ISLA, es'la, JosE FRANCISCO DE (1703-81). A Jesuit preacher and satirist. born in Segovia, Spain. Hs was a man of acute wit and in tense humor. He ridiculed a religious festival at Salamanca and a royal pageant at Pamplona in his Triunfo del amor y de la lealtad. an ironi cal eulogy so artfully disguised that at first it was regarded as an honest adulation. but upon its burlesque character becoming known he was ccmpelled to leave the city. llis most important satire was the Ilistoria del Minus() predicuder Fray Gerundio de Campaz:as (1758), in Whose adventure he held up to public contempt the igno rance and audacity of the itinerant friars of the time, and ridiculed unmercifully their debased pulpit oratory. lt was condemned in 1760 by the Inquisition on the clamor of the lower clergy, but his popularity saved him from personal per secution. (if Isla's other productions, may be mentioned: El cicerda, which purports to a life of Cicero, but is really a satirical presenta tion of the vices and absurdities of the time (this work was finished in Italy, whither the author
.went in 1767 when the expulsion of his Order from Shun doomed him to expatriation, and still remains unedited) ; the Jutventtd t•iunfonte (1727), his earliest work, and one in which the satirical ahn is most cunningly hidden; the ('arias de Juan de la En•ina (1784). which assails the charlatanry of Spanish physicians; his Carta s Pzilliii(IrCS (2(1 ed. 1790) ; the Ser inoncs (1792), not so attractive as his satirical treatment of the conventional sermon of the time would lead one to expect. Apart from the publi cation of the Fray Gernndio, Isla owes his chief fame to his translation of the picaresque novel of Le Sage. the Gillas. Consult De Galas, Vida 1c J. F. de Isla (1\ladri(1, 180:3) ; selections from his works in Midi()lcea de an toms cspaiioles, vol. NV. (Madrid, 1850) ; Gnu lean, Les inYcheurs bur lennes en Espagnc ( Paris, 1891) ; Lintilhae, Le Sage (Paris, 1893).