Diego de Torres was a Spanish writer and poet and the author the creator of an autobiographical genre as a novelistic form. The son of a bankrupted bookseller, he was a prodigious student and devoted himself to learning his entire life during his many occupations: Chaplain, Professor of mathematics at the University of Salamanca, priest,  and finally protected and administrator of the Dukes of Alba, under whose protection he remained until the end of his days.

His admiration for Francisco de Quevedo was highly relevant and influenced the critical and satirical vision of the society of his time that is reflected in his work. Already in his first works, such as Ocios políticos (1726), a collection of poetry of several poetic meters, he showed his talent for mockery. Later he wrote the controversial piece, Moral Dreams (1727 and 1728), where he crudely satirized his contemporaries. This work was based on Quevedo's Dreams and was subtitled Visions and Visits of Torres with Francisco de Quevedo.  A few years later, he published La barca de Aqueronte, a satire against all kinds of characters and professionals of his time, doctors, lawyers, judges, women, nobles, and academics.

His work is highly very personal, describing characters with a brilliant and exuberant expressionist style, transcending the mere humorous portrait to show the disgust that produced in him certain customs and behaviors of the society of his time. More than an intention to be faithful to reality in such descriptions, the author configures a  distorted vision, twisting the real person he describes with the objective of making from that particular anecdote a criticism of society

All the elements and purposes outlined in his Moral Dreams were developed with mastery in his novel-like autobiography, Life, ancestry, birth, upbringing, and adventures of Dr. Diego de Torres Villarroel (1743-1758). The author mixes his singular individuality with the picaresque tradition to make the autobiographical genre a ruthless analysis of the emerging bourgeoisie class,  to which ironically he belongs. With a  taste for exaggeration and satire and diatribes against the ignorance of the time, his sarcasm and pleasure for the crude and the grotesque acquire remarkable relief, often through the creation of words, very influenced by the baroque prose of Quevedo's Dreams. Despite its grotesque deformation, his work is a sincere work, a living document on the narrative and moral tradition of an era.

Sacudimiento de mentecatos

Visiones y visitas de Torres con Don Francisco de Quevedo por la Corte

La Barca de Aquronte

Los desahuciados del mundo y de la gloria

In this autobiographical book, the author defends himself against the false image that his critics gave of him, who characterized him as a man from a novel, an extravagant scholar, interested in astrology and with the inclinations of a sorcerer.

Autobiography

During the 16th century, the medieval vision of the world enters into crisis. The Renaissance was defined by a substantial and absolute division between Nature and Spirituality. The world of the senses and the world of the spirit was intimately fused in the man of the Middle Ages, to the point that there was one and the same thing. The Renaissance, with its radical individualism, signified a revolutionary change of position that separated the human being from the omniscient spirituality of the Middle Ages. The Renaissance proclaimed that the Middle Age was only a dark period between Antiquity and its time. In this sense, the Renaissance is not a mere cultural period, but a new conception of life that manifests itself in aspects such as politics and science, as well as literature. There is a conscious search for a language full of natural elegance, with a predominance of the novel in different types, chivalry, pastoral, Moorish, and the picaresque among the most popular ones.

During the Renaissance, an enormous effort was made to clearly delimit the world of the individual, separated from the spiritual realm. The independence of the human being was proclaimed on the basis that God and man are two incommunicable entities.  Following Calvin's thought, the creature could not influence the behavior nor the inscrutable decisions of the Creator, the first one predestined from birth.  It was the task of the Spanish theologians at the Council of Trent who fought such a doctrine, proclaiming an intimate connection between God and man. The consequences of Trento were incalculable for the world of culture in Spain, the country exempt from heresy by the council but its cultural future was also determined by it. As the sixteenth century progressed towards its end, the natural and the supernatural world tended to draw closer together for the Spaniards, with the scientific pursuit, and the mere intent of rational thinking viewed with deep suspicion.

Notwithstanding, there is also in Spain an advance in science and discoveries are made, accompanied by a development of urban life and incipient capitalism. The reign of the Catholic Monarchs and later during the  Empire there was a development of humanism, man becoming the center of the universe, with the courtier as the ideal Renaissance man, and a renewed interest in the study of the authors of Antiquity.  The discovery of the printing press in Europe triggered movements of reform, propitiating in Spain a response with the development of particular religious literature known as mysticism. 

Neoclassicism

Teatro Crítico I, by Benito J. Feijoo

Diccionario de Autoridades of Real Academia 

Orígenes de la lengua española, by Gregorio Mayans

Poética, by Ignacio de Luzán

Vida, by Diego de Torres Villarroel

Fray Gerundio de Campazas, by José Francisco de Isla

La petimetra, by Nicolás Fernández de Moratín

El delincuente honrado, by Gaspar Melchor de Jovellanos

Fábulas morales, Félix M. Samaniego

Fábulas literarias, by Tomás de Iriarte

Poesías, by Juan Meléndez Valdés

Cartas marruecas, by José de Cadalso

La comedia nueva, by Leandro Fernández Moratín

Informe sobre la ley agraria, by Gaspar Melchor de Jovellanos

Exequias de la lengua castellana, by Juan Pablo Former

Los caprichos, by Francisco de Goya

Publicaion of Diario de los literatos de españa (7 volumes)

Publication of El pensador, by José Clavijo.

Publication of El censor, by Luís García del Cañuelo

Foundation of the Real Academia de la Lengua

First edition of the Diccionario de Autoridades

Publication of the Tratado de ortografía

Foundation of the Real Academia de la Historia

Foundation of the Academia de Buenas Letras de Barcelona

Foundation of the Academia Real de Bellas Artes de San Fernando

Publication of Viaje de España, by Antonio Ponz

Phoibition of representation in theater of "autos sacrementales" (religious plays).

Foundation of Sociedad Vascongada de Amigos del País.

Auto de Curiel: For fear of the rulers to the influence of foreign ideas, the judicial order prohibits the import of books written in Spanish and published abroad.

Edition of the first French encyclopedia. Diderot's work, although widely criticized, can be considered the first modern encyclopedia.

Samuel Johnson publishes the Dictionary of the English language, with uses, customs and definitions of the words that make up the English language. Includes terms that appear in Shakespeare and other great authors of British literature.

Publication of Candide, by Voltaire. Candide is living a sheltered but indoctirinated life.

Harmonia Mundi, by Kepler

Night thoughts, by Edward Young

Tom Jones, by Henry Fielding

Diccionary of the English Language, by Samuel Johnson

Candide, by Voltaire

On Education, by Rousseau

The 5th Symphony, by Ludwig van Beethoven. 

Critique of Pure Reason, by Enmanuel Kant

Don Giovanni, by W. A. Mozart

Lyrical Ballads, by W. Wordsworth and S. Coleridge

Concordat of Rome: The Spanish Monarchy demands to extend to all its domains the Royal Patronage granted by the Pope in the time of the Catholic Monarchs, which granted the monarchs the right to appoint bishops and provide ecclesiastical benefits to certain territories.

Spanish Bites

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Vida, ascendencia, nacimiento, crianza y aventuras del Doctor Don Diego de Torres Villarroel (1743)

By Diego Torres Villarroel

Time Period: Neoclassicism

Genre: Autobiography

Spanish Bites

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