Baltasar Gracián y Morales

Baltasar Gracián y Morales (January 8, 1601 - December 6, 1658), Spanish prose writer, was born in Belmonte, near Calatayud (Aragon).

Biography

The son of a doctor, in his childhood Gracián lived with his uncle, who was a priest. He studied at a Jesuit school in Zaragoza from 1616 to 1619 and at the age of 18 became a novice. He studied philosophy at the College of Calatayud in 1621 and 1623 and theology in Zaragoza. He was ordained in 1627 and took his final vows in 1635.

Related Topics:
Priest - Zaragoza - Novice - Philosophy - College of Calatayud - Theology

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He assumed the vows of the Jesuits in 1633 and dedicated himself to teaching in various Jesuit schools. He spent time in Huesca, where he befriended the local scholar Vincencio Juán de Lastanosa, who helped him achieve an important milestone in his intellectual upbringing. He acquired fame as a preacher, although some of his oratorical displays, such as reading a letter sent from Hell from the pulpit, were frowned upon by his superiors. He was named President of the college of the Tarragona Company and wrote works proposing models for courtly conduct such as El héroe (The Hero), El político (The Politician), and El discreto (The Discreet One). During the Spanish war with Catalonia and France, he was chaplain of the army that liberated Lleida in 1646.

Related Topics:
Jesuits - 1633 - Huesca - Vincencio Juán de Lastanosa - Tarragona - Catalonia - France - Lleida - 1646

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In 1651, he published the first part of the Criticón (Faultfinder) without the permission of his superiors, whom he disobeyed repeatedly. This attracted the Company's displeasure. Ignoring the reprimands, he published the third part of Criticón in 1657, and as a result was sanctioned and exiled to Graus. He tried to leave the order but was unsuccessful. He died in 1658 and is buried in Tarazona near Zaragoza in the province of Aragon.

Related Topics:
1651 - Graus - 1658

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Gracián is the most representative writer of the Spanish Baroque literary style known as Conceptismo (Conceptism), of which he was the most important theoretician; his Agudeza y arte de ingenio (Wit and the Art of Inventiveness) is at once a poetic, a rhetoric and an anthology of the conceptist style.

Related Topics:
Baroque - Conceptism - Poetic - Rhetoric - Anthology

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