塞万提斯(Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra,1547年-1616年)是文艺复兴时期西班牙小说家、剧作家、诗人,1547年9月29日出生,1616年4月22日在马德里逝世[1]。他被誉为是西班牙文学世界里很伟大的作家。评论家们称他的小说《堂吉诃德》是文学目前的靠前部现代小说,同时也是世界文学的瑰宝之一。他的一生经历,是典型的西班牙人的冒险生涯。他生于16世纪的西班牙,那是个激动人心的时代。信奉伊斯兰教的摩尔人被逐回北非,西班牙从地域到宗教都得到统一。在西班牙王廷的资助下,哥伦布发现了新大陆。海洋冒险促进了殖民主义的兴盛,对美洲的掠夺刺激了靠前工商业的发展,一些城市里资本主义生产关系开始萌芽,西班牙拥有一千多艘船航行在世界各地,成为称霸欧洲的强大封建帝国。但是西班牙的强盛极为短暂,专制君主腓力普二世对外发动多次失败的战争,既耗尽了国库的资产,也使西班牙丧失了海上霸主的地位。
You must know, then, that the above-named gentleman whenever he was at leisure (which was mostly all the year round) gave himself up to reading books of chivalry with such ardor and avidity that he almost entirely neglected the pursuit of his field-sports, and even the management of his property; and to such a pitch did his eagerness and infatuation go that he sold many an acre of tillage-land to buy books of chivalry to read, and brought home as many of them as he could get. But of all there were none he liked so well as those of the famous Feliciano de Silva's composition, for their lucidity of style and complicated conceits were as pearls in his sight, particularly when in his reading he came upon courtships and cartels, where he often found passages like "the reason of the unreason with which my reason is afflicted so weakens my mason that with mason I murmur at your beauty; " or again, "the high heavens, that of your divinity divinely fortify you with the stars, render you deserving of the desert your greatness deserves.'" Over conceits of this sort the poor gentleman lost his wits, and used to lie awake striving to understand them and worm the meaning out of them; what Aristotle himself could not have made out or extracted had he come to life again for that special purpose. He was not at all easy about the wounds which Don Belianis gave and took, because it seemed to him that, great as were the surgeons who had cured him, he must have had his face and body covered all over with seams and scars. He commended, however, the author's way of ending his book with the promise of that interminable adventure, and many a time was he tempted to take up his pen and finish it properly as is there proposed, which no doubt he would have done, and made a successful piece of work of it too, had not greater and more absorbing thoughts prevented him.