This lecture was one of the chapters in a work devoted to the mobility of texts in early modernity. It took advantage of the double anniversary of the deaths of William Shakespeare and Miguel de Cervantes in 1616 to draw attention to the asymmetry of exchanges between different European "literatures".
In 1995, the Unesco General Conference held in Paris decided that World Book and Copyright Day would be celebrated every April 23. The United Nations website states
April 23 is a symbolic date for universal literature. It was on this date in 1616 that Cervantes, Shakespeare and Inca Garcilaso de la Vega all died.
But is it really so? While the Peruvian mestizo chronicler appears to have died on this day, it should be remembered that Cervantes died on April 22 and was buried the following day, and that Shakespeare lived and died in an England that had not accepted Pope Gregory XIII's calendar reform, which had cut ten days off the year 1582. In the Gregorian calendar, which was that of Roman Christianity, Shakespeare only died on May 3.