Portal:Literature/Biography archive/2007, Week 29

Luis de Góngora (July 11, 1561 – May 24, 1627) was a Spanish Baroque lyric poet. Gongora, who is considered by many literary scholars the most important Spanish poet of the modern time, came from a noble family. He was born in Córdoba, where his father, Francisco de Argote, was corregidor, the poet adopted the surname of his mother, Leonor de Góngora, who claimed descent from an ancient family. At the age of 15 he entered as a student of civil law and Canon law at the University of Salamanca, but was content with an ordinary pass degree. He was already known as a poet in 1585 when Miguel de Cervantes praised him in La Galatea; in this same year he took minor orders and shortly afterwards was nominated to a canonry at Córdoba. Around 1605 he was ordained priest, and afterwards lived at Valladolid and Madrid, where, as a contemporary remarks, he "noted and stabbed at everything with his satirical pen."