author
Juan Bautista Arriaza
1770–1837
A poet of late 18th- and early 19th-century Spain, his work moves between polished neoclassicism and early Romantic feeling. He is especially remembered for the patriotic verses that made him a well-known literary voice during the Peninsular War.
1 Audiobook
Modern Poets and Poetry of Spain
by James Kennedy, Juan Bautista Arriaza, Manuel Bretón de los Herreros, José de Espronceda, Leandro Fernández de Moratín, José María Heredia, Tomás de Iriarte, Gaspar de Jovellanos, Francisco Martínez de la Rosa, Juan Meléndez Valdés, Manuel José Quintana, duque de Angel de Saavedra Rivas, José Zorrilla
About the author
Born in Madrid on February 27, 1770, Juan Bautista Arriaza y Superviela built an unusually varied career: he served as a naval officer when he was young, later worked in diplomacy, and eventually became known above all as a poet and writer. His life and work place him at the meeting point of Spanish neoclassicism and preromanticism.
Arriaza became widely known for his patriotic poetry written during the war against Napoleonic occupation, which gave him a strong public reputation in his own time. He also published lyrical verse, and his writing shows both formal control and a taste for stronger emotion and political feeling than strict classicism usually allowed.
He was elected to the Real Academia Española in 1829. Arriaza died in Madrid on January 22, 1837, leaving behind a body of work that helps capture the literary and political atmosphere of Spain in a turbulent age.