Through his authorship of Don Quixote and other lesser known works, Miguel de Cervantes has had an inestimable impact on the development of modern fiction. Don Quixote represents the first extended prose narrative in European literature in which characters and events are depicted in accord with modern realistic tradition, with the form of the work artfully constructed upon a complex of symbol and theme. Hence, Don Quixote maintains the distinction of being the original European novel, one from which all others, in some sense, are descended. Countless writers and scholars have viewed it as one of the most enduring masterpieces, as the deranged gentleman-turned-knight Quixote and his companion, Sancho Panza, assume archetypal importance for what they reveal of the human mind and emotions, Golden Age Spanish society, and the compass of earthly existence. Cervantes's short stories are also admired for their similar independence from stereotype and contrivance and...