Marsha S. Collins is a Professor of Comparative Literature and Chair of the Department of English and Comparative Literature at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. A Hispanist and comparatist, she studies the Literature of Early Modern Spain in its European and global contexts. She has written on romance, pastoral, and other idealizing fictional forms; literature and the visual arts; early modern lyric poetry; and Early Modern European court culture. Known for her research on Cervantes, Lope, Góngora, and others, she currently serves as Vice President and President‑Elect of the Cervantes Society of America and is a member of the Executive Committee of the Asociación de Cervantistas.

• AcknowledgmentsPreface: Cervantes, Friendship, and a Community of Readers1 Cervantes’s World of Friendship and Community2 “I was the first” … before Don Quixote3 Don Quixote and Sancho, a Novel Friendship4 Don Quixote’s Gallery of Friendships5 Cervantes, Community, and Don QuixoteConclusion: Persiles, Cervantes’s Last Words on Amity and CommunityIndex