Juan de Flores dating history

Details

Juan de Flores (c. 1455 - c. 1525) was a Spanish courtier, knight, administrator, diplomat and author, most known for two "sentimental novels": Grimalte y Gradissa and Grisel y Mirabella, both probably written between 1470 and 1477 and published around 1495. Until recently, little was known of his life. Representative of a class of late medieval "humanist knights", he was associated with the court of García Álvarez de Toledo, 1st Duke of Alba and may have been the nephew of the noble Pedro Alvarez Osorio. In 1476, he was appointed official chronicler to the monarchs Fernando and Isabella; among his other political activities, he may have participated in the civil war of the 1470s and in Grenada. He was "one of the most widely read Spanish authors in Europe", unmatched until Miguel de Cervantes started writing 60 years after de Flores died, and the European popularity of his Grisel y Mirabella (which had at least 56 editions in several languages before Cervantes was born) was on a par with Diego de San Pedro's Cárcel de amor and Fernando de Rojas's La Celestina.