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Documents for "Spanish and Portuguese Literature: Biographies":
  • Alarcón, Juan Ruiz de 1581?-1639, Spanish dramatic poet, one of the great literary figures of the Spanish Golden Age, b. Mexico. After practicing law in Spain (1600-1608) and Mexico, he returned (1613) to Spain, where...
  • Alarcón, Pedro Antonio de 1833-91, Spanish writer, politician, and diplomat. He wrote several novels, including El sombrero de tres picos (1874, tr. The Three-cornered Hat, 1891), on which Manuel de Falla based his popular...
  • Alas, Leopoldo 1852-1901, Spanish novelist, short-story writer, and literary critic who wrote under the pseudonym Clarín, b. Zamora. Although he began his literary career as a journalist, he later was a...
  • Alberti, Rafael 1902-99, Spanish poet. After abandoning an earlier career as a painter, Alberti published his first book, Marinero en tierra [sailor on dry land] (1925), which was widely applauded. He was a member of the "Generation of 1927," which also included such figures as Vicente Aleixandre , Luis Buñuel , and Federico García Lorca. Alberti's poems show the influence of Juan Ramón Jiménez and of the Spanish classics, especially of Góngora. His poetic brilliance is revealed in Concerning the Angels (1929, tr. 1967), a collection of introspective lyrics with surrealist overtones. A Loyalist in the Spanish civil war, Alberti sought exile in Buenos Aires, Argentina, after Franco's triumph in...
  • Aldana, Francisco de 1537-78, Spanish general, diplomat, and poet, b. Alcántara or Naples. He symbolizes the ideal of the Spanish Renaissance. As a soldier he served Philip II of Spain and Sebastian of Portugal in...
  • Aleixandre, Vicente 1898-1984, Spanish lyric poet. He won the national prize for literature for La destrucción o el amor (1935, tr. 1976) and the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1976. His earlier verse, often free in form, is pessimistic and surrealistic. His later verse is marked by realism and then by an increasingly...
  • Alemán, Mateo 1547-1614?, Spanish novelist, b. Seville. Alemán studied medicine and practiced accounting. He led a turbulent life, was sent to jail twice for his debts, and at the age of 60 found refuge in...
  • Alencar, José de 1829-77, Brazilian jurist and author. Alencar was one of the founders of modern Brazilian literature. His historical novels ( O Guarani, 1857; Iracema, 1865, tr. 1886) offer idealized portraits of...
  • Alonso, Dámaso 1898-1990, Spanish philologist, lyric poet, and literary critic, b. Madrid. He is known for his literary sensitivity and the precision and rigor of his critical approach. His critical works include...
  • Altoaguirre, Manuel 1904-59, Spanish poet, b. Málaga. With his contemporary Emilio Prados he founded the literary journal Litoral. His poetry is distinguished by its grace, sensitivity, and refinement, treating such themes as love, nature, and solitude. His interest in typography is evident in some of the beautiful editions of...
  • Andrade, Carlos Drummond de 1902-87, Brazilian poet. The son of landowners, he worked as a journalist before earning (1925) a degree in pharmacology. In 1928 Andrade became a civil servant while working as a newspaper...
  • Andrade, Mário de 1893-1945, Brazilian author. Through his fiction, poetry, and wide-ranging essays, Andrade became a leading representative of Brazilian modernismo. Macunaíma (1928, tr. 1984), his most important novel, is marked by colloquial and innovative language and anticipates the rise of magical realism in Latin American literature. Andrade's work shows the...
  • Aranguren, José Luis 1909-, Spanish philosopher, theologian, and essayist, b. Ávila. A professor of ethics and sociology at the Univ. of Madrid, he is concerned with philosophical problems. His works include La...
  • Aub, Max 1903-72, Spanish author, b. Paris. He was educated in Spain where he lived until 1942, when he emigrated to Mexico. His style combines realism with fantasy. He used the Spanish civil war and its...
  • Avellaneda, Alonso Fernández de pen name used by the unknown Spanish writer who published a spurious second part of Don Quixote in 1614, before Cervantes's own second part appeared (1615). The book is usually referred to as El...
  • Bécquer, Gustavo Adolfo 1836-70, Spanish poet and writer of romantic tales. Bécquer's work is considered to be among the best 19th-century lyric poetry. Orphaned at 10, unhappy in love and marriage, and living in poverty...
  • Baroja y Nessi, Pío 1879-1956, Spanish novelist from the Basque Provinces, member of the group of writers known as the Generation of '98. He left medicine to devote himself to literature and came to be the most popular Spanish novelist of the 20th cent. Of his several trilogies, the most widely read abroad concerns the underworld of...
  • Benavente y Martínez, Jacinto 1866-1954, Spanish dramatist, b. Madrid. He was awarded the 1922 Nobel Prize in Literature. His best-known play is Los intereses creados (1907, tr. Bonds of Interest, 1917), a farce written on the pattern of the Italian commedia dell'arte. In 1916 he wrote a second part to this play, La ciudad alegre y confiada [the gay and confident city]. La malquerida (1913, tr. The Passion Flower, 1920), on the Phaedra theme, was popular with the public and the critics. His plays fall into four classes: social satires, psychological dramas, children's plays, and allegorical-morality plays...
  • Benet, Juan 1927-93, Spanish novelist and essayist. He earned a degree in civil engineering and worked as a highway engineer before publishing (1961) his first work, Nunca llegarás a nada [you'll never...
  • Berceo, Gonzalo de c.1198-1265?, earliest known Spanish medieval poet. He was a religious in a Benedictine monastery who wrote prolifically on saints and other figures important in the history of the church. His...
  • Bernardes, Diogo c.1530-c.1600, Portuguese poet. A follower of Sá de Miranda, he wrote melodious pastoral verse, and was one of the chief poets of the Portuguese Renaissance. The official poet on the tragic...
  • Blasco Ibáñez, Vicente 1867-1928, Spanish novelist and politician, b. Valencia. Outspoken against the monarchy, Blasco Ibáñez published a radical republican journal, El pueblo, and was imprisoned 30 times for...
  • Boscán Almogáver, Juan c.1495-1542, Spanish poet. A Catalan aristocrat, Boscán was a literary figure at the court of Ferdinand V. He introduced Italian poetic forms into Spanish poetry, thus revolutionizing its...
  • Brandão, Raul 1867-1930, Portuguese novelist. His major theme was the tragic lives of poor people, and he often depicted a nightmare world of suffering ruled by inexplicable forces. His major works of fiction...
  • Caballero, Fernán pseud. of Cecilia Böhl de Faber , 1796-1877, Spanish novelist and folklorist. Born in Switzerland, she spent most of her adult life in Andalusia, where her novels are set. They are marked by a didactic tone and sentimental plots,...
  • Cadalso, José de 1741-82, Spanish poet, critic, and satirist. Cadalso's rhapsodic prose autobiography, Noches lúgubres (1798), probably suggested by Edward Young's Night Thoughts, was a herald of the Spanish...
  • Calderón de la Barca, Pedro 1600-1681, Spanish dramatist, last important figure of the Spanish Golden Age, b. Madrid. Educated at a Jesuit school and the Univ. of Salamanca, he turned from theology to poetry and became a...
  • Camões, Luís de 1524?-1580, Portuguese poet, the greatest figure in Portuguese literature. Born of a poor family, Camões gained wide familiarity with classic literature at the Univ. of Coimbra. It is thought that...
  • Campoamor, Ramón de 1817-1901, Spanish poet, the first to break with the romantic tradition of long, tragic, and emotional poetry. While no longer generally popular, he was one of the most popular Spanish poets of...
  • Castillejo, Cristóbal de c.1490-1550, Spanish poet of the Renaissance. As secretary to the king of Bohemia, Castillejo visited Vienna and other European cities. His poems are grouped under the titles Obras de amores [works...
  • Castro y Bellvís, Guillén de 1569-1631, Spanish dramatist, best known of the Valencian group of playwrights of the Golden Age. Three of his plays dramatize episodes from Don Quixote. His masterpiece, Las mocedades del Cid [the...
  • Castro, Américo 1885-1972, Spanish philologist and literary critic, b. Brazil. After the Spanish Civil War, Castro's studies focused on how modern Spanish history was adversely affected by the shift of Spain's...
  • Castro, Rosalía de 1837-85, Spanish poet and novelist. Castro's book of verse Cantares gallegos (1863) was the first important poetry in Galician since the 13th cent.; it reflected the lyrical appeal of Galician folk...
  • Cela, Camilo José 1916-2002, Spanish novelist, short-story writer, and poet, b. Iria Flavia. Among the writers to emerge after the Spanish civil war , he won critical acclaim with the novel La familia de Pascual Duarte (1942, tr. The Family of Pascual Duarte, 1964). Its brutal realism and crudeness of language are characteristic of Cela's style. These attributes are also evident in La colmena (1951; tr. The Hive, 1953), a powerful work detailing three days among the poor of Madrid. Cela was an extremely prolific author, but comparatively few of his works have been translated into English. These include the...
  • Cernuda, Luis 1904-63, Spanish poet. Cernuda fled Spain after the Spanish civil war and taught abroad. His works include La realidad y el deseo [reality and desire] (1936), a collection of his delicate surrealist...
  • Cruz, Ramón de la 1731-94, Spanish dramatist. He wrote tragedies and adapted French and Italian plays, but he owes his fame to his sainetes, some 450 masterly one-act comedies that depict the life of the middle and...
  • Cueva, Juan de la 1550?-1610?, Spanish dramatist, one of the precursors of Lope de Vega. He spent the years from 1574 to 1577 in Mexico. Of his 14 plays, the most famous is the comedy El infamador [the scoundrel] (1581). Cueva rejected traditional dramatic unities and introduced national themes to the stage, laying the foundation for the national drama of Spain's Golden Age. His innovations...
  • Delibes, Miguel 1920-, Spanish novelist, short-story writer, and journalist, b. Valladolid. He is known for his descriptions of provincial and rural life and for his psychological analysis of middle- and...
  • Diego, Gerardo 1896-1987, Spanish poet, b. Santander. Although he embraced many new poetic credos, his poetry is classified into two styles. His traditional poetry of real and sentimental experiences includes Soria...
  • Domenchina, Juan José 1898-1959, Spanish poet and critic, b. Madrid. He was active in the transition from modernismo to the "new poetry." Such early volumes as Del poema eterno [from the eternal poem] (1917) and...
  • Echegaray, José 1832-1916, Spanish dramatist, mathematician, physicist, economist, and politician. He taught science, practiced engineering, and devoted his later life to economics and politics, holding several...
  • Encina, Juan del 1469?-c.1530, Spanish dramatist, musician, and poet, b. Encino. He served as court musician to the duke of Alba in Italy, and in 1513 his play Plácida y Victoriano was presented in Rome. His...
  • Ercilla y Zúñiga, Alonso de 1533-94, Spanish poet. In Chile (1556-63) he fought against the Araucanian, and while there he began the epic poem La Araucana, considered the finest Spanish historical poem. This heroic work in 37 cantos is divided into three parts, published in 1569, 1578, and 1589. It tells of the courageous insurrection of the...
  • Espinel, Vicente Martínez 1550-1624, Spanish writer, musician, and adventurer. Espinel was notorious for his dissolute life, which his holy vows, taken in 1589, did little to change. An accomplished guitarist, he helped...
  • Espronceda, José de 1808-42, Spanish romantic poet. Involved in radical intrigue from the age of 14, he suffered imprisonment and was twice exiled. His Poesías (1840) brought him lasting fame. Of Espronceda's...
  • Feijoo, Benito Jerónimo 1676-1764, Spanish Benedictine scholar and critic, abbot at Oviedo, Asturias. Feijoo led in bringing the Enlightenment to Spain. His writings on philosophy, science, and literature represent the...
  • Fernández de Moratín, Leandro 1760-1828, Spanish dramatist and poet. A supporter of Joseph Bonaparte, he lived in exile in France after Bonaparte fell. Molière, whose works he translated, was his literary model. His plays,...
  • Ferreira, António c.1528-69, Portuguese dramatist and poet. Ferreira served as a privy councillor and a magistrate. Influenced by the Italian Renaissance, he wrote his great play Inés de Castro (c.1557), employing I