Greetings ladies and gentlemen and welcome to a new episode of great books in ten minutes. By the end of this episode, you will know all that you need about Miguel De Cervantes's popular masterpiece, Don Quixote. Don Quixote could be considered the first modern European novel and a founding work of western literature. It is universally loved and it is among the world’s most translated books. The main themes of Don Quixote are Realism vs Idealism, Truth and Lies, Madness and Sanity, Love and Heroism. Miguel de Cervantes is commonly known as the greatest writer in the Spanish language and is credited with being Europe’s first novelist. His life was both adventurous and tragic. When only 17 years old he traveled to Rome and joined the Italian navy to fight in the battle of Lepanto against the Ottomans. Miguel was badly wounded in that battle and lost control of his left arm completely. He then joined the Spanish army and even received medals of honor for his service. It was in one of his expeditions for the Spanish army that he was captured by pirates and sold into slavery in Algeria. He lived as a slave for five years until his relatives found him and paid for his freedom with the help of the Trinitarian church. There are also accounts mentioning that he bought his freedom with the inheritance that his father had left him. Now a poor and disabled man, while taking a job as a tax collector, Miguel tried his hand in writing and published his first play “La Galatea” which was not received well. It is believed that he wrote 20 plays of which only two have survived but it wasn’t until 1605 when he published the first part of Don Quixote that he tasted success and went from obscurity to instant fame. With Don Quixote’s success, Cervantes finally achieved some degree of financial security and became a household name in Europe. Ten years later and just one year before his death he published the long-anticipated sequel to Don Quixote. A lesser Spanish nobleman from La Mancha by the name Alonso Quixano was almost fifty years old when he lost his mind. He spent most of his time reading fictional books about chivalry and was so obsessed with them that took every word literally and believed them to be all true. Copying the heroes of the books, he decided to become a knight errant in search of glory and adventure to prove his worth and valor. He then found himself a suit of armor, gave himself the title of “Don Quixote” and named his old horse “Rocinante”. As for his lady of love, he chose a farm girl and without her even knowing it called her Dulcinea del Toboso. Don Quixote arrived at an inn, where he believed to be a castle. He treated prostitutes as noble ladies and asked the innkeeper who he referred to as the lord of the castle, to dub him a knight. At night he stayed up guarding his armor, and when inn workers tried to move it out of the way to water the mules, he beat them up. Eventually, the innkeeper dubbed Don Quixote a knight in a pretend ceremony to get rid of him. Next, he encountered a slave named Andres who was tied to a tree by his master and being punished. Don Quixote freed the slave and forced the master to promise to pay him his wages and treat him fairly. A promise that the master broke the moment Don Quixote left. He then ran into some merchants from Toledo, who insulted his imaginary but beloved lady Dulcinea. Enraged by their insults, Don Quixote, attacked them to defend his lady’s honor. The merchant beat the old man up and left him by the road to die. Fortunately, his neighbor found him and returned him to his home. When he was unconscious, his niece, his priest, and a local barber burned most of the books in his library and sealed up the room. When Don Quixote gained his consciousness again, they told him that it was all done by a wizard. A few months later, and after getting his strength back, Don Quixote promised his neighbor Sancho Panza to make him a governor if he agreed to be his squire. Sancho, who was a simple farmer, agreed to the offer and snuck away with Don Quixote at dawn. Next, they came across two Benedictine friars who were traveling on the same road with a lady in a carriage. Don Quixote took the friars as captors of the lady and attacked them. An armed guard who was accompanying the party, tried to defend against the attack and a fight broke out. The short battle ended when the lady came out of the carriage and ordered those who were traveling with her to surrender to Don Quixote. Don Quixote agreed to not punish them on the condition that the armed guard would go to lady Dulcinea and tell her of his bravery. After that, Don Quixote and Sancho encountered a group of goat herders who were going to the funeral of a student who after reading too many pastoral novels, had left his studies to become a shepherd and seek the love of a shepherdess named Marcela. At the funeral Marcela showed up and vindicated herself from all the vile things that the student had written about her in his poems, then she vanished into the woods. Don Quixote and Sancho followed her but gave up after a few hours.When they were resting by a pond, a group of Galicians showed up to water their ponies. Don Quixote’s horse, Rocinante, tried to mate with the ponies which caused the Galicians to hit him. At this moment when Don Quixote rose to defend his horse, which caused the Galacians to beat him and Sancho up too and once again leave them injured and in great pain. After escaping the ordeal, Don Quixote and Sancho arrived at a nearby inn and shared a room with another man in a hayloft. At night, Don Quixote, who once again saw the inn as a castle, took a servant girl named Helen as a beautiful princess and asked her to sit on his bed with him which caused the girl to panic. At this moment the the other man with whom they were sharing the room, interfered to save the girl and attacked Don Quixote. As a result, a huge fight broke out in which everyone was badly hurt. Next, an officer who had a warrant to arrest Don Quixote for illegally freeing slaves was convinced by the priest to show mercy on the account of his insanity. Instead of taking him to prison, they locked him up in a cage and made him think it is an enchantment and that there is a prophecy for his heroic return home. At this point, the first book ends. I strongly recommend all of you to read both of Don Quixote’s books in their entirety. They are among the sweetest stories ever written and I guarantee that you will be both amused and enlightened by them. For this video and its length, I will not go through the entire second book here but for the sake of a proper ending to this episode, I will summarize the final chapter. After getting ridiculed by a Duke and Duchess and being sent to a series of imagined adventures resulting in practical jokes, Don Quixote took a short trip to Barcelona and was met with nothing but more mockery. At home, his friends, who were worried about his well-being devised a plan to defeat Donquixote in a duel and force him to leave knight-errantry as the just punishment for his defeat. So a young bachelor and a friend of Don Quixote by the name of Sanson Carrasco dressed himself up as a knight and challenged him to a duel. After defeating Donquixote in the fight he ordered him to abandon knight-errantry for a year and go back to his home and stay there. Disheartened by his defeat, Don Quixote returned to his home and gradually became depressed and finally fell on his deathbed. After a long dream, however, he woke up having fully recovered his sanity. He rejected his ambitions and apologized for the damage that he had caused. He then named his niece as the main benefactor of his will with the one condition that she can never marry a man who reads books of chivalry. Very well, ladies and gentlemen, We are at the end of this episode. I hope you enjoyed my summary of Don Quixote. Please consider subscribing to my channel and see you in the next video.