FERNNDEZ DE MORATN, LEANDRO

born March 10, 1760, Madrid, Spain died July 21, 1828, Paris, France dramatist and poet, the most influential Neoclassic literary figure of the Spanish Enlightenment. The son of the poet and playwright Nicols Fernndez de Moratn, he was an apologist of the French Encyclopaedists, a translator of Molire and William Shakespeare, and a satirist of contemporary society. The two predominant themes of his plays are dramatic criticism, as seen in La comedia nueva (1792; The New Comedy), in which he satirizes the absurd characters and plots of the popular plays of the time, and attacks on excessive parental authority and marriages of convenience, as seen in El s de las nias (1806; The Maiden's Consent). Because of political and ecclesiastical opposition to his French sympathies, he spent most of his life after 1814 in France, where he died; he was buried between his models Molire and Jean de La Fontaine, but his remains were later transferred to Madrid.