José Cadalso

José Cadalso y Vázquez de Andrade ( born October 8, 1741 Cadiz, † February 26, 1782 in Gibraltar) was a Spanish writer.

Life

José Cadalso y Vázquez was born in Cadiz; the mother died in childbirth and his father, who was on business in America, met the son know only 13 years later. So his uncle Mateo Vázquez, a Jesuit cared about the education of the boy and sent him to Paris to study. When the father returned, José followed him to London, and later to Italy, Germany, Holland and finally to Spain, where he entered the Seminario de Nobles in Madrid. He died only 40 years old, at the siege of Gibraltar.

Work

As a satirist José Cadalso attacked in the first published in 1772 Los eruditos a la violeta the superficiality of an education that replaces serious study by chatty dilettantism.

Prose

• Defensa de la española nación contra la carta de Montesquieu persiana LXXVIII ( 1768 ).
• Los eruditos a la violeta ( 1772)
• Cartas Marruecas (1773, not published until 1789)
• Noches lúgubres ( 1771/72, publ. 1789-90 )
• Memoria de los más Acontecimientos particulares de mi vida ( autobiography)

Drama

• Solaya o los circasianos ( tragedy)
• Don Sancho García ( 1771) ( Tragedy )