Francisco Gómez de Quevedo y Villegas
Francisco Gómez de Quevedo y Villegas (1580-1645) was a prominent Spanish writer known for his sharp wit and satirical style, which left a lasting impact on literature. Born into a family connected to the Spanish court, Quevedo received a rigorous education, studying humanities and theology at prestigious institutions. His literary career began with satirical rewrites of his contemporary Luis de Góngora's poetry, which sparked a famous rivalry that defined the literary landscape of the time. Throughout his life, Quevedo produced a wide array of works, including poetry, essays, and a notable picaresque novel, "El Buscón," which critiques societal ambition and moral decay.
Despite experiencing political turbulence, including exile and imprisonment, Quevedo's literary output remained prolific, reflecting deep philosophical and social themes. His poetry and prose offered profound observations on existential, religious, and political issues of his era, characterized by a mix of admiration and disdain for contemporary society. Quevedo's legacy continues to resonate, influencing future writers and establishing him as a key figure in Spanish literature, particularly known for his baroque style and innovative approaches to traditional forms. His works are studied for their rich commentary on the human condition and the complexities of his time.
On this Page
Subject Terms
Francisco Gómez de Quevedo y Villegas
Spanish poet and writer
- Born: September 17, 1580
- Birthplace: Madrid, Spain
- Died: September 8, 1645
- Place of death: Villanueva de los Infantes, Ciudad Real, Spain
Quevedo y Villegas was one of the greatest figures of Spanish letters. He cultivated various genres of poetry and wrote satire, literary criticism, and rich prose that included fictional, philosophical, and political texts. He became the most representative proponent of conceptismo, a form of witty and satirical literary conceit that played on ideas and was opposed to the style of culteranismo, which attempted to ennoble Spanish language through a play on words.
Early Life
Francisco Gómez de Quevedo y Villegas (frahn-SEES-koh GOH-mehz day kay-VAY-thoh ee vee-YAY-gahs) was born to a family with close ties to the Spanish court. His father, Pedro Gómez de Quevedo, was the secretary of Princess María (daughter of Charles V) and Queen Anna (wife of Philip II), and his mother, María de Santibáñez (d. 1600), was the queen’s chambermaid. His father died in 1586.
Quevedo y Villegas attended the prestigious Jesuit College in Madrid and then in Ocaña. From 1596 to 1600, he studied humanities (including philosophy, Latin, Greek, French, and Italian) at the University of Alcalá. He graduated in 1600 and began his studies in theology, which he finished in Valladolid in 1606. There he came into contact with the literary circles of the time and started to make a name for himself. He befriended the Flemish Humanist and philosopher Joest Lips (Justus Lipsius), with whom he kept an epistolary correspondence. In 1599, he began to write satirical pastiches of Góngora’s poetry, rewriting the latter’s most serious poems in a mocking vein, thus creating great animosity between the two writers and their followers.
Quevedo y Villegas’s poems (eighteen of them) first appeared in poet Pedro de Espinosa’s anthology Flores de poetas ilustres de España (1605; flowers of illustrious poets of Spain), which earned Quevedo y Villegas respect and popularity among the literary circles of the time. By 1606, he was back in Madrid, seeking the duke of Osuna as protector.
Life’s Work
The years between 1609 and 1613 were marked by intense literary production. Quevedo y Villegas translated and wrote commentaries on classical writers, as well as writing jacaras (popular poems) and serious poetry in a neo-Stoic vein. These years coincided with a moment of personal crisis and introspection that inspired the religious and metaphysical poems of Heráclito cristiano (wr. 1613, pb. 1670; Christian heraclites).
From 1613 to 1619, Quevedo y Villegas traveled to Italy, where he combined his writing poetry with diplomatic responsibilities and activities as the secretary of the duke of Osuna, who was the viceroy of Sicily and Naples during that period. Around 1621, he wrote a religious and political text based on the Gospels. Política de Dios, gobierno de Christo, tirania de Satanas (pb. 1626; Divine Maxims of Government…, 1715) analyzed the role of the king and his favorite.
Upon the death of King Philip III in 1621, his son Philip IV inherited the throne—at sixteen years of age—and changed the political landscape, while his favorite, the count-duke of Olivares, gained great influence. The political figures of the old reign were persecuted. This included Quevedo y Villegas’s protector, the duke of Osuna, who died in prison on September 25, 1624. The writer’s proximity to Osuna temporarily tarnished his reputation. In 1620, he was exiled from the court to his estate at La Torre, which did not end his literary career, however. Perhaps to curry favor, he composed Los grandes anales de quince días (wr. 1620-1621, pb. 1788), in which he praised the monarch’s first fifteen days in power.
Around 1625, Quevedo y Villegas had regained the king’s confidence while traveling first to Andalusia with the court and then to Aragón one year later. While Quevedo y Villegas was away, his picaresque novelLa vida del Buscón llamado Pablos, ejemplo de vagabundos y espejo de tacaños was published in Saragossa in 1626. It is better known as El Buscón (wr. 1603-1603) and was translated as The Life and Adventures of Buscon, the Witty Spaniard (1657). In this novel, Quevedo y Villegas portrayed the life of a trickster and his marginal world in an indictment of arrivisme (aggressive ambition) and moral liberalism. A version of his Sueños y discursos de verdades encubridoras de engaños (pb. 1627; Visions, or Hel’s Kingdome and the World’s Follies and Abuses , 1640), which he had begun to write in 1606, was published in Barcelona. Following the concept of classical and medieval visions, the work is a group of six short texts in the form of a dialogue, in which Quevedo y Villegas gives a satiric and moralistic and grotesque depiction of the society of his time.
After involving himself in a polemic defending the candidacy of Saint James (Santiago) as a patron of Spain (he had been a knight of the order since 1618), and not of Saint Teresa as others had proposed, the king confined him to La Torre. Again, this confinement failed to end his literary career.
In 1632, a new period of literary production and political activity started for Quevedo y Villegas, as he became the king’s secretary. Two years later, he married Esperanza de Mendoza, but they separated two years later. Coinciding with a second period of personal crisis, he published a philosophical prose text, La cuna y la sepultura (pb. 1633; the cradle and the grave), imitating Seneca’s stoicism.
After years of conflict, Louis XIII of France declared war against Spain in 1635. This situation moved Quevedo y Villegas to write two texts showing his disapproval of the neighbor country: Carta al serenísimo Luis XIII (pb. 1635; letter to the most serene Louis XIII) and Visita y anatomía de la cabeza del cardenal Richelieu (wr. 1635; visit and anatomy of the head of Cardinal de Richelieu). Meanwhile, an attack on Quevedo y Villegas, which would tarnish his reputation, appeared in Valencia showing to what extent he had become a controversial figure who was hated by many.
His polemical satire La hora de todos y la fortuna con seso (wr. 1635, pb. 1655; Fortune in Her Wits: Or, The Hour of All Men , 1697), in which he mixes mythological characters with people of his time, such as Olivares, was published ten years after Quevedo y Villegas’s death.
From 1639 to 1643, he was imprisoned in León, this time for unclear reasons, where despite this predicament and his poor health he wrote poetry, satire, and political and religious texts. Aside from a small group of early poems, Quevedo y Villegas did not publish his poetry in his lifetime. It was after his death that his friend Josef Antonio González de Salas published one of the first anthologies with his poems, called El Parnasso español (pb. 1648; the Spanish Parnassus). Some of his poetry was translated into English by the poet Philip Ayres (1638-1712) and was published in the anthology Lyric Poems: Made in Imitation of the Italians (pb. 1687).
Significance
Quevedo y Villegas was a prolific man of letters who left a greatly varied legacy. His influence has persisted through the centuries and can be traced in writers such as Miguel de Unamuno y Jugo (1864-1936) and Jorge Luis Borges (1899-1986), among many others.
With the poetry of his rival Góngora, his own work represents a landmark of Spanish poetry. His poetry not only opened a space of experimentation and sharp conceptualization but also offered a way to recover the past by cultivating traditional forms. His at times burlesque poems allowed him to reflect upon religious, metaphysical, existential, and political questions as well as to practice social criticism. In his prose, he depicted and criticized the vices and hypocrisy of his time. The attitudes that he evinced, characterized by both attraction and contempt for the world around him, conveyed, variously, a deep vitality and baroque disillusionment with the vanity of the world.
Bibliography
Clamurro, William H. Language and Ideology in the Prose of Quevedo. Newark, Del.: Juan de la Cuesta, 1991. This study examines the language and rhetorical strategies used by Quevedo y Villegas in four of his best-known works. Clamurro highlights Quevedo y Villegas’s moralistic and satirical flourishes in rhetorical and ideological terms.
Mariscal, George. Contradictory Subjects: Quevedo, Cervantes, and Seventeenth-Century Spanish Culture. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1991. Mariscal begins his study by asserting the importance of “reconceiving the subject as a product of culture and society.” He discusses the notion of subjectivity in seventeenth century Spanish literature. The book includes a chapter on “Individuation and Exclusion” in Quevedo y Villegas.
Martínez, Maricarmen. The Revolt Against Time: A Philosophical Approach to the Prose and Poetry of Quevedo and Bocángel. Lanham, Md.: University Press of America, 2003. Martínez examines the concepts of the neo-Stoic “revolt against time” in seventeenth century Spain, specifically the poetry and prose of Quevedo y Villegas and his contemporary, Gabriel Bocángel. She argues that Seneca became a central figure in the neo-Stoic struggle against things and time in the work of both authors.
Schwartz, Lia, and Antonio Carreira, eds. Quevedo a Nueva Luz. Málaga, Spain: Universidad de Málaga, 1997. An edited volume on Quevedo y Villegas’s work that includes studies from scholars in Europe and the United States covering Quevedo y Villegas’s intellectual formation as a Humanist, his political activities, and the impact of his work on several nineteenth and twentieth century Spanish writers.