biography
| name: |
Risco Agüero, Vicente Martínez
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pronunciation:
[riskoh agwayroh]
| sex:
| male
|
| lived:
| (1884–1963)
|
| biography:
| Galician novelist, mediaevalist, and ethnologist, born in Orense, NW Spain. A leading light of the Galician revival in the 20th-c, he wrote essays including Historia de Galicia (1952), novels, and poetry in Galician, including O porco de pe (1928). His novel La puerta de paja (1953) was written in twenty days in a burst of inspiration. It is an allegory reminiscent of Calderón's La vida es sueño, in which Risco's Segismundo, Baldonio, the civil and ecclesiastical ruler of the mediaeval fantasy realm of Nerbia, repudiates his former life of tyranny, blasphemy, and licence; but while Nerbia had prospered under his autocratic rule, under the virtuous and high-principled Cardinal Arnulfo who replaces him, the peasants and the noblemen rise in revolt and bring chaos and misery on themselves. La puerta de paja is not wholly didactic; fantasy and erudition mingle in scenes such as the discussions of four mediaeval physicians. He also wrote Historia de los judíos desde la destrucción del Templo (1944) and a Biografía de Satanás (1948), which was reworked in 1956 as Satanás: historia del diablo. |
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