This course explores Cervantes and Spain’s most famous and best known work. We will read the entire 2 volumes in this course, with a focus on the social and literary concerns emblematic of Spain’s Golden Age. This includes a study of what good literature is, the relationship between good literature and life, the limits between reality and fiction, the role (and criticism) of Imperial Spain on the individual and his freedoms, the relationship between writing as a form of power and orality as a form or resistance to that power, moral and literary censure. Lastly, and as a means to contextualize the work in question, special attention will be paid to the sociocultural, political and religious life of the Spanish Golden Ages.