Ebook: El “Libro de Alexandre” y sus influencias en el Mester de clereçía

This dissertation deals with the influence of the thirteenth-century narrative poem Libro de Alexandre in medieval Spanish literature and various types of imitation of it by other medieval poets. The two texts chosen for comparison, analysis and interpretation are the thirteenth-century Libro de Apolonio and the fourteenth-century Libro de buen amor. The Spanish Alexander poem is believed to be the earliest work of the poetic school “mester de clerecía;” and its relations with other medieval Spanish poems have been treated by several scholars such as Ramón Menéndez Pidal, María Rosa Lida de Malkiel, Dana Nelson, and Jorge García López. However, my scope, perspective and interpretative strategy in the present study are different from those of most of the previous scholars. Through a close scrutiny, a considerable number of new thematic, linguistic and stylistic parallels are retrieved between the Alexandre and the Apolonio, and between the Alexandre and the Buen amor. Theories of literary imitation, intertextuality, literary influence, and plagiarism are introduced to guide the interpretation of these new data.

Chapter One examines the relations between the Alexandre and the Apolonio, which are organized in thematic terms: moralization, wedding and festival celebration, medieval erudition, and knowledge of music. Other parallels are included in a section “paralelismos narrativos aislados”; more singular parallels which affect no more than one or two verses are made into a appendix. What the author of the Apolonio learned from the Alexandre is mainly the art of descriptio and the formulaic mechanism of the “cuaderna vía” verse form; his basic approach is that of abbreviation. He may also have relied on his poetic model for his knowledge and treatment of medieval music performance. His imitation of the Alexander poem varies from the reproductive mode to transformative and heuristic absorption.

Chapter Two examines the relations between the Alexandre and the Buen amor. The influence of the Alexander poem affects Juan Ruiz's poem from single verse borrowings to the configuration of one of the major sections of the Buen amor, sequences covering the battles between Lady Lent and Sir Carnal and the tent of Sir Love. Ruiz's modes of imitating his Alexander model are more complex than those seen in the Apolonio. Judging from his hilarious treatments of the ideal personal portrait, the Serranilla, the lamentation on Death, and the epitaph of Trotaconventos, it is probably true that his imitation is by no means reverent or sincere, although we are not absolutely sure that he parodies the Alexandre in all these treatments. Many remote European, Islamic or Jewish parallels or sources for Juan Ruiz's poem have been claimed by scholars, but no important and probable native Spanish antecedent has been found. This study recognizes the Alexandre as the most important Spanish model for the Buen amor. It, in turn, also affects the place of the Alexandre in the history of medieval Spanish literature. Overall, through an examination of the influence of the Alexander in the Apolonio and the Buen amor , this study shows the great impact of the Spanish Alexander poem in thirteenth-century and fourteenth-century Spanish literature and its proper place in the history of the Spanish literature.