Background
Jose De was born on 8 December in 1741.
During his youth he traveled extensively in western Europe and acquired the familiarity with French and English literature which later exerted an influence on his work.
Jose De was born on 8 December in 1741.
During his youth he traveled extensively in western Europe and acquired the familiarity with French and English literature which later exerted an influence on his work.
Jose De Cadalso Y Vazquez received education at a Jesuit school in Paris, France.
On his return to his own country, Cadalso proceeded to join the army and ultimately rose to the rank of colonel. While stationed in Madrid, he fell in love with the actress Maria Ibanez, and her sudden death left a lasting effect on his work. At this point, however, he was transferred to Salamanca, where he became a member of the Salamancan School of poets and exercised an influence upon the most notable of them, Melendez Valdes. When Spain declared war against Great Britain in 1778, Cadalso joined the siege of Gibraltar. He was killed in action there, Feb. 27, 1782.
In some of his work, Cadalso may be classed with the precursors of Romanticism. His melancholy and elegiac collection of prose dialogues, Noches lúgubreslugubres ("Melancholy Nights"), which dramatized the death of his beloved and his attempts to disinter her body, shows the influence of Edward Young's Night Thoughts. Caldalso's dependence on French Classicism is shown in his somewhat inferior plays, the most notable of which is Don Sancho Garcia, conde de Castilla (1771), a historical drama, which suggests the work of the great 19th-century romantic dramatist, Jose Zorrilla. Cadalso's poetry is of little greater value; his Ocios de mi juventud (1773) ("Diversions of My Youth") has some inspiring moments and in form shows the influence of Quevedo. In prose Cadalso frequently employed satire, and Los Eruditos áa la violeta (1772) ("The Learned on the Violet") is an amusing take-off on pedantry and superficial knowledge. Of all his works, however, the posthumous Cartas Marruecas (1793) ("Moroccan Letters") is the most important. This series of fictitious letters, although it is modeled on Montesquieu's Lettres persanes, is a highly original handling of the problem of Spain's decadence. In this work Cadalso shows himself to be an essayist of unusual ability and one of the most important Spanish prose writers of the 18th-century.