Don Quixote De La Mancha by Miguel de Cervantes SaavedraMiguel de Cervantes Saavedra was a Spanish writer best known for his novel Don Quixote De La Mancha. The novel was written and set in the late 16th and early 17th centuries and was written in Cervantes' native language. The author narrates much of the novel's action in the third person, following the action of Don Quixote and only occasionally entering his characters' thoughts. He switches to the first person, however, whenever he talks about the novel itself. Cervantes maintains an ironic distance from the novel's characters and events, sometimes discussing them with mock seriousness. The story consists of the adventures of a middle-aged gentleman, Don Quixote, originally from the La Mancha region of central Spain. Obsessed with the chivalric ideals propagated in the books he has read, he decides to take up the spear and sword to defend the defenseless and destroy the wicked. After a first failed adventure, he embarks on a second with a somewhat confused farmhand named Sancho Panza, whom he has persuaded to accompany him as his faithful squire. In exchange for Sancho's services, Don Quixote promises to make Sancho the wealthy ruler of an island. On his "steed", Rocinante, an old nag, Don Quixote travels the streets of Spain in search of glory and great adventures. He gives up food, shelter and comfort, all in the name of a peasant girl, Dulcinea d...