ESPINEL, VICENTE MARTINEZ (1551-1624)

This article appears in Volume V09, Page 775 of the Encyclopedia Britannica.

Encyclopedia Britannica - Main :: EMS-EUD

ESPINEL, VICENTE MARTINEZ (1551-1624) , Spanish poet and novelist, was baptized on the 28th of December 1551, and educated at Salamanca. He was expelled from the university in 1572, and served as a soldier in Flanders, returning to Spain in 1584 or thereabouts. He took orders in 1587, and four years later became chaplain at Ronda, absented himself from his living, and was deprived of his cure; but his musical skill obtained for him the post of choirmaster at Plasencia. His Diversas Rimas (1591) are undeniably good examples of technical accomplishment and

caustic

CAUSTIC (Gr. rcavvraubs, burning)

wit. Espinel, however, survives as the author of a clever picaresque novel entitled Relaciones de la vida del Escudero Marcos de ObregOn (1618). It is, in many passages, an autobiography of Espinel with picturesque embeIlishments. Marcos is not a chivalresque "

esquire

ESQUIRE (0. Fr. escuyer, Mod. Fr. ecuyer, derived through the form escudier from Med. Lat. scutarius, " shield-bearer ")

," but an adventurer who seeks his fortune by attaching himself to

great

GREAT

men; and the object of the author is to warn

young

YOUNG
YOUNG, A
YOUNG, ARTHUR (1741-1820)
YOUNG, BRIGHAM (1801-1877)
YOUNG, CHARLES MAYNE (1777–1856)
EDWARD
- EDWARD
_16831765_.html">YOUNG,
EDWARD
- EDWARD
(1683–1765)
YOUNG, JAMES (1811-1883)
THOMAS
_1773_1829_.html">YOUNG,
THOMAS
(1773-1829)

men against such a life. Apart from the unedifying confessions of the hero, the book contains curious anecdotes concerning prominent contemporaries, and the episodical stories are told with

great

GREAT

spirit; the style is extremely correct, though somewhat diffuse. Le Sage has not scrupled to borrow from Marcos de Obregdn many of the incidents and characters in Gil Blasa circumstance which induced Isla to give to his Spanish

translation

TRANSLATION

of Le Sage's

work

WORK

the jesting title, Gil Blas restored to his Country and his Native Tongue. In the 1775 edition of the Siecle de Louis XI V. Voltaire grossly exaggerates in saying that Gil Blas is taken entirely from Marcos de Obregon. Espinel was a clever musician and added a fifth

string

STRING

to the guitar. He revived the measure known as decimas or espinelas, consisting of a stanza of ten octosyllabic lines. Most of the poems which he left in

manuscript

MANUSCRIPT

remain unpublished owing to their licentious character.

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