Don Quixote tells the story of a gentleman from La Mancha who, from reading so many books of chivalry, loses his wits, takes the name Don Quixote de la Mancha, and sets out into the world, with the farmer Sancho Panza as his squire, to live like the knights of the books, until he returns vanquished and sane to his home and dies as Alonso Quijano the Good.
In Part One, from 1605, he sets out alone, takes an inn for a castle, and has himself dubbed a knight by the innkeeper. Brought back home, he sees the priest and the barber condemn to the bonfire almost his entire library. He sets out again with Sancho, to whom he promises an Insula, and charges at windmills he sees as giants. Along the way the book fits in other stories: that of Marcela, that of Cardenio and Dorothea, that of The Curious Impertinent, and that of the captive and Zoraida. Meanwhile the gentleman frees galley slaves who stone him, and ends up carried off in a cage by his friends.
In Part Two, from 1615, everyone has already read Part One. The bachelor Sansón Carrasco brings the news that the story is in print, Sancho invents that Dulcinea is enchanted, and the dukes stage adventures and give him the governorship of an Insula, which he exercises with good sense. A false Don Quixote, that of Avellaneda, enters the conversation, and in Barcelona the Knight of the White Moon, who is the bachelor, defeats the gentleman, who promises a year without arms.
In the village, a fever keeps him in bed. He wakes with free and clear judgment, renounces the books of chivalry, asks Sancho's forgiveness, makes a will, and dies. The historian Cide Hamete hangs up his pen and claims the character.