Juan de Mena

Juan de Mena (* 1411 in Cordoba, Spain, † 1456 in Laguna Torre, now the city of Madrid, Spain) was a Spanish poet.

Juan de Mena studied at the University of Salamanca, then still made ​​in Rome with the ancient classical literature familiar, was after his return, Latin secretary and Royal chronicler of King John II and a member of the council of his native city, he died in 1456.

Mena is considered the father of Spanish poetry and as such is well- known as the Spanish Ennius. He took the old man and the Italians to the pattern.

His main work is the didactic poem Laberinto de Fortuna ( Labyrinth of Doom ), Seville in 1496; with commentary by Hernán Núñez, according to the number of verses also ( Three hundred) called Las Trecientas, an allegorical painting of the changes of fortune and an obvious imitation of the Divine Comedy of Dante.

The poetic value of the work, despite some beautiful details throughout low; by his contemporaries, but it was greatly admired and imitated several times in Spain and in Portugal. Mena's other poetic works are: La coronación ( The Coronation, 1492), a poem in celebration of the coronation of the poet Marqués de Santillana; the allegorical and ascetic poem coplas de los siete Pecados mortales (1500 ) and several smaller pieces in the courtly style.