Quevedo y Villegas, Francisco

Born Sept 26, 1580, in Madrid; died Sept. 8, 1645, in Villanueva de los Infantes. Spanish writer.

Quevedo y Villegas was a member of a distinguished family of the nobility. Because of his views and satirical works he was persecuted by the authorities and the Inquisition, and he was imprisoned from 1639 to 1643. The crisis of Renaissance humanism and the characteristics of baroque culture are vividly reflected in his world view and creative work. In his works a struggle against Scholasticism and a defense of Epicurean materialism were interwoven with the preaching of Stoic philosophy, and criticism of the Spanish state and society was intertwined with the ideal of a “people’s monarchy” and an “early Christian humanism” (the treatise The Politics of God, the Rule of Christ, and the Tyranny of Satan, parts 1–2, published 1626–39). His works also combined a castigation of social vices with pessimism and a denial of the Renaissance ideal of the harmonious man. In satirical poetry, the picaresque novel The Story of the Life of a Rogue Named Don Pablos (written before 1609, published in 1626; Russian translation, 1950), the cycle of sociopolitical pamphlets Visions (written between 1607 and 1623, published in 1627), and the collection of short stories The Hour of Retribution, or Reasonable Fortune (1635, published 1650), Quevedo y Villegas created a satirical panorama of everyday life in 17th-century Spain.