Juan José Martí

For others with this name, see José Martí (disambiguation).

Juan José Martí (c. 1570 – 22 December 1604)^[1] was a Spanish novelist, who was born at Orihuela, Province of Alicante about 1570. He graduated as bachelor of canon law at Valencia in 1591, and in 1598 took his degree as doctor of canon law; in the latter year he was appointed co-examiner in canon law at the University of Valencia, and held the post for six years. He died in Valencia, and was buried in Valencia Cathedral on 22 December 1604.^[2]

Marti joined the Valencian Academia de los noclurnos, under the name of Atrevimiento, but is best known by another pseudonym, Mateo Luján de Sayavedra, under which he issued an apocryphal continuation (1602) of Alemán's Guzmán de Alfarache (1599).^[3] Marti obtained access to Alemán's unfinished manuscript, and stole some of his ideas; this dishonesty lends point to the sarcastic congratulations which Alemán, in the genuine sequel (1604) pays to his rival's sallies: "I greatly envy them, and should be proud that they were mine."^[4][5] Marti's book is clever, but the circumstances in which it was produced account for its cold reception and afford presumption that the best scenes are not original.^[2]

It has been suggested that Marti is identical with Avellaneda, the writer of a spurious continuation (1614) to Don Quixote; but he died before the first part of Don Quixote was published (1605).^[2]

References

1. "Biography (Spanish)". Archived from the original on 2016-04-12. Retrieved 2012-06-26.
2. Chisholm 1911.
3. Ignacio Arellano Autores españoles Page 80 - 1991 "En 1604, en Lisboa, publicó Alemán su Segunda parte de la vida del pícaro Guzmán de Alfarache, atalaya de la vida ... escrita por el abogado valenciano Juan José Martí (1570-1604), pero firmada por un tal "Mateo Luján de Sayavedra" "
4. Dictionary of the Literature of the Iberian Peninsula: L-z - Page 1286 Germán Bleiberg, Maureen Ihrie, Janet W.. Pérez - 1993 "Mateo Aleman published a second part to Guzman in 1604, following a spurious sequel by Juan Martí in 1602, to which he makes justifiably angry reference in his text."
5. Ezequiel González Mas Historia de la literatura española: Barroco : (siglo XVII) Volume 3 - Page 415 - 1989 "El adjetivo "verdadero" era obvia respuesta al valenciano Juan José Martí (1570-1604), posible autor de otra segunda parte que apareció en 1602 bajo la firma de Mateo Luján de Sayavedra."

•  This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Martí, Juan José". Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 17 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. p. 788.