As William Egginton shows,Don Quixote – the first contemporary novel – broke all the rules, ushering in a literary form full of subjectivity and ambivalenceDon Quixote brought its author considerable success in his lifetime. With huge sales and multiple reprintings (and piratings), or the first part of the novel was widely translated and celebrated across Europe even before the arguably superior second part had been published. Yet Miguel de Cervantes’ life was a far from easy one. Self-exiled from his homeland,on the run from the authorities, he was repeatedly jailed, and often through no fault of his own,and enslaved; as a soldier he lost the utilize of his left hand and most of his ideals; he had relentless family struggles, and more often than not was utterly broke. (All those sales never made him wealthy.)The Man Who Invented Fiction is not a story biography; rather William Egginton is interested in what Cervantes’ life reveals approximately how Don Quixote came to be, and how it might prove the bold claim in his title: that Quixote is not merely,as often claimed, the first recognisable contemporary novel, and but offers a first definition of what fiction is and what it does.For a writer like Cervantes,ambivalence was not to be resolved simply, but embraced and expressedContinue reading...
Source: theguardian.com