SÀ DE MIRANDA, FRANCISCO DE

(1480/90 to 1558)

Portuguese poet and dramatist. The son of a canon of Coimbra, he grew up in the royal court at Lisbon and received a doctorate in law. Some of his early poems were published in 1516. He spent six years (1520-1526) in Italy and probably wrote two comedies,Os estrangeiros/The For-eignersandOs Vilhalpandos/The Vilhalpando Family, while abroad, though they were not produced until after his return home. He mar-ried and sometime before 1530 settled as a country gentleman in northern Portugal, where he wrote most of his later works. He intro-duced italianate literary forms such as sonnets, eclogues, and elegies into Portuguese literature, yet he also continued to write in traditional Portuguese verse forms.