Cervantes íntimo : Amor y sexo en los Siglos de Oro

We live in an age of headlines and slogans, where history has been displaced by self-serving, tailor-made narratives. For this reason, it is difficult to find a more quixotic undertaking than writing an intimate biography of Miguel de Cervantes. If, in addition, one draws on historical and bibliographical sources from the period and dedicates its pages to stripping the literary genius of all the clichés that, for centuries, have adorned his illustrious figure in a variety of ways, then the audacity is multiplied tenfold. José Manuel Lucía Megías, Professor at the Complutense University of Madrid and one of today's most respected Cervantes scholars, embarks us on a fascinating and entertaining journey aimed at unmasking the myth of all the constraints imposed on his life: from the temptation to read his works biographically to the construction of heroic images based on his role in the Battle of Lepanto or his captivity in Algiers, not to mention the numerous speculations about his romantic and sexual life. This journey takes us away from the swampy land of stereotypes enshrined by centuries of criticism and sails towards an open sea, free of prejudice, to banish once and for all those incomplete portraits and help us discover the man that Miguel de Cervantes was.