Cervantes’s Sources and Influences

Cervantes’s literary works reference a complex set of ancient, medieval, and early modern sources. Having been raised with a humanist education, Cervantes would have been familiar with many classical writes, such as Homer and Virgil, as well as European writers who lived and worked closer to his own time, such as Torquato Tasso and Mateo Alemán. This chapter does not pretend to be exhaustive in its treatment of Cervantes’s sources, but it does offer the reader a guide to many of the most important influences on Cervantes’s literary production from Spain, early modern Europe, and classical antiquity.