SOUTSOS, ALEXANDROS

born 1803, Constantinople died 1863 Greek poet who founded the Greek Romantic school of poetry. Sotsos studied in Chios (Khos) and later in Paris, where he was influenced by the French Romantics and by liberal political opinion. His verse satires are his liveliest writings and inspired the early development of modern political liberalism in Greece. His dramas and one long prose work, the Exristos (The Exile), were considered cold and artificial, but his numerous lyrics were admired by his contemporaries in spite of their lack of originality and their rhetorical exuberance. Lord Byron's Childe Harold was the model for his longest poem, Periplanomnos (The Wanderer). His collected works were published in 1916.