Don Quixote is a novel which will never cease to be discussed, written about, or presented through art. Its protagonist captures the mind of both young and old alike, and its ideas and themes reverberate across generations and cultures. Cervantes’s classic, to put it simply, compels people to talk — to share ideas, arguments, perspectives. William Egginton’s The Man Who Invented Fiction: How Cervantes Ushered in the Modern World is one of the newest books about Cervantes and his time; and like Ilan Stavans’s also recent, and very entertaining, Quixote: The Novel and the World (2015), it contains elements of fun and adventure while still being informative and generally insightful.
In The Man Who Invented Fiction, Egginton examines the life of Cervantes (1547-1616) and the cultural and political backdrop of his time, with the aim of understanding how Cervantes “was able to achieve the innovation that he did.” As the subtitle of the book makes clear, Egginton believes not only that Cervantes was a man of immense talent and the inventor of fiction, but that he was pivotal in bringing in the modern world. Two bold claims — and certainly ones that not everyone will be convinced of by the end of the book.
Egginton intersperses narrative biography with analysis of Cervantes’s works. This combination makes for a nice blend, as the reader gains a lively feel for the 16th-century European world alongside Cervantes’s interaction and development within that world. Egginton’s prose throughout the book is always readable, and a dry, scholarly tone which might just have easily pervaded the pages is almost entirely absent.
Regarding Cervantes’s world, 16th-century Spain was experiencing radical change. The literacy rate was rising; the scientific thought of Copernicus and others had brought in new notions about objectivity and the earth’s place in the universe; ambitious nation states were beginning to form and grow; and the emergence of the modern theater was taking root. All of this contributed to a gradual, but fundamental, change in how people conceived of both themselves and the world around them. As Egginton encapsulates it with regard to Cervantes, “The style he invented was the expression of a world in flux, and he helped give that flux a literary shape.”
But how exactly did he do this? And what was it about Cervantes as a person that enabled him to create such ingenious literary works?
There was, first of all, Cervantes’s personality. Eggington emphasizes Cervantes’s resilience in the face of myriad disappointments, hardships, and even downright cruelty at the hands of his own government. But Cervantes, remarkably, never succumbed to the butcheries of the world or let it inure him. Instead, the experiences led him to seek “understanding, sympathy, and kindness” among his fellow human beings. And, equally important, they spurred Cervantes’s curiosity in better understanding the many complex roles which people play. Egginton is right to emphasize the strength of Cervantes’s personality throughout the book; his five years of captivity at Algiers, for instance (chapter 4), shows the truly impressive strength of his character and unwillingness to lower his integrity.
Beyond personality, Cervantes executed literary maneuvers that, though employed by predecessors and contemporaries to a degree, Cervantes’s used in such a way that pushed him into new territory — or so Egginton argues. Egginton takes passages from Desiderius Erasmus and Torquato Tasso (among others) to compare with passages of Cervantes. The analysis is not as revealing or convincing as Egginton seems to think, but they do show to a degree where Cervantes does something different.
Also on the matter of Cervantes’s literary ingenuity is the wealth of experience he gained from writing for the theater. (Egginton astutely shows how all of the genres Cervantes engaged with — poetry, theater, satire, picaresque novel — helped him to craft Don Quixote.) The theater, as mentioned, was coming into existence in the 16th century — in Spain and England particular — and Cervantes took full advantage of this development. His acquaintance with the stage proved invaluable in the maturity and evolution of his thought and literary creations. As Egginton writes, “Using the techniques of the stage, he would start to create characters whose startling realism, ironic awareness and vivid emotion burst forth from their inability to recognize themselves in that farce.”
Egginton’s book is on the whole an entertaining and informative one. Though some of the speculations involved in putting together a narrative biography can verge on annoying, this can be overlooked in recognizing that Egginton provides for the reader a vivid picture of Cervantes’s personal world. Also well done is the attention Egginton gives to Cervantes’s oeuvre. Though readers will of course be familiar with Don Quixote, lesser known works, like the autobiographical Journey to Parnassus, are also given much attention.
The main downside of the book stems from the fact that virtually all of Egginton’s arguments are in subservience to the grandiose claim that Cervantes invented fiction and “ushered in the modern world.” No surprise here, given that this is the thesis of the book. But it has the unfortunate consequence that otherwise interesting arguments and analyses often feel strained in order to support a wild and unnecessary thesis. After all, such lofty claims need not be argued for — or held — in order for one to appreciate and acknowledge the enormous influence that Cervantes has had. Egginton is of course free to write the book he wants, but it’s hard not to feel that it would have been a more instructive, more insightful account of Cervantes’s life and writing had he done away with the (overly) bold claim.
Spectatio 