Don Quixote: Was the First Modern Novel Born in Captivity?

First published in 1605, Don Quixote is considered by many to be the first modern novel. Because of this, it is still widely read and beloved over 400 years later. However, the daunting nature and outdated language of the massive text preclude many from having more than a passing familiarity with the novel beyond remembering the iconic windmill and idealistic knight. Despite this, Miguel de Cervantes’ personal experiences with captivity—his capture by Barbary pirates in Algiers and two prison stints—had a significant impact on his novel, with scenes reflecting Cervantes’ own experiences appearing throughout his masterpiece.

Miguel de Cervantes was born in 1547 in Alcala, just outside of Madrid. He left Madrid in 1569, most likely following a duel with Antonio de Sigura, according to an arrest warrant from that year discovered by a biographer in the 19th century and now largely accepted as accurate. Eventually, he was given a commission in military service, where he sailed in the landmark Battle of Lepanto against the Ottoman Empire.

Per Cervantes’ own retelling, he commanded a small skiff while suffering from malaria. He received two wounds to the chest and one to the left arm, resulting in a loss of function and his nickname “El Manco de Lepanto,” or the one-handed/one-armed man of Lepanto.

Cervantes and the crew were taken to Algiers to be held for ransom and, if no ransom arrived, sold as slaves. However, Cervantes’ family was very poor. Cervantes’ father was a struggling surgeon who was born deaf. In 1577, the family scraped up enough money to pay for Rodrigo’s freedom, but not Miguel de Cervantes, who, after four unsuccessful escape attempts, was forced to remain until 1580 when a religious charity freed him.

After regaining his freedom, Cervantes returned to Spain, married, wrote his first novel, La Galatea, and became a tax collector. There are some differing accounts on his dates of arrest, though most agree that he was jailed at least two times due to various “irregularities” in his accounts. However, he was for certain arrested in late 1597 and remained in a prison in Seville for several months. Most believe that this period of incarceration is where Cervantes developed the idea for Don Quixote, especially since the novel’s prologue begins as follows:

Idle reader: Without my swearing to it, you can believe that I would like this book, the child of my understanding, to be the most beautiful, the most brilliant, and the most discreet that anyone could imagine. But I have not been able to contravene the natural order; in it, like begets like. And so what could my barren and poorly cultivated wits beget but the history of a child who is dry, withered, capricious, and filled with inconstant thoughts never imagined by anyone else, which is just what one would expect of a person begotten in a prison, where every discomfort has its place and every mournful sound makes its home?

Miguel de Cervantes, Don Quixote de la Mancha, Prologue

The general consensus is that Cervantes died in 1616 from what many scholars suspect to be diabetes, a disease that had no treatment at the time.

Besides his famous Don Quixote, Cervantes wrote a variety of other novels and plays. One of his plays, El Trato de Argel, or The Trade of Algiers in English, was written only a few years after his release from captivity. It is considered to be a pseudo-autobiographical account of the trauma and suffering Cervantes endured within his North African prison. The play relates Cervantes’ fear of what his fate may have been had he not been freed from Algerian captivity—death or being auctioned off to the highest bidder—and the effects of being deprived of freedom for so long.

Don Quixote is a two-part novel. The first part was published in 1605, and the second in 1615. In a time enamored with romance, tales of chivalry, and knights, Don Quixote is more of a parody of those literary traditions. Its protagonist, Alonso Quijano, is a retired gentleman who, after reading so many of these romances, decides to set out on his horse Rocinante in order to seek adventure. In need of a knightly name, Quijano dubs himself Don Quixote. His reliable squire, Sancho Panza, accompanies him on these adventures and tries to keep him out of trouble.

However, so enamored by adventure and romance, Quixote is not the soundest of mind. In one famous scene, Quixote rides off to fight a horde of giants, which, in reality, is nothing more than a field of windmills in the countryside. Also, since every knight needs a fair maiden in whose name to perform his heroic acts, he spots a peasant girl in a town near his home and renames her “Dulcinea del Toboso,” who he perceives as an exceedingly fair member of the upper class. Quixote goes on many more adventures while Panza and other characters try to lure him home.

Cervantes’ Experience in Captivity Reflected in the Novel

There are three scenes within the Quixote epic that most strongly echo Cervantes’ experiences with imprisonment:

1. Freeing the Galley Slave

Don Quixote and Sancho Panza come across a group of galley slaves—people who, for various criminal offenses, were ordered by the king to serve their punishment by rowing in his ships. Quixote questions all of the slaves about their crimes, including Ginés de Pasamonte, who is curiously a writer with previous experience serving on the galleys in a way that loosely parallels Cervantes’ life.

Quixote attempts to convince the commissioner and guards in charge of the group to release the prisoners. When he is unsuccessful, Quixote then attacks the commissioner, who, surprised by the attack from the old man, is thrown to the ground and injured. When the other guards go to subdue Quixote, the galley slaves see their chance for freedom and join the fight. They were victorious. However, due to a disagreement between Quixote and Pasamonte, the slaves then betrayed their helpers. The slaves stole Quixote and Panza’s clothes and then threw stones at the pair, stones which also pelted Quixote’s steed Rocinante and Panza’s donkey.

At one point in the novel, Quixote is locked in a cage on a cart pulled by an ox. This scheme was devised primarily between a priest and barber who knew Quixote in an effort to return the old man to his home and put an end to his (mis)adventures.

They disguise themselves to avoid recognition and convince Quixote that he is under an enchantment and must be contained until they can break it. Quixote agrees, though he soon becomes suspicious and laments his situation:

I’ve read many grave histories of knights errant, but I’ve never read, seen, or heard of enchanted knights being carried off this way, or with the slowness of these lazy and sluggish beasts—it has always been that they’re whisked away in the air with extraordinary speed, shrouded in some dark cloud, or in a chariot of fire, or on a hippogriff or a similar animal. To think that they’re hauling me away on an oxcart! My God, it upsets me!
– Cervantes, chapter XLVII.

3. The Captive’s Tale

While at an inn listening to the stories of various guests, Don Quixote meets a man referred to as “the captive,” who is encouraged to tell the tale of his life. The captive is a Spaniard who served in the king’s army, fighting in various wars before he was imprisoned in Algiers – again, paralleling Cervantes’ own life rather strongly.

While there, a woman named Lela Zoraida falls in love with the captive and slips him money to aid his escape, along with a letter in which she declares her love. She writes that she has converted to Christianity and desires to leave Algiers with him and, hopefully, become the captive’s wife. Following this, the captive breaks free with some of his fellow slaves and gains them all passage to Spain, where they seek to baptize Lela Zoraida so that she and the captive can be wed.

Impact of Quixote: What Makes It “The First Modern Novel?”

Don Quixote has been referred to as “The First Modern Novel,” but what does that really mean? After all, it’s not as though Don Quixote was the first novel ever written. What gives it this title?

One reason for this is that the novel was, and still is, innovative. It introduced many elements that had never been seen before—or, at least, never done so well—in literature. Many of these elements are plot devices that are still important today.

Cervantes set a trend; centuries later, authors are still following in his footsteps. Some of these elements found in Don Quixote include:

• The Unreliable Narrator: The protagonist of Don Quixote is insane. How he perceives the world cannot be trusted, and other characters counter Quixote’s delusions.

• Character development: In Don Quixote, the characters evolve, learn, and grow. Meanwhile, in traditional romances, the characters are rather stagnant. The good guys remained the good guys, and the bad guys remained the bad guys.

• Heteroglossia: Cervantes includes multiple voices and perspectives, not just Quixote.

• Parody: Quixote takes the genres of chivalry romance, picturesque novels, and pastorals and both embodies and mocks those established literary traditions.

The novel is pivotal not only because it has influenced literary tradition but also because of its cultural impact. The term “quixotic” comes from the novel, used as a synonym for idealistic, impulsive, or unpredictable. The book coined the idiom “fighting windmills.” Over 500 million copies have been sold of Don Quixote since its publication, and it has been translated into over 140 languages.

Over 400 years after its release, it is indisputable that Don Quixote is still an iconic piece of literature. This fame, the absurdities of the plot, and, paradoxically, the stereotype of the novel being a dusty old classic all make it easy to overlook its origins as a book born of Cervantes’ own misfortunes and tragedies. Knowing the influence Cervantes’ captivity and influence had on the first modern novel, however, further enriches this incredible story.