biography
pronunciation:
[metge]
| sex:
| male
|
| lived:
| (c.1345–c.1413)
|
| biography:
| Catalan poet and prose-writer, born in Barcelona, NE Spain. His works were composed during periods of imprisonment during 1381–98. His stepfather was Ferrer Sayol, chief notary to Queen Leonor of Sicily, the third wife of Pere III, called ‘el Ceremonioso’. Sayol, a humanist who translated Palladius's De re rustica, probably influenced Metge in the direction of learning. For obscure reasons, Metge was arrested and imprisoned in 1381, 1388, and again after the death of the king in 1396, but always managed to regain his lost power, and was still a royal secretary in 1410, during the reign of Marti I. During his first period in prison (1381), he wrote the allegorical poem Llibre de fortuna e prudència in the tradition of Boethius and the Roman de la Rose; his second prison term produced Historia de Valter e Griselda, the first translation from Petrarch into a Peninsular language. It is Lo somni (written in 1398) that has ensured Metge's fame. Written after reading Petrarch's Secretum, Lo somni is an apologia of Metge, a debate on the immortality of the soul, a defence of famous women, and much more. The short burlesque La medecina apropiada a tot mal was probably written at the same time. |
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