"He next proceeded to inspect his hack, which, with more quartos than a real
and more blemishes than the steed of Gonela, that "tantum pellis et ossa fuit,"
surpassed in his eyes the Bucephalus of Alexander or the Babieca of the Cid. Four
days were spent in thinking what name to give him, because (as he said to
himself) it was not right that a horse belonging to a knight so famous, and one
with such merits of his own, should be without some distinctive name, and he
strove to adapt it so as to indicate what he had been before belonging to a knighterrant,
and what he then was; for it was only reasonable that, his master taking a
new character, he should take a new name, and that it should be a distinguished
and full-sounding one, befitting the new order and calling he was about to follow.
And so, after having composed, struck out, rejected, added to, unmade, and
remade a multitude of names out of his memory and fancy, he decided upon
calling him Rocinante, a name, to his thinking, lofty, sonorous, and significant of
his condition as a hack before he became what he now was, the first and foremost
of all the hacks in the world"
Part 1 appeared in 1605 and Part 2 in 1615.
Spain, specifically La Manche, which is in central Spain. Or, at least I know that's where they start.
This is an allegory and fighting the windmill is man's attacking imaginary enemies. This describes confrontations where adversaries are incorrectly perceived.
The helmet that Don quixote took with him was not a real helmet but one that was a mordial and was not a closed helmet but used paste board and looked like a whole one but weak and broke when he tested it so he fixed bars of iron on the inside. The armor if you like to know was his great-grandfathers.
Because Don Quixote claims he is sustained by only the thoughts and dreams of his one true love, Dulcinea of Toboso, he does not eat or sleep for much of the novel.
Don Quixote is a mock romance, the character of Quixote is mock-heroic. The definition of a mock epic is very similar to that of mock romance, however, the mock epic is the larger idea, and the mock romance is the specific idea.
Don Quixote claims that a magician turnes the giants into windmills to thwart his heroic attack