The Book of Good Love: Juan Ruiz’s Medieval Masterpiece
The Book of Good Love: A Literary Examination
Textual History, Author, and Dating
The Book of Good Love has been preserved in three manuscript copies and fragments. In it, the author confesses to be named Juan Ruiz, the Archpriest of Hita. Few specific details about his life are known.
The manuscripts present two dates of composition: 1330 and 1343. This has led to speculation that there were, in those years, two successive editors of the book, hence the differences between the texts. Scholars also believe that the variations in the manuscripts could be explained by the complicated process of transmission of medieval texts. None of the surviving manuscripts appear with a title.
Poetic Meter, Language, and Style
It is a long poem of over 1700 verses, most of them written in cuaderna vía (quatrain stanza), although there are many short minstrel meters and other verses in which the author demonstrates his poetic virtuosity. In the cuaderna vía, eight-syllable hemistichs abound, being more popular than heptasyllabic ones. Juan Ruiz shows a consummate mastery of the meter, far exceeding the simple minstrel he claims to be and the rest of the clergy of the Mester de Clerecía.
His language and style exhibit features from both rhetorical tradition and vernacular influences. The work boasts a rich lexicon and syntax, characterized by repetitions and enumerations, accumulation of synonyms, anaphora, rhetorical questions, and wordplay. The author employs slang, diminutives of sentimental value, and an abundant use of proverbs, idioms, and exclamations. The expressive range is further enhanced by regular dialogue, which dramatizes the story. The disorder of sentences, typical of familiar language, the changing rhythm of intonation, and humor, including jokes, are also notable. A holiday and mocking air is characteristic of a work in which irony and parody are basic features of an author who does not express a complacent view of the world.
Structure and Content Analysis
The Book of Good Love is composed of numerous heterogeneous materials, unified by the first-person narrative:
- A prologue in prose, which declares the intention of the work.
- A series of affairs with women from very different social conditions (e.g., a nun, a “blackberry” woman, mountain women).
- A collection of 32 fables and stories with didactic intent.
- Episodes, such as those involving Don Melón and Doña Endrina, adapted from Latin texts.
- A set of moral or satirical asides, like the power of money or the censure of the libertine clergy.
- Satires and parodies, such as those of the canonical hours.
- Allegorical passages like the fight between Don Carnal and Doña Cuaresma (Carnival and Lent) or the reception given to Don Amor and Don Carnal.
- A group of lyrical compositions, including minstrel songs, religious poems, serranillas (mountain songs), student songs, and songs of the blind.
The first-person narrative, the common theme of love and deceit, and the loose, heterogeneous structures contribute to a semi-jocose narrator and the work’s sacro-profane ambivalence. Arabic influence is evident in the setting, as is the presence of destiny or fate in the figure of the Trotaconventos. The influence of medieval Christian culture is also clear in The Book of Good Love, as is that of Latin literature (e.g., Ovid, Latin comedy) and other medieval Latin texts. Two overarching themes are love and death. Everything created appears subject to love, presented as a compelling force of nature.
The book expresses an overwhelming life force, sexuality, eroticism, and sensual pleasure. This conception of beings and things is embodied in the characters. Popular, folk, and carnival elements make it possible to consider Juan Ruiz’s work as a rich document that reflects the persistence of certain pagan ways of understanding life not typically found in texts of the time.
Death is presented as the opposite force to love and life. In the disappearance of the Trotaconventos, the protagonist’s pimp friend, it becomes clear that death is destructive and not liberating.
Corruption, the subversion of individual values, and fierce pragmatism are correlated with the importance attached to money, which becomes the golden rule in the struggle for existence.