Don Quixote is a Spanish epic novel by Miguel de Cervantes. It was originally published in two parts, in 1605 and 1615. Considered a founding work of Western literature, it is often labelled as the first modern novel and one of the greatest works ever written. Don Quixote is also one of the most-translated books in the world and one of the best-selling novels of all time.
Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra was an Early Modern Spanish writer widely regarded as the greatest writer in the Spanish language and one of the world's pre-eminent novelists. He is best known for his novel Don Quixote, a work often cited as both the first modern novel and "the first great novel of world literature". A 2002 poll of around 100 well-known authors voted it the "most meaningful book of all time", from among the "best and most central works in world literature".
Tirant lo Blanch is a chivalric romance written by the Valencian knight Joanot Martorell, finished posthumously by his friend Martí Joan de Galba and published in the city of Valencia in 1490 as an incunabulum edition. The title means "Tirant the White" and is the name of the romance's main character who saves the Byzantine Empire.
Marcelino Menéndez y Pelayo was a Spanish scholar, historian and literary critic. Even though his main interest was the history of ideas, and Hispanic philology in general, he also cultivated poetry, translation and philosophy. He was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature five times.
Juan Goytisolo Gay was a Spanish poet, essayist, and novelist. He lived in Marrakesh from 1997 until his death in 2017. He was considered Spain's greatest living writer at the beginning of the 21st century, yet he had lived abroad since the 1950s. On 24 November 2014 he was awarded the Cervantes Prize, the most prestigious literary award in the Spanish-speaking world.
Antonio de Nebrija was the most influential Spanish humanist of his era. He wrote poetry, commented on literary works, and encouraged the study of classical languages and literature, but his most important contributions were in the fields of grammar and lexicography. Nebrija was the author of the Spanish Grammar and the first dictionary of the Spanish language (1495). His grammar is the first published grammar study of any modern European language. His chief works were published and republished many times during and after his life and his scholarship had a great influence for more than a century, both in Spain and in the expanding Spanish Empire.
Giannina Braschi is a Puerto Rican poet, novelist, dramatist, and scholar. Her notable works include Empire of Dreams (1988), Yo-Yo Boing! (1998) and United States of Banana (2011).
Martí de Riquer i Morera, 8th Count of Casa Dávalos was a Spanish literary historian and Romance philologist, a recognised international authority in the field. His writing career lasted from 1934 to 2004. He was also a nobleman and Grandee of Spain.
Helena Percas de Ponseti was a writer, essayist, scholar, and professor. She received her undergraduate degree from the Institut Maintenon in Paris, France, her Master's Degree from Barnard College and her Doctorate from Columbia University in New York. From 1948 to 1990 Percas was a Professor in the Spanish Department of Grinnell College, in Iowa, U.S. When she retired she was named Professor Emerita, and 10 years later, she established an annual award for the most outstanding senior in the Spanish Department, Helena Percas de Ponseti Senior Award in Spanish and created a fund for research in the area of Hispanic Culture. Furthermore, she donated to the college her valuable collection of books written by Latin American women.
The Academia Antártica was a society of writers, poets and intellectuals—mostly of the criollo caste—that assembled in Lima, Peru, in the 16th and 17th centuries. Their objective was to author a body of literature that matched or surpassed that of Europe's and would prove that literariness indeed thrived in Spain's remotest colonies. Members of this collective together published several anthologies of original writings and translations, the most famous of which are the Primera parte del Parnaso Antártico de obras amatorias and the Segunda parte del Parnaso Antártico de divinos poemas. These are dated 1608 and 1617, respectively.
Hispanism is the study of the literature and culture of the Spanish-speaking world, principally that of Spain and Hispanic America. It may also entail studying Spanish language and cultural history in the United States and in other presently or formerly Spanish-speaking countries in Africa, Asia, and the Pacific, such as Equatorial Guinea and the former Spanish East Indies.
John Bowle (1725–1788) was an English clergyman and scholar, known today primarily for his ground-breaking, annotated edition of the early 1600s Miguel de Cervantes novel Don Quixote.
Spanish Golden Age theatre refers to theatre in Spain roughly between 1590 and 1681. Spain emerged as a European power after it was unified by the marriage of Ferdinand II of Aragon and Isabella I of Castile in 1469 and then claimed for Christianity at the Siege of Granada in 1492. The sixteenth and seventeenth centuries saw a monumental increase in the production of live theatre as well as in the importance of the arts within Spanish society.
Juan de la Cuesta (?-1627) was a Spanish printer known for printing the first editions of Don Quixote de la Mancha (1605) and the Novelas ejemplares (1613), by Miguel de Cervantes, as well as the works of other leading figures of Spain's Golden Age, such as Lope de Vega.
Manuel Sánchez Cuesta is philosopher, ethicist and humanist.
Francisco de Robles was a bookseller in Madrid, whose shop was near the Puerta de Guadalajara. He was also a publisher; among his books are the first editions of Don Quixote (1605) and the Exemplary Novels (1613), by Miguel de Cervantes. Robles contracted with the printer Juan de la Cuesta to print Don Quijote in his shop at Atocha 87, in Madrid, which is today a museum and cultural center, and home of the Sociedad Cervantina.
Francisco Darío Villanueva Prieto is a Spanish literary theorist and critic. He has been a member of the Royal Spanish Academy since 2007, and he occupies the chair corresponding to the letter D. Secretary of the Academy from December 2009, he was elected director in 2014, post he held until January 2019.
William Egginton is a literary critic and philosopher. He has written extensively on a broad range of subjects, including theatricality, fictionality, literary criticism, psychoanalysis and ethics, religious moderation, and theories of mediation.
Jean Canavaggio was a French biographer and emeritus professor of Spanish literature at the Paris West University Nanterre La Défense.
Elizabeth A. Scarlett is an American academic and writer. She is a Spanish professor in the Department of Romance Languages & Literatures at the University at Buffalo of the State University of New York. She completed her undergraduate degree in Comparative Literature at Washington University in St. Louis, and her graduate degrees at Harvard University. She was a Fulbright Foreign Language Teaching Assistant in 1983-84 in Carcassonne, France, and was an exchange student in 1988-89 at the University of Seville, Spain.
