5 Lessons from Cervantes

Volume II

By: Oswald Sobrino

Narrated by: Virtual Voice

This book is Volume II of my work on Miguel de Cervantes, the author of the famous, pioneering novel Don Quixote de La Mancha. The novel was published in two parts: the first part in 1605 and the second part in 1615. My Volumes I and II on Cervantes discuss the first part of the novel. Future volumes will discuss the second part of the novel.

Why bother with Cervantes and his most famous work? Don Quixote presents a lengthy and entertaining meditation on the meaning and significance of our human lives: the need for purpose and adventure in our lives, the crisis of aging, the role of love and desire in our lives, and the mixture of the comic and the tragic in life, among many other themes. For students of literature, the novel is known as the first modern novel because it anticipated so many later works with its realism and complex character development. Volume I serves as a first introduction to Cervantes and his famous novel. This book, Volume II, continues the coverage of Part I of the novel begun in Volume I and assumes that the reader has had at least a general introduction to Cervantes the man and his work as discussed in Volume I.