Leandro Fernández de Moratín
Leandro Fernández de Moratín, (b. March
10, 1760, Madrid, Spain—d. July 21,
1828, Paris, France), dramatist and
poet, the most influential Neoclassic
literary figure of the Spanish
Enlightenment.
The son
of the poet and playwright Nicolás
Fernández de Moratín, he was an
apologist of the French Encyclopaedists,
a translator of Moličre and William
Shakespeare, and a satirist of
contemporary society. The two
predominant themes of his plays are
dramatic criticism, as seen in La
comedia nueva (1792; “The New Comedy”),
in which he satirizes the absurd
characters and plots of the popular
plays of the time, and attacks on
excessive parental authority and
marriages of convenience, as seen in El
sí de las nińas (1806; The Maiden’s
Consent). Because of political and
ecclesiastical opposition to his French
sympathies, he spent most of his life
after 1814 in France, where he died; he
was buried between his models Moličre
and Jean de La Fontaine, but his remains
were later transferred to Madrid.
