An unpublished humorous letter of Francisco de Aldana and new information for his biography

Abstract

Here, we make known an unpublished humorous letter of Francisco de Aldana. In this letter, Aldana recounts his unknown stay in England, in the court of Elisabeth I, when he went there in 1569, accompanying Chapín Vitelli who was the ambassador of Philip II. Besides being a milestone for this kind of humorous subgenre, the letter has important intertextual connections with other literary works such as El Celoso by Velázquez de Velasco, who copied Aldana blatantly. The letter also helps us to establish the relation he had with the poet Don Fadrique Álvarez de Toledo, son of the Duke of Alba, last addressee of Aldana’s letter.