Jorge Manrique

Jorge Manrique (c. 1440 – 24 April 1479) was a major Spanish poet, whose main work, the Coplas a la muerte de su padre (Stanzas about the Death of his Father), is still read today. He was a supporter of the great Spanish queen, Isabel I of Castile, and actively participated on her side in the civil war that broke out against her half-brother, Enrique IV, when the latter attempted to make his daughter, Juana, crown princess. Jorge died in 1479 during an attempt to take the castle of Garcimuñoz after Isabel gained the crown.

Manrique were one of major Spanish aristocratic families of the Jewish converso descent. See, Norman Roth, "Conversos, Inquisition, and the Expulsion of the Jews from Spain", Madison, WI: The University of Wisconcin Press, 1995, p. 333. Jorge Manrique was a great-nephew of Iñigo López de Mendoza (marquess of Santillana), a descendant of Pero López de Ayala, chancellor of Castile, and a nephew of Gómez Manrique, corregidor of Toledo, all important poets of the late fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. He was, therefore, a member of a noble family of great consequence.

 References 

 Domínguez, Frank A. Love and Remembrance: The Poetry of Jorge Manrique. Lexington: The University Press of Kentucky, 1989.
 Domínguez, Frank A. "Jorge Manrique" in Castilian Writers, 1400-1500 Vol. 286. Detroit: Gale, c2004. (The article can be accessed as well in electronic format through the database Literature Resource Center at Gale in participating libraries.)
 Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth. Coplas de Don Jorge Manrique. Boston: Allen & Ticknor, 1833.
 Marino, Nancy. Jorge Manrique's Coplas por la muerte de su padre: A History of the Poem and Its Reception.(Colección Támesis, A/298.) Woodbridge, UK: Tamesis, 2011
 Serrano de Haro, Antonio. Personalidad y destino de Jorge Manrique. Madrid: Editorial Gredos, 1966.
 Salinas, Pedro. Tradición y originalidad Buenos Aires: Editorial Sudamericana 1947
 Brenan, Gerald. The Literature of the Spanish people, Cambridge, 1951.

Category:1440 births
Category:1479 deaths
Category:Spanish poets