BOOK REVIEW CERVANTES DICTIONARY Author: Jean Canavaggio From the reader report by: Livia Deorsola Diccionario Cervantes is a monumental work, an absolute overview of all the historical circumstances and personalities, schools, critical and artistic reception, characters, life passages, places, and works that surround the great figure of Miguel de Cervantes (1547-1616), considered to be the founder of the modern novel in the Western. Cervantes’ bibliography has been exhaustive, but few bring together in a single work all of the threads surrounding the gimpy man of Lepanto. By the very nature of the genre, this is not an indepth study of the work, or even a biography study, but a tightly knit web of what is essential to an overview on the author. In the prologue to Dicionário, its organizer Jean Canavaggio, French biographer and former Professor Emeritus of Spanish literature at the Western University of Paris Nanterre La Défense, warns: the purpose was not to bring novelties to studies on Cervantes, but to offer reliable data, stripped of the legends that surround Cervantes. The edition is composed of more than 130 entries, and offers a nice gallery of high-quality images that illustrate some of these entries. Importantly, there are several entries about the author’s family background, which help clearing up little-known passages of his life, and shed light on the people who helped forge his personality. Additionally, the book refers to the cities he passed through, the military campaigns he was part of, and his imprisonment in Algiers. Also not to be missed are his intellectual background and the characteristics of the Spain of his time.
PUBLISHED IN NEW SPANISH BOOKS BR
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