Francisco De Sa De Miranda

SA DE MIRANDA, FRANCISCO DE Portuguese poet, was the son of a canon of Coimbra belonging to the ancient and noble family of Si. He probably made his first studies of Greek, Latin and philosophy in one of the colleges of the Old City, and in 1505 went to Lisbon university. He seems to have resided for the most part in the capital down to 1521, dividing his time between the palace and the university, in the latter of which he had taken the degree of doctor of law by 1516.

In the middle of July 1520 he set out across Spain for Italy, and spent the years 1521 to 1525 abroad, visiting Milan, Venice, Florence, Rome, Naples and Sicily "with leisure and curiosity." He enjoyed intimacy with Giovanni Ruccellai, Lattanzio Tolomei and Sannazaro; he saluted the illustrious Vittoria Colonna, a distant connection of his family, and in her house he probably talked with Bembo and Ariosto, and perhaps met Machiavelli and Guicciardini. He brought home with him (ca. 1525) the sonnet and canzone of Petrarch, the tercet of Dante, the ottava rima of Ariosto, the eclogue in the manner of Sannazaro and Italian hendecasyllabic verse. He did not, however, abandon the short national metre, but carried it to perfection in his Cartas.

His Os Estrangeiros, produced in 1527-28, was the first Portu guese prose comedy, as his Cleopatra (c. 155o) is recognised to be the first Portuguese classical tragedy. In 1528 Miranda made his first real attempt to introduce the new forms of verse by writing in Spanish a canzon entitled Fabula do Mondego, and in 153o-32 he followed it up with the eclogue Aleixo.

The year 1532 had marked his passage from the active to the contemplative life, and the eclogue Basto, in the form of a pas toral dialogue written in redondilhas, opened his new manner. It has a pronounced personal note, and its episodes are described in a genuinely popular tone. The same epoch saw the compo

sition of his Cartas or sententious letters in quintilhas which, with Basto and his satires, make up the most original, if not the most valuable, portion of his legacy. A more lyrical vein is apparent in the quintilhas of A. Egipciaca Santa Maria.

In

1538 he wrote his second classical prose comedy Os Vilhal pandos, which was played before the Cardinal Infant Henry. He died on March 15, 1558• Sa. de Miranda led the way in a revolution in literature, and especially in poetry, which under his influence became higher in aim, purer in tone and broader in sympathy. He introduced the Renaissance into Portugal and at the same time made an austere stand against materialism. Some of his sonnets are admirable, and display a grave tenderness of feeling, a refinement of thought and a simplicity of expression which give them a high value. He wrote much and successfully in Castilian, several of his best eclogues being in that language.

Si de Miranda's works were first published in 1595, but the admirable critical edition of Madame Michaelis de Vasconcellos (Halle, 1885) containing life, notes and glossary, supersedes all others. His plays can best be read in the 1784 edition of the collected works, A. Egipciaca Santa Maria was edited by T. Braga (Oporto, 1913). See Sousa Viterbo, Estudos sobre Sci de Miranda (3 parts, Coimbra, 1895-96) ; Decio Carneiro, Sa de Miranda e a sua obra (Lisbon, 1895) ; Theophilo Braga, Sci de Miranda (Oporto, 1896) ; C. Michaelis de Vasconcellos, Novos estudos sobre Sci de Miranda in vol. v. (1912) of the Boletim da Segunda Classe of the Lisbon Academy of Sciences.