Boscán, Juan

(ca. 1490-1542)

   Catalan poet and humanist. He received a humanistic education at the court of King Ferdinand of Aragon and tutored the future Spanish general and governor of the Netherlands, the Duke of Alva. In 1526 his encounter with the Venetian ambassador Andrea Navagero, a noted humanist and poet, awakened his interest in imitating Italian poetry in his own language, and he and his close associate Garcilaso de Vega pioneered the introduction of Petrarchan themes and Italian verse forms into Spanish literature. He is also known as the translator of the famous Book of the Courtier by Baldassare Castiglione, a book that shaped the ideas and manners of the Spanish court for the rest of the century.