Francisco de Quevedo y Villegas

Francisco de Quevedo y Villegas , 1580–1645, Spanish satirist, novelist, and wit, b. Madrid. In 1611 he fled to Italy after a duel and became involved in revolutionary plottings. When Philip IV ascended the Spanish throne, Quevedo narrowly avoided a long prison term. He was later imprisoned (1639–43) as the presumed author of a satire on the king and his favorite, the conde de Olivares. Quevedo was one of the great writers of the Spanish Golden Age. Los sueños [visions] (1627) is a brilliant and bitterly satiric account, after Dante and Lucan, of the inhabitants of hell. Other major works include the philosophical treatise Providencia de Dios (1641), the political essay Política de Dios y gobierno de Cristo (1626–55), and the important picaresque novel La vida del Buscón (1626). Also a major poet, his verse was collected in El Parnaso español (1648). His Epístola satírica y censoria (1639), a poetic satire against Olivares, is well known. Quevedo was a determined opponent of Gongorism (see Góngora ).

Bibliography: See studies by D. W. Blesnick (1972) and J. Iffland (1978).