The first part of Cervantes’ genius creation — the novel «The cunning hidalgo Don Quixote of La Mancha» — was published in January 1605, the second part — in 1615. The novel immediately became extremely popular. Don Quixote and his devoted squire Sancho, Dulcinea and even Rossinante soon gained such fame that masks appeared at carnivals in Spain, reproducing these images of the novel.
For Cervantes’ contemporaries, Don Quixote remained a popular entertainment reading. No one thought to look in this book for anything other than mockery of chivalric romances. But since the 18th century, Don Quixote has been included in the golden fund of world literature as one of its greatest works, and the knight of the sad image himself has become a symbolic character expressing the eternal properties of the human spirit.
© & ℗ SP Vorobiev V.A.
© & ℗ ID SOYUZ
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