Alonso Quixano, a less-than-affluent man of fifty, "lean bodied" and "thin faced, lives modestly in the Spanish country village of La Mancha with his niece, Antonia, and a cranky housemaid. Practical in most things, compassionate to his social peers, the local clergy, and the servant classes, Quixano is respectful toward the ruling classes, whom he unquestioningly accepts as his superiors. He is driven neither by ambition for wealth and position nor bitterness at his genteel poverty.
Well read and thoughtful, Quixano's most prized possessions are his books. From his readings and studies, he becomes by degrees interested, then obsessed, with the codes, deeds, and tales of chivalry — of knights errant on some courtly and idealized mission. As his appetite for the lore of chivalry increases, Quixano begins selling off acres of his farmlands, using the funds to buy more books, and increasingly throwing himself into his studies. "From little sleep and too much reading his brain dried up and he lost his wits. He had a fancy . . . to turn his passion knight errant and travel through the world with horse and armor in search of adventures" with the purpose of "redressing all manner of wrongs."
At length, he is galvanized into action by his passion for the chivalric code. Outfitting himself with some old rusty armor, Quixano enlists his spavined hack horse to go forth in search of knightly adventures. Hopeful of finding a proper noble to dub him, Quixano finally is licensed in his venture by an innkeeper who believes him to be a lord of a manor. Now Quixano is "Don Quixote de La Mancha"; the tired hack and dray horse becomes elevated to "Rosinante."
