Spanish Literature: Key Authors and Works (14th-15th Centuries)

**Juan de Mena** wrote *The Labyrinth of Fate*. He travels to the Palace of Fortune, where there is a fortunate story with different characters from Cordoba.

**Jorge Manrique**, from Palencia, is known for mocking songs and love poetry influenced by the Provençal lyric and themes of the *dolce stil nuovo*. His most famous work is *Verses of Don Jorge Manrique on the Death of His Father*. *Coplas* is a lament for the death of a loved one. It is composed of forty stanzas formed by two sextuplets with broken rhyme, using eight-syllable verses. It can be divided into three parts.

The dominant theme is the praise of his father, Master of the Order of Santiago. Manrique was not content to eulogize the dead hero but wraps it in a series of reflections on life, death, and the transience of things in this world.

*La Celestina*, by **Fernando de Rojas**, is a dialogue with no narrator. The many urban settings in which the action develops and the long duration of the story would have made it impossible to represent theatrically in that era. The 1502 edition contains twenty-one acts.

Calisto is rejected by Melibea and uses the matchmaker Celestina’s advice. Celestina convinces Melibea to have an affair with Calisto. Pármeno and Sempronio demand their share of the spoils from the matchmaker, but she refuses, and they kill her. For this, they are executed. Calisto is with Melibea when, going away on a ladder, he falls and is killed. Melibea commits suicide by jumping from a tower in her home. In the 1502 version, the work is lengthened by popular demand: the lovers do not die after the first night of love, but the deaths happen when Calisto goes to defend his servants from thugs sent by Elicia and Areúsa, pupils of Celestina and lovers of Pármeno and Sempronio.

Nothing is known of his life, except that he was born in Alcalá and was Archpriest. He wrote in the first half of the 14th century. His best-known work is the *Book of Good Love*, a masterful text from the *mester de clerecía*, mostly written in *cuaderna vía*, totaling over 7,000 verses. He was influenced by the lyrical art of the minstrels and introduced some short poems into his works. In the *Book of Good Love*, the two *mesteres* coexist.

This is a fictional autobiography, narrated in the first person, of his alleged affairs with 15 women. The author confesses that he wrote his book to urge the good love that is professed to God and creatures, as in Christian morality. Human nature seems inclined to sin, so he will tell events so they can be avoided: it is necessary to know both good and evil to choose the best. He then exposes his affairs with women ranging from the rugged mountain woman to the great lady, the unmarried to the married, and even a nun.

**Don Juan Manuel** was the first author who had a true literary consciousness of his individuality and style. He was the first author who worried that his works were broadcast without errors. Paradoxically, the library where he kept his books suffered a fire. Don Juan Manuel’s style is very pure; he aims to achieve clarity, good vocabulary, and syntactic structure. He demonstrated a great interest in achieving a concise style in his expression. He composed all his literary works in prose, and almost all have an educational or moral nature. He composed *The Book of the Knight and the Squire*, *El Conde Lucanor*, and others.

*El Conde Lucanor* is divided into five unequal parts with 50 stories, each with a moral. The Count talks with his advisor, Patronio, about a problem. Patronio narrates a story that must be applied to reality. *El Conde Lucanor* is divided into 50 examples from different sources within a repeated framework for each story:

• The Count presents a problem.
• Patronio replies with an example.
• Application of the moral of the tale to the problem.