ERCILLA y ZÚÑIGA, ALONSO de. - Spanish poet, b. in Madrid in 1533, d. there in 1594; between 1558 and ’63 he took part in the campaign for the conquest of Chile, which he celebrated in the thirty-seven cantos of the poem La Araucana, in which an initial part of substantial epic truth is followed, from canto XII onward, by a vast series of fantastic episodes.
The poem, which reveals the author’s admiration for the heroic resistance of the vanquished enemy and echoes Lucan, Seneca, Virgil, Garcilaso, and Ariosto, abounds in intense descriptions (v. il supplizio di Caupolicán), but is weak in its portrayal of characters; nor can certain attempts to graft pagan marvels onto the predominant Christian element be called successful.
Despite its formal harshness, the Araucana is an original poem, indeed the only truly epic composition of the Spanish Renaissance, praised by Cervantes, Voltaire (to whose eyes it seemed superior to the Iliad), Chateaubriand, and M. Menéndez y Pelayo.