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Fernando de Herrera

1911 Encyclopedia Britannica

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1911 Encyclopedia Britannica
• Fernando de Herrera
The Nuttall Encyclopedia
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• Fernando de Herrera

FERNANDO DE HERRERA ( c. 1534-1597), Spanish lyrical poet, was born at Seville. Although in minor orders, he addressed many impassioned poems to the countess of Gelves, wife of Alvaro Colon de Portugal; but it is suggested that these should be regarded as Platonic literary exercises in the manner of Petrarch. As is shown by his Anotaciones alas obras de Garcilaso de la Vega (1580), Herrera had a boundless admiration for the Italian poets, and continued the work of Boscan in naturalizing the Italian metrical system in Spain. His commentary on Garcilaso involved him in a series of literary polemics, and his verbal innovations laid him open to attack. But, even if his amatory sonnets are condemned as insincere in sentiment, their workmanship is admirable, while his odes on the battle of Lepanto, on Don John of Austria, and the elegy on King Sebastian of Portugal entitle him to rank as the greatest of Andalusian poets and as the most important of the followers of Garcilaso de la Vega (see Vega). His poems were published in 1582, and reprinted with additions in 1619; they are reissued in the Biblioteca de autores espanoles, vol. xxxii. Of Herrera's prose works only the Vida y muerta de Tomas Moro (1592) survives; it is a translation of the life in Thomas Stapleton's Tres Thomae (1588).

Bibliography. - E. Bourciez, "Les Sonnets de Fernando de Herrera," Annales de la Faculte des Lettres de Bordeaux (1891); Fernando de Herrera, controversia sobre sus anotaciones a les obras de Garcilaso de la Vega (Seville, 1870); A. Morel-Fatio, L'Hymne sur Lepante (Paris, 1893).