SOURCE: McGaha, Michael D. “The Influence of Macrobius on Cervantes.” Revue de Littérature Comparee 53, no. 4 (October-December 1979): 462-69.

In the following essay, McGaha explores the indebtedness of Cervantes to Macrobius's Commentary on the Dream of Scipio.

Don Quixote, the first modern novel, is surely one of the most original books ever written, yet paradoxically, it is hard to conceive of a book more firmly rooted in the literary tradition. Modern scholarship has destroyed forever the myth of Cervantes the untutored genius who managed to compose his masterpiece by a stroke of miraculous inspiration and who was ultimately incapable of understanding what he had accomplished. Don Quixote abounds in allusions—some obvious and others oblique—to literary works of all periods and genres. Cervantes, a man who was in his own words “extremely fond of reading anything, even though it be but scraps of paper in the streets,”¹ was...