La Araucana - The Author

The Author

Alonso de Ercilla was born into a noble family in Madrid, Spain. He occupied several positions in the household of Prince Philip (later King Philip II of Spain), before requesting and receiving appointment to a military expedition to Chile to subdue the Araucanians of Chile, he joined the adventurers. He distinguished himself in the ensuing campaign; but, having quarrelled with a comrade, he was condemned to death in 1558 by his general, García Hurtado de Mendoza. The sentence was commuted to imprisonment, but Ercilla was speedily released and fought at the Battle of Quipeo (14th of December 1558). He was then exiled to Peru and returned to Spain in 1562.

Ercilla embodied the Renaissance ideal of being at once a man of action and a man of letters as no other in his time was. He was adept at blending personal, lived experience with literary tradition. He was widely acclaimed in Spain. There is an episode in Miguel de Cervantes’s 17th-century novel Don Quixote, when a priest and barber inspect Don Quixote's personal library, to burn the books responsible for driving him to madness. La Araucana is one of the works which the men spare from the flames, as "one of the best examples of its genre", entirely Christian and honorable, and is proclaimed to be among the best poems in the heroic style ever written, good enough to compete with those of Ariosto and Tasso.