Miguel de Cervantes, writer of Don Quixote, has frequently been portrayed in fictionalized contexts across various mediums. In A Character Named Cervantes, Howard Mancing and Tatevik Gyulamiryan explore how Cervantes’s life is depicted in biographies and fiction and how he, as a (bio)fictional character, contributes to our understanding of reality and fiction, fact and invention, history and imagination, and above all, our perceptions of these concepts.
The book reveals that Cervantes’s life was unlike anyone else’s. Characterized by an array of extraordinary experiences – both triumphant and tumultuous, adventurous and misfortunate, impassioned and disillusioned – his life events mirror the quixotic spirit he famously imbued in his iconic character. Despite the wealth of documented events, a lot about Cervantes remains uncovered, which allows for human imagination, interpretation, and creation to intervene, attempting to provide a more comprehensive biography. The book highlights how Cervantes’s life has inspired multiple interpretations and recreations by historians, biographers, and novelists alike. It emphasizes the crucial role of human imagination in the crafting of biographies, particularly within literary and scholarly traditions. Ultimately, A Character Named Cervantes examines Cervantes through the dual lenses of fiction and fictionalized history.
Table of Contents:
List of Illustrations
Acknowledgments
Introduction: The Fictional Lives of Miguel de Cervantes
Howard Mancing and Tatevik Gyulamiryan
Critical Perspectives
1. The First Two Centuries of Cervantes in Fiction
Howard Mancing
2. Don Quixote Lurks Behind Miguel de Cervantes: The Portrait Tradition from the Eighteenth to the Twenty-First Centuries
Rachel Schmidt
Cervantes in Fiction
3. "An Adventure of the Strangest Kind": Dialogue across the Centuries in Paul Scheerbart’s Fantasy Novella Cervantes
Jennifer Marston William
4. "La dolorosa gloria": Cervantes’s Character in Manuel Mujica Láinez’s Bomarzo
Yelsy Hernández Zamora and Nils Longueira Borrego
5. "Parecía reír el ave": The Fictive Miguel de Cervantes’s Use of Constructive Anthropomorphism in "Las gallinas de Cervantes" by Ramón J. Sender
Steven Wagschal
6. Fictionalizing Historical Cervantes: Stephen Marlowe’s The Death and Life of Miguel de Cervantes
Joan Cammarata
7. Miguel de Cervantes, Biofictional Superhero
Michael J. McGrath
8. A Certain Cervantes: Reimagining an American Cervantes in the French Graphic Novel
Sarah Gordon
9. Ariel Dorfman’s Cautivos: Channelling the Search for Truth, Justice, and Reconciliation through Miguel de Cervantes
Bradley J. Nelson
Cervantes on Stage and on Screen
10. Cervantes through the Women in His Family: Pingüinas by Fernando Arrabal and Las Cervantas by Inma Chacón and José Ramón Fernández
Aroa Algaba Granero
11. Time Travel Cervantes: Sci-Fi, Rivalry, and Theory of Mind in El ministerio del tiempo and Cervantes contra Lope
Isabel Jaén and Julien Jacques Simon
12. A Bone of Contention: The Contested Exhumation of Miguel de Cervantes
Carmen Moreno-Nuño
13. Towards the Creation of a Myth of a Hero: Cervantes, War, and Captivity
Tatevik Gyulamiryan
14. Second(ary) Acts: Cervantes on the Page
Edward H. Friedman
Conclusion: Lo que quedó en el tintero
Howard Mancing and Tatevik Gyulamiryan
Appendix 1: A Cervantes Chronology
Appendix 2: Works by Cervantes
Appendix 3: Cervantes on Stage
Appendix 4: Cervantes in the Novel (more than 15,000 words)
Appendix 5: Cervantes in Short Fiction (fewer than 15,000 words)
Appendix 6: Cervantes on Screen
Contributors
Index
About the Author :
Howard Mancing is a professor emeritus of Spanish at Purdue University.
Tatevik Gyulamiryan is an associate professor of Spanish at Hope College.
