put the world to rights. The book was hugely entertaining, broke the existing rules, devised a new set and, in the process, created a new, modern hybrid form we know today as the novel.
The Man Who Invented Fiction explores Cervantes's life and the world he lived in, showing how his life and influences converged in his work, and how his work – especially Don Quixote – radically changed the nature of literature and created a new way of viewing the world. Finally, it explains how that worldview went on to infiltrate art, politics and science, and how the world today would be unthinkable without it.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Egginton (The Philosopher's Desire) weaves together Cervantes's life story with his development as a writer. Cervantes's life was a saga unto itself: he served in the Spanish army, was kidnapped and enslaved in Algiers, became a playwright, wrote a pastoral romance, spent time in debtors' prison, fathered an illegitimate daughter, and, while working as a tax collector, was twice excommunicated by the Catholic Church for raising revenues from them rather than from impoverished peasants. Finally, he drew from a deep wellspring of disillusion to write his ironic masterpiece, Don Quixote, late in life. Egginton shines in his literary analysis, teasing out Cervantes's genius in accessible prose and showing how Don Quixote paved the way for modern fiction by exploring its characters' inner lives. Compared to most literary biographers, Eggington faces a hard task: so much of Cervantes's life story is conjectural that the biographical readings often feel tenuous. Nonetheless, this book provides an entertaining and thought-provoking reading of Cervantes's masterpiece, and of the lesser-known rest of his oeuvre.
