Cervantes [Hardcover]

Jean Canavaggio (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: February 1, 1990

A study of the life of Cervantes, the author of "Don Quixote". It traces his life as a soldier, as a tax collector, his time as a prisoner of war of the Turks, and finally the publication of "Don Quixote" in 1605. This book won the Prix Goncourt for biography in 1987.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Little is known about the life of the father of the modern novel. Like his contemporary Shakespeare, Cervantes fascinates because he is approached most closely through his writings. Here a professor at the University of Caen, in Normandy, offers a collage-like portrait, separating what is certain about Cervantes from the imagined and the plausible, placing him into his milieu, Spain's Golden Age, in the effort to discover "that ever-present absentee whose unmistakable voice we always recognize among a thousand others." Unfortunately, much of the book is speculative, raising more questions than answers. Canavaggio mixes tenses, sometimes using the past, present and future in one paragraph; the prose, while exuberant, is rambling. This is an ambitious, adulatory biography.
Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

To the well-known biographical details of Don Quixote's creator--soldier, hero of Lepanto, prisoner of war, inept gov ernment worker, unhappy husband-- Canavaggio's popularized treatment offers no new discoveries. The author, a Cervantine specialist, eschews scholarly apparatus, the most glaring violation of which is the failure to follow up textual references with appropriate footnotes. The English translation not only lacks the stylistic fluidity of the 1986 original, but also excludes the genealogical tables and maps as well. Libraries that already own Francisco Navarro y Ledesma's Cervantes: The Man and the Genius ( LJ 1/1/73; o.p.) or William Byron's Cervantes: A Biography ( LJ 9/15/78) may find themselves already sufficiently served.
- Lawrence Olszewski, OCLC, Dublin, Ohio
Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 352 pages
• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company; 1st edition (February 1, 1990)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0393028127
• ISBN-13: 978-0393028126
• Product Dimensions: 9.4 x 6.2 x 1.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #271,303 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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