Miguel de Cervantes was born in 1547, probably in Alcalá de Henares. He lived through imperial Spain, Mediterranean warfare, captivity, poverty and the rise of print entertainment. Those experiences later fed one of the most transformative prose imaginations in world literature.

Cervantes changed narrative art by turning romance, oral anecdote, theatre and social observation into modern fiction. His birth belongs on a poetry timeline because Don Quixote profoundly affected later poets' ideas about illusion, voice and literary self-awareness.