ERCILLA y ZÚNIGA, ALONSO de. — Spanish poet, b. in Madrid in 1533, d. there in 1594, took part between 1558 and '63 in the campaign for the conquest of Chile, which he celebrated in the thirty-seven cantos of the poem *La Araucana*, in which a first part of substantial epic truth is followed, starting from canto XII, by a vast series of fantastic episodes. The poem, which reveals the author's admiration for the heroic resistance of the defeated enemy and echoes Lucan, Seneca, Virgil, Garcilaso and Ariosto, abounds in intense descriptions (v. the torture of Caupolicán), but is weak in character portrayal; nor can any attempt at grafting pagan marvels onto the prevailing Christian element be deemed successful.
Despite its formal harshness, *La Araucana* is an original poem, indeed the only truly epic composition of the Spanish Renaissance, praised by Cervantes, Voltaire (who considered it superior to the *Iliad*), Chateaubriand and M. Menéndez y Pelayo.