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Francisco Gómez de Quevedo y Santibáñez Villegas, Knight of the Order of Santiago (Spanish pronunciation: [fɾanˈθisko ðe keˈβeðo]; 14 September 1580 – 8 September 1645) was a Spanish nobleman, politician and writer of the Baroque era. Along with his lifelong rival, Luis de Góngora, Quevedo was one of the most prominent Spanish poets of the age. His style is characterized by what was called conceptismo. This style existed in stark contrast to Góngora's culteranismo. Biography Quevedo was born on 14 September 1580 in Madrid into a family of hidalgos from the village of Vejorís, located in the northern mountainous region of Cantabria. His family was descended from the Castilian nobility. Quevedo's father, Francisco Gómez de Quevedo, was secretary to Maria of Spain, daughter of emperor Charles V and wife of Maximilian II, Holy Roman Emperor, and his mother, Madrid-born María de Santibáñez, was lady-in-waiting to the queen. Quevedo matured surrounded by dignitaries and nobility at the royal court. Intellectually gifted, Quevedo was physically handicapped with a club foot, and myopia. Since he always wore pince-nez, his name in the plural, quevedos, came to mean "pince-nez" in the Spanish language. Orphaned by the age of six, he was able to attend the Imperial School run by the Jesuits in Madrid. He then attended university at Alcalá de Henares from 1596 to 1600. By his own account, he made independent studies in philosophy, classical languages, Arabic, Hebrew, French and Italian. Quevedo attended the Medrano Academy (Poetic Academy of Madrid) founded by the president Sebastian Francisco de Medrano between 1616-1626. In 1601, Quevedo, as a member of the Court, moved to Valladolid, where the Court had been transferred by the King's minister, the Duke of Lerma. There he studied theology, a subject that would become a lifelong interest, and on which in later life he would compose the treatise Providencia de Dios (God's Providence) against atheism. By this time, he was becoming noted as both a poet and a prose writer. Some of his poetry was collected in a 1605 generational anthology by Pedro Espinosa entitled Flores de Poetas Ilustres (Flowers by Illustrious Poets). We can also date back to this time the first draft of his picaresque novel Vida del Buscón – apparently written as an exercise in courtly wit – and a few satirical pamphlets that made him famous among his fellow students and which he would later disown as juvenile pranks. Around this time, he began a very erudite exchange of letters with the humanist Justus Lipsius, in which Quevedo deplored the wars that were ravaging Europe. The Court returned to Madrid in 1606, and Quevedo followed, remaining till 1611. By then, he was a well-known and accomplished man-of-letters. He befriended and was praised by Miguel de Cervantes and Lope de Vega, the premier playwright of the age. Enemies Quevedo's enemies included, among others, the dramatist Juan Ruiz de Alarcón for, despite his own physical handicaps, Quevedo found Alarcón's redheaded and hunchbacked physique a source of amusement. Quevedo also attacked Juan Pérez de Montalbán, the son of a bookseller with whom he had quarrelled, satirizing him in La Perinola (The Whirligig), a piece that he included in his book Para todos (For Everyone). In 1608, Quevedo duelled with the author and fencing master Luis Pacheco de Narváez as a result of Quevedo criticizing one of Pacheco's works. Quevedo took off Pacheco's hat in the first encounter. They remained enemies all their lives. In Quevedo's Buscón, this duel was parodied with a fencer relying on mathematical calculations having to run away from a duel with an experienced soldier. Quevedo could be impulsive. He was present at the church of San Martín in Madrid when a woman praying there was slapped on the cheek by another man who had rushed up to her. Quevedo seized the man, dragging him outside the church. The two men drew swords, and Quevedo ran his opponent through. The man, who died of his wounds some time later, was someone of importance. Quevedo thus retired temporarily to the palace of his friend and patron, Pedro Téllez-Girón, 3rd Duke of Osuna. The preferred object of his fury and ridicule, however, was the poet Góngora, whom, in a series of scathing satires, he accused of being an unworthy priest, a homosexual, a gambler, and a writer of indecent verse who used a purposefully obscure language. Quevedo lampooned his rival by writing a sonnet, Aguja de navegar cultos, which listed words from Góngora's lexicon: "He who would like to be a culto poet in just one day, / must the following jargon learn: / Fulgores, arrogar, joven, presiente / candor, construye, métrica, armonía..." Quevedo satirized Góngora's physique, particularly his prominent nose in the sonnet A una nariz, (To a Nose). It begins with the lines: Érase un hombre a una nariz pegado, / érase una nariz superlativa, / érase una nariz sayón y escriba, / érase un peje espada muy barbado. (There was a man glued to a nose, / there was a superlative nose, / there was a nose that was an official and a scribe, / there was a bearded swordfish.) Relationships with the Duke of Osuna About that time, Quevedo grew very close to Pedro Téllez-Girón, 3rd Duke of Osuna, one of the great statesmen and generals of the age, whom he accompanied as secretary to Italy in 1613, carrying out a number of missions for him which took him to Nice, Venice, and finally back to Madrid. There he engaged in all manner of courtly intrigue to get the viceroyalty of Kingdom of Naples for Osuna, an effort that finally bore fruit in 1616. He then returned to Italy in the Duke's entourage, where he was entrusted with putting in order the Viceroyalty's finances, and sent on several espionage-related missions to the rival Republic of Venice, although it is now believed these did not involve him personally. He was rewarded for his efforts with a knighthood in the order of Santiago in 1618. Temporary exile and retirement With the fall from favor of Osuna in 1620, Quevedo lost his patron and protector and was exiled to Torre de Juan Abad (Ciudad Real), whose fiefdom his mother had purchased for him. His supposed vassals, however, refused to acknowledge him, forcing Quevedo into an interminable legal battle with the town's council that would not be won until after his death. Quevedo would write some of his better poetry in this retirement, such as the sonnet Retirado a la paz de estos desiertos... or Son las torres de Joray.... He found consolation to his failed ambitions as a courtier in the Stoicism of Seneca, his study and commentary turning him into one of the main exponents of Spanish Neostoicism. The elevation of Philip IV to the throne in 1621 meant the end of Quevedo's exile, and his return to Court and politics, now under the influence of the new minister, the Count-Duke of Olivares. Quevedo accompanied the young king in trips to Andalusia and Aragon, recounting some of its various in.... Discover the Epicteto popular books. Find the top 100 most popular Epicteto books.