Satire of the cuckold in the work of Francisco de Quevedo

The "cuckold" is the prototype of the consenting husband in Quevedo's time. He represents the hypocrisy, the vanity, and, most of all, the moral decadence of Spanish society in the 17th Century. Quevedo expresses his great disillusion with the amoral behavior of his people and, through his satire, attempts to give a lesson on morality. Quevedo was able to transfer onto his work Spanish ideas and realities, giving them a serious character as that of an ascetic or a politician, with the pessimistic and sarcastic tone typical of his satire. Two important and influencing factors on his work and his way of looking at life were the family and cultural environment he was exposed to and the effect of his physical defects, which he succeeded in compensating due to his energetic personality. Quevedo used conceptism as his literary style, applying his genius to the creation of metaphors, taking the Spanish language to its maximum expression as no one else had done before him.