Don Quixote

Don Quixote is a Spanish novel by Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra and is considered the most influential work of literature from the Spanish Golden Age and the entire Spanish literary canon. In the story, a gentleman named Mr. Alonso Quixano reads too many chivalric romances and consequently loses his sanity. Deciding to revive chivalry, undo wrongs, and bring justice to the world, he recruits a simple farmer, Sancho Panza, as his squire, who often employs a unique, earthy wit in rebutting Don Quixote's rhetorical orations. In the course of their travels, Don Quixote's tendency to intervene violently in irrelevant matters and his failure to pay his debts result in privations, injuries and humiliations. Considered by many to be the first and greatest European novel.