Name Luisa de | Role Poet | |
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Died October 13, 1560, Burgos, Spain | ||
Luisa Sigea de Velasco (1522 in Tarancón – October 13, 1560 in Burgos), also known as Luísa Sigeia, Luísa Sigea Toledana and in the Latinized form Aloysia Sygaea Toletana, was a poet and intellectual of the 16th century, one of the major figures of Spanish humanism, who spent a good part of her life in the Portuguese court in the service of Maria of Portugal (1521–1577), as her Latin teacher. André de Resende wrote the following epitaph for her: Hic sita SIGAEA est: satis hoc: qui cetera nescit Rusticus est: artes nec colit ille bonas, (Loosely translated: Here lies Sigea; no more need be said; anyone who does not know the rest is an uneducated fool.)
Satyra Sotadica
In 1680 an erotic work was published, entitled Aloysiæ Sigeæ Toletanæ satyra sotadica de arcanis amoris et veneris: Aloysia hispanice scripsit: latinitate donavit J. Meursius. The title translates as "Luisa Sigea Toledana's Sotadic satire, on the secrets of love and sex; Luisa wrote it in Spanish; it has here been translated into Latin by J. Meursius." Johannes Meursius (1579 – 1639) was a Dutch classical scholar and antiquary. "Sotadic" refers to Sotades, the 3rd-century BC Greek poet who was the chief representative of a group of writers of obscene, and sometimes pederastic, satirical poetry.
This is widely considered the first-ever fully pornographic work written in Latin, and it contains among other things a defense of tribadism (i.e. lesbianism). The attribution to Sigea (as well as the attribution to Meursius) was a hoax, as was first demonstrated by Bruno Lavignini in his edition of the poem (Italy, 1905). It is believed that the true author was the Frenchman Nicolas Chorier. The work was translated into many other languages, including English, under the title Dialogues of Luisa Sigea.