Jorge De Montemayor

He seems to have studied music in his youth, and to have gone to Spain in 1543 as Chorister in the suite of the Portuguese Infanta Maria, first wife of Philip II . In 1552 he went back to Portugal in the suite of the Infanta Juana, wife of D. João , and on the death of this prince in 1554 returned to Spain. He is said to have served in the army, to have accompanied Philip II to England in 1555 , and to have travelled in Italy and the Low Countries ; but it is certain that his poetical works were published at Antwerp in 1554, and again in 1558 .

His reputation is based on a prose work, the ''Diana'', a pastoral romance published about 1559 . Shortly afterwards Montemayor was killed in Piedmont , apparently in a love affair; a late edition of the ''Diana'' gives the exact date of his death. The ''Diana'' is generally stated to have been printed at Valencia in 1542 ; but, as the '' Canto De Orfeo '' refers to the widowhood of the Infanta Juana in 1554, the book must be of later date.

It is important as the first Pastoral Novel published in Spain; as the starting-point of a universal literary fashion; and as the indirect source, through the Translation included in Googe 's '' Eglogs, Epytaphes And Sonnets '' ( 1563 ), of an episode in '' The Two Gentlemen Of Verona ''. Though Portuguese was Montemayor's native language, he only used it for two songs and a short Prose passage in the sixth book of the ''Diana''. His mastery of Spanish is amazing, and even Cervantes , who judges the verses in the ''Diana'' with unaccustomed severity, recognizes the remarkable merit of Montemayor's prose style. That he pleased his own generation is proved by the seventeen editions and two continuations of the ''Diana'' published in the 16th Century , by Parodies , imitations and renderings in French and English .

Bibliography

G Schönherr, ''Jorge de Montemayor, sein Leben und sein Schafroman'' (Halle, 1886); Domingo García Péres, ''Catálogo razonado biográfico y bibliográfico de los autores portugueses que escribieron en castellano'' (Madrid, 1890); Hugo Albert Rennert, ''The Spanish Pastoral Novel'' (Baltimore, 1892); J Fitzmaurice-Kelly, "The Bibliography of the Diana" in the ''Revue hispanique'' (1895); R Tobler, "Shakespeare's Sommernachtstraum und Montemayor's Diana" in the ''Jahrbuch Der deutschen Shakespeare-Gesellschaft'' (1898); Marcelino Menéndez Y Pelayo , ''Origenes de la novela'' (Madrid, 1905).

REFERENCE

''This entry incorporates public domain text originally from the 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica .''

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Jorge De Montemayor