Baltasar Gracián y Morales

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

Works

• El héroe (1637, The Hero), a criticism of Machiavelli drawing a portrait of the ideal Christian leader.
• El político Don Fernando el Católico (1640, The Politician King Ferdinand the Catholic), presents his ideal image of the politician.
• Arte de ingenio (1642, revised as Agudeza y arte de ingenio in 1648 (translated as The Mind's Wit and Art by Leonard H. Chambers), an essay on literature and aesthetics.
• El discreto (1646, The Complete Gentleman), described the qualities which make the sophisticated man of the world.
• Oráculo manual y arte de prudencia (1647), translated as The Art of Worldly Wisdom (by Joseph Jacobs, 1892), The Oracle, a Manual of the Art of Discretion (by L.B. Walton), Practical Wisdom for Perilous Times (in selections by J. Leonard Kaye), or The Science of Success and the Art of Prudence, his most famous book, some 300 aphorisms with comments.
• El Criticón (1651-1657), a novel, translated as The Critic by Sir Paul Rycaut in 1681.

The only publication which bears Gracián's name is El Comulgatorio (1655); his more important books were issued under the pseudonym of Lorenzo Gracin (possibly a brother of the writer) or under the anagram of Gracian de Marlones. Gracián was punished for publishing without his superior's permission El Criticón (in which Defoe is alleged to have found the germ of Robinson Crusoe): but no objection was taken to its substance.

Related Topics:
Defoe - Robinson Crusoe

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