Tomás de Iriarte y Oropesa

Tomás de Iriarte (or Yriarte ) y Oropesa ( born September 18, 1750 in La Orotava (now Puerto de la Cruz ), Tenerife, † September 17, 1791 in Madrid) was a Spanish poet of the Enlightenment.

Life and work

Tomás de Iriarte came from an educated family of writers. At the age of 13 he was sent for his education to Madrid to his uncle, the humanist and royal librarian Juan de Iriarte ( 1701-1771 ). At 18, he began French dramas for the Royal Theatre translate and thus laid the foundation for his literary career. In 1770 he published Tirso Imarete, an anagram of his name, its own comedy, entitled Hacer que hacemos.

In the 1770s Iriarte worked as an official translator of the Secretariat of State, since 1776 as an archivist. He was the man of letters in Madrid a civilized life was, as usual in his time, engaged in literary disputes and kept in touch to intellectual circles. Abroad he was known in 1780 by La música, a didactic poem. He achieved fame in 1782 with his Fábulas literarias, a collection of mounted in verse fables, which contained no morality in contrast to their traditional intentions, but were designed as treatises classic ancient theories.

Tomás de Iriartes work is assigned to the literary classicism; his style is characterized by sobriety and satirical to critical tone. It inspired, among others, the Spanish poet Félix María Samaniego (1745-1801) morales to its Fábulas, created 1781-1784.

Iriarte came, not least because of its literary fables, in personal conflicts, and in 1786 the Spanish Inquisition appears. He died at the age of 41 years at the throat.