The man who invented fiction
Subtitle: how Cervantes ushered in the modern world
By: William Egginton
Publisher: Bloomsbury USA, an imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
Published: 2016
Language: eng
Number of pages: 239
ISBN-13: 9781620401750
Subjects: Spanish fiction; History and criticism; Influence; Fiction
Description: "In the early seventeenth century, a crippled, graying, almost toothless veteran of Spain's wars against the Ottoman Empire published a book. It was the story of a poor nobleman, his brain addled from reading too many books of chivalry, who deludes himself that he is a knight errant and sets off on hilarious adventures. That book, Don Quixote, went on to sell more copies than any other book beside the Bible, making its author, Miguel de Cervantes, the single most-read author in human history. Cervantes did more than just publish a bestseller, though. He invented a way of writing. This book is about how Cervantes came to create what we now call fiction, and how fiction changed the world."--
Notes: Includes bibliographical references and index.
Table of contents: title: Introduction: Within and Without; title: Poetry and History; title: Open and Closed; title: Soldier of Misfortune; title: A Captive Imagination; title: All the World's a Stage; title: Of Shepherds, Knights, and Ladies; title: A Rogue's Gallery; title: The Fictional World.