Sa de Miranda, Francisco de

Sá de Miranda, Francisco de 

Born Aug. 28, 1481, in Coimbra; died after May 17, 1558, in Tapada, Minho Province. Portuguese poet and playwright who wrote most of his poems in Spanish.

Sá de Miranda studied at the University of Lisbon and later participated in poetry competitions at court. During the years 1521–26 he lived in Italy. Around 1528 he wrote the comedy The Foreigners (published 1559) and around 1538 the anticlerical comedy The Braggarts (Velhalpandos; published 1560). He introduced into Portuguese poetry the verse forms of the Italian Renaissance—the sonnet, ode, eclogue, and epistle. Sá de Miranda’s work is characterized by melancholic and individualistic motifs. In his eclogues and epistles, however, he criticized the clergy, the aristocracy, colonial wars, the royal administration, and the legal system. He contrasted the disorder of city life in Lisbon with farm life in the country (the eclogue Basto).

WORKS

Obras completas, vol. 1, 3rd ed. Lisbon, 1960. Vol. 2: 2nd ed., Lisbon, 1943.
Poesias de F. de Sá de Miranda, acompanhada de um estudo sobre o poeta por Carolina Michaëlis de Vasconcellos. Halle, 1885.

A. I. DROBINSKII