Chapters on Spanish LiteratureFitzmaurice-Kelly, James
History
Chapters on Spanish Literature
Fitzmaurice-Kelly, James
Spanish literature; Spanish literature -- History and criticism
The Archpriest adds an impudent epitaph on Trotaconventos, who is
represented as saying that, though her mode of life was censurable,
she made many a happy marriage; as begging all who visit her grave
to say a _Pater Noster_ for her; and as wishing them in return the
conjoint joys of both heavenly and earthly love. After this sally of
blasphemous irony comes advice as to the arms which Christians should
use against the devil, the world, and the flesh—a tedious exhortation
from which the author breaks away to declare that he has always wished
everything (including sermons) to be short, and with this he digresses
into a panegyric on little women. But another March has come round,
and, as usual, in the spring the Archpriest’s fancy lightly turns to
thoughts of love. In default of the gifted Trotaconventos, he employs
Don Furón, a liar, drunkard, thief, mischief-maker, gambler, bully,
glutton, wrangler, blasphemer, fortune-teller, debauchee, trickster,
fool and idler: apart from the defects inherent to these fourteen
characters, Don Furón is as good a _fa tutto_ as one can hope to
have. But he fails in the only embassy on which he is sent, and,
with a good-humoured laugh at his own folly, the Archpriest narrates
his last misadventure as a lover. With an elaborate exposition of
the saintly sentiments which actuated the author (for whom every
reader is entreated to say a _Pater Noster_ and an _Ave Maria_), the
_Libro de buen amor_ ends. What seems to be a supplement contains
seven poems addressed to the Virgin (a begging-song for poor students
being interpolated between the second and third poem). The Salamanca
manuscript closes with an amusingly impertinent composition in which a
certain archpriest unnamed—possibly Juan Ruiz himself—is described as
being sent by Don Gil Albornoz, the Archbishop of Toledo, with a brief
from the Pope inculcating celibacy on the Dean and Chapter of Talavera.
What follows has all the air of being a personal experience. The brief
is no sooner read in church than the Dean is on his legs, threatening
to resign rather than submit; the Treasurer wishes that he could lay
hands on the meddling Archbishop, and both the Precentor Sancho and the
Canon Don Gonzalo join in an indignant protest against the attempt to
curtail clerical privileges. The Gayoso manuscript, which omits this
_Cántica de los clérigos de Talavera_, includes two songs for blind
men, and these are printed by M. Ducamin as a sort of last postscript
to the _Libro de buen amor_.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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