LISTA (Y ARAGN), ALBERTO

born Oct. 15, 1775, Triana, Spain died Oct. 5, 1848, Seville Spanish poet and critic considered to be the foremost member of the second Sevillian school of late 18th-century writers who espoused the tenets of Neoclassicism. At the age of 20, Lista held the chair of mathematics at a college in Seville; later (1807) he assumed the chair of rhetoric and poetry at the University of Seville. After spending four years (181317) in France, he returned to Spain and founded the periodical El censor and the Free University of Madrid. He spent most of his life trying to educate people in the Neoclassic principles of good taste, emphasizing the need for balance between form and content. His Poesas (1822, 1837; Poems) show faint influences of the Romantic movement. Among his best known works are El imperio de la estupidez (1798; The Empire of Stupidity), a critical work in the manner of Alexander Pope's Dunciad; Ensayos literarios y crticos (1844; Literary and Critical Essays); and Lecciones de literatura espaola (1836; Lessons in Spanish Literature), the published form of his lectures at the University of Madrid in 1822.