Francisco de Rioja (born at

Seville Seville (; es, Sevilla, ) is the capital and largest city of the Spanish autonomous community of Andalusia and the province of Seville. It is situated on the lower reaches of the River Guadalquivir, in the southwest of the Iberian Peninsula ...

, 1583; died at

Madrid Madrid ( , ) is the capital and most populous city of Spain. The city has almost 3.4 million inhabitants and a metropolitan area population of approximately 6.7 million. It is the second-largest city in the European Union (EU), and ...

, 1659) was a Spanish poet. Rioja was a canon of

Seville Cathedral The Cathedral of Saint Mary of the See ( es, Catedral de Santa María de la Sede), better known as Seville Cathedral, is a Roman Catholic cathedral in Seville, Andalusia, Spain. It was registered in 1987 by UNESCO as a World Heritage Site, along ...

and a member of the

Spanish Inquisition The Tribunal of the Holy Office of the Inquisition ( es, Tribunal del Santo Oficio de la Inquisición), commonly known as the Spanish Inquisition ( es, Inquisición española), was established in 1478 by the Catholic Monarchs, King Ferdinand ...

Works

Quintana considers his poems the first attempts at descriptive poetry in the

Castilian language In English, Castilian Spanish can mean the variety of Peninsular Spanish spoken in northern and central Spain, the standard form of Spanish, or Spanish from Spain in general. In Spanish, the term (Castilian) can either refer to the Spanish langu ...

. The style is original, the thoughts beautifully expressed, the taste refined, and the versification well adapted and harmoniously blended with the theme. Menéndez y Pelayo writes that Rioja's "Ode to Summer", and those "To Tranquillity", "To Constancy," "To Riches" and "To Poverty" are, after the lyrics of Fray

Luis de León Luis de León ( Belmonte, Cuenca, 1527 – Madrigal de las Altas Torres, Castile, Spain, 23 August 1591), was a Spanish lyric poet, Augustinian friar, theologian and academic, active during the Spanish Golden Age. Early life Luis de ...

, the best moral odes in Castilian poetical treasure. The ode "A las ruinas de Italia", which belongs to Rodrigo Caro, and the "Epístola moral", whose author is probably Francisco de Andrada, were earlier ascribed to Rioja.

References

*Ramón Fernández, ''Poesías de Francisco de Rioja y de otros poetas andaluces'' (Madrid, 1798); * Sismondi, ''Hist. de la literatura española'', II (Seville, 1842), 173; *Ticknor, ''Hist. of Spanish Lit.'', II (New York, 1854), 545; *Fernández-Espino, ''Curso híst. crítico de la lit. española'' (Seville, 1895). *Edition of Rioja's poems is that of Barrera (Madrid, 1867); ''Adiciones á las poesías de Rioja'' (Madrid, 1872)

External links

''Catholic Encyclopedia'' article
* * {{DEFAULTSORT:Rioja, Francisco De 1583 births 1659 deaths Spanish poets