Iriarte, Tomás de

Iriarte, Tomás de (tōmäs` dā ēryär`tā), 1750–91, Spanish poet and dramatist, b. Canary Islands. He spent most of his life in Madrid, where, like many of his contemporaries, he engaged in polemics, criticism, satire, and the translation of Latin and French works. Iriarte wrote several comedies of manners but is best known for his 76 Fábulas literarias [literary fables] (1782, tr. 1835), which earned him an international reputation as a wit and a moralist. Most of these deal with literary methods and style. The French fabulist Florian acknowledged a debt to Iriarte.