The Fake Sequel to Don Quixote: Scandal in the Literary World!
✍️ Miguel de Cervantes’s Legendary Work
Cervantes’s novel Don Quixote de la Mancha, published with its first volume in 1605, quickly became a hit. This novel is considered both a parody of chivalric novels and the birth of the modern novel.
However, what is truly intriguing are the events surrounding the forged second volumes that followed the success of the first volume.
🕵️♂️ The Forged Volume Scandal: “Avellaneda’s Don Quixote”
⚠️ What Happened?
While Cervantes was about to write the second volume of Don Quixote, someone under the pseudonym “Fernández de Avellaneda” appeared in 1614 and published a forged second volume:
📘 Don Quixote de la Mancha, a novel of the same name.
❗This book:
It used the characters from Cervantes’s first volume,
Its style and narrative were very different,
It openly belittled Cervantes.
It is not known for certain who Avellaneda was, but literary historians agree that it contained a personal attack on Cervantes.
😠 Cervantes’s Reaction: A Literary Revenge
Cervantes was quite enraged by the forged sequel, but he responded through literature.
📖 In 1615, the True Second Volume Arrived
Cervantes published his own true second volume:
📘 Segunda parte del ingenioso caballero Don Quixote de la Mancha
And in this volume, he made numerous references to Avellaneda:
Don Quixote is aware of the forged book.
He states that the contents of that book are “lies.”
He indirectly mocks the characters who belittle the forged author.
He even criticizes Avellaneda’s Don Quixote: “I’m not that person!”
This attitude is a famous example of the author’s revenge through fiction in literature.
🧩 Who Was the Pseudo-Author Avellaneda?
His true identity remains unknown.
Some historians suggest that he was one of Cervantes’ literary rivals, perhaps even a supporter of Lope de Vega.
Whoever he was, his goal was both to gain fame and to discredit Cervantes.
🏆 Result: Literature Wins
Cervantes’s literary response not only consigned Avellaneda to the dusty shelves of history, but also transformed the second volume of Don Quixote into a more layered and metafictional masterpiece.
❝ The forgery forced the genuine author to be more creative. ❞
🎯 In short:
A forged version was written for the second volume of Don Quixote.
Cervantes responded with a genuine second volume.
In this volume, he made explicit references to the forged author.
The result: both a major scandal and a masterful response emerged in literary history.