BOSCAN ALMOGAVER, JUAN (1490?-I542), Spanish poet, was a Catalan of patrician birth, and, after some years of military service, became tutor to the duke of Alva. His poems are divided into sections which mark stages of his poetical evolution. The first book contains poems in the old Castilian metres, written before 1526, in which year he became acquainted with the Venetian ambassador, Andrea Navagiero, who urged him to adopt Italian measures; this advice gave a new turn to Boscan's activity. The remaining books contain a number of pieces in the Italian manner, the longest of these being Hero y Leander, a poem in blank verse. He also published, in 1534, an admirable translation of Casti glione's Il Cortegiano. Italian measures had been introduced into Spanish literature by Santillana and Villalpando ; Boscan natural ized them definitively and founded a poetic school.
The best edition of his poems was issued at Madrid in by W. J. Knapp. See F. Flamini, Studi di storia literaria italiana e straniera (Livorno,