Miguel Cervantes

La primera novela de Miguel de Cervantes, una rica colecci n de poemas sobre el amor. Pr logo dedicado al inmortal y querido esp ritu de Cervantes por Juan Bautista Bergua. La Galatea fue la primera novela escrita por Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra (1547-1616). Novela pastoril compuesta de seis libros, publicada en 1585, recoge una rica colecci n de poemas sobre el amor. La primera historia trata sobre dos pastores, Elicio y Erastro, enamorados de Galatea, una bella pastora que tiene las virtudes de las hero nas cervantinas y quien adora su libertad mientras su padre insiste en casarla con el rico Erastro. En el sexto libro Cervantes incluye el Canto de Cal ope, donde el autor elogia a todos los ingenios vivos de la poes a espa ola de entonces: G ngora, Lope de Vega, Alonso de Ercilla, Fray Luis de Le n y otros.

Translated by P. A. Motteux With an Introduction and Notes by Stephen Boyd, University College, Cork Cervantes’ tale of the deranged gentleman who turns knight-errant, tilts at windmills and battles with sheep in the service of the lady of his dreams, Dulcinea del Toboso, has fascinated generations of readers, and inspired other creative artists such as Flaubert, Picasso and Richard Strauss. The tall, thin knight and his short, fat squire, Sancho Panza, have found their way into films, cartoons and even computer games. Supposedly intended as a parody of the most popular escapist fiction of the day, the ‘books of chivalry’, this precursor of the modern novel broadened and deepened into a sophisticated, comic account of the contradictions of human nature. On his ‘heroic’ journey Don Quixote meets characters of every class and condition, from the prostitute Maritornes, who is commended for her Christian charity, to the Knight of the Green Coat, who seems to embody some of the constraints of virtue. Cervantes’ greatest work can be enjoyed on many levels, all suffused with a subtle irony that reaches out to encompass the reader, and does not leave the author outside its circle. Peter Motteux’s fine eighteenth-century translation, acknowledged as one of the best, brilliantly succeeds in communicating the spirit of the original Spanish.