Spanish Amputees - Miguel de Cervantes (Paperback)

Purchase includes free access to book updates online and a free trial membership in the publisher's book club where you can select from more than a million books without charge. Excerpt: Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra (Spanish pronunciation: 29 September 1547 23 April 1616) was a Spanish novelist, poet, and playwright. His magnum opus Don Quixote, often considered the first modern novel, is a classic of Western literature, and is regularly regarded among the best novels ever written. His work is considered among the most important in all of literature. His influence on the Spanish language has been so great that Spanish is often called la lengua de Cervantes, Spanish for the language of Cervantes. He has been dubbed El Prncipe de los Ingenios The Prince of Wits. It is assumed that Miguel de Cervantes was born in Alcal de Henares. The exact date of his birth is not known, but it's probable that he was born on 29 September - the feast day of Saint Michael the Archangel - given the tradition to name a child with the name of the feast day of his birth. Cervantes was baptized in Alcal de Henares on October 9, 1547, at the parish church of Santa Maria la Mayor. The baptizmal act read: His father was Rodrigo de Cervantes, a surgeon of cordoban descent. Little is known of his mother Leonor de Cortinas, except that she was a native of Arganda del Rey. His siblings were Andrs (1543), Andrea (1544), Luisa (1546), Rodrigo (1550), Magdalena (1554) and Juan (unknown). In 1569, Cervantes moved to Italy, where he served as a valet to Giulio Acquaviva, a wealthy priest who was elevated to cardinal the next year. By then, Cervantes had enlisted as a soldier in a Spanish Navy infantry regiment and continued his military life until 1575, when he was captured by Algerian corsairs. He was then released on ransom from his captors by his parents and the Trinitarians, a Catholic religious order. He subsequently returned to his family in Madrid. In... More: http: //booksllc.net/?id=19444