The Libro del rey Canamor is one of a small group of chivalric narratives that reached popularity levels in sixteenth-century Europe similar to the “best-seller” of today. In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries these works were often overlooked or easily dismissed by scholars and many have been forgotten by the modern press. My proposal is to present the Libro del rey Canamor to the scholarly public for closer examination, easier access and renewed interest. This study presents a review of the essential distinctions often made between various types of chivalric narratives, leading to a brief discussion of their history in Hispanic literature, as well as their classification and acceptance through the years. It also examines the history of the shorter narratives and their relation to sixteenth-century printing and the creation of an editorial genre. The analysis of the Libro del rey Canamor examines its editorial history and narrative structure. Although some of its contemporaries were published for a longer period of time, this text was not able to extend its publishing life into the seventeenth century. Nevertheless, there were at least ten different editions in its heyday. The Libro del rey Canamor consists of two independent nuclei which create a hybrid text, the first part of which comes from a medieval source, while the second brings to light the aforementioned editorial genre. It is likely that the second part was written specifically for publication in early sixteenth-century Valencia. The analysis of content focuses on the major protagonists, folk motifs and their roles and functions in the more developed episodes. Finally we examine the presence of humor found in each section, concentrating on battle bravado, love intrigues, and jests. The review of the history of the chivalric narratives, both editorial and social, as well as the analysis of the internal elements of the Libro del rey Canamor in particular, show that this brief narrative is a hybrid text: a combination of a medieval narrative, albeit heavily edited, and a newly written second generation, melded together to create one of the best-sellers of sixteenth-century Spain.

The thirteenth-century poetic dedication to Santa Oria is a vividly portrayed life of a little-known saint. Author, Gonzalo de Berceo abides by tradition in ways that the devotional poem is well-received by his public while presenting innovation which demands the attention of his contemporary audience. The Spanish poet selects a female religious subject and conforms to certain familiar motifs of female spiritual progression simultaneously exploring novel pathways. Dreams and voyages to the other world are decoratively displayed through a schematic of symbols, both bold and subtle. The artistic and picturesque quality to the poem melds elements of literary tradition to create an original voyage of a young saint, a vision and her soul. This study investigates the five visionary journeys presented in the poetic dedication to Oria. Elements of symbolism and imagery, the scripting of sanctity, with regard for female holiness, and the access to and artistic rendering of the other world are identified and located with respect to an opulent hagiographic ancestry. The Poema de Santa Oria is presented in context with other thirteenth-century mester de clerecía poems also offering visionary escapes. The Spanish-language works of shared legacy with Oria offer shades of the heavenly realm yet do not penetrate the other world locations to the extent of visionary literary precedent. The Poema de Santa Oria is positioned within an extensive tradition of hagiographic and visionary legacy descending from both art and letters. It is argued here that as a body, Oria shared language, experience and earthly spaces with her mester de clerecía contemporaries, yet the journeys of her spirit are more closely aligned with earlier literary experiences of divine destinations. Berceo's artistic style is as gentle and deliberate as the characters and landscapes he portrays. Consideration is given to the artist's exploitation of the senses which result in creation of the precious pictorial images governing narration of the saint's visionary world.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Ohio State University, 1979. / Includes vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 353-379). Available online via OhioLINK's ETD Center.

As we gaze into the mirror of literary texts, we often forget that the images projected back at us are verbal constructs that may bear little resemblance to the reality they purport to represent. This is the case with a group of fifteenth-century Spanish texts that denigrate or defend women. We do not witness these women as they really were; instead, we see fictionally embodied projections of the fears and fantasies of both their authors and of the societies in which they were formed. We see how man's relation to woman plays itself out in a constant oscillation between overwhelming attraction and fear of the loss of control over both himself and woman; or, we see women who are so perfect and so willingly subjected to man's control that they will never achieve status as an individual. This dissertation examines three modes of discourse used by these texts to represent women. The misogynist discourse of Alfonso Martínez de Toledo and Luis de Lucena achieves near hallucinatory visions of chaos with its depictions of Woman as Wild Man: the incarnation of every excess and sin that men might dream of but know they cannot indulge in. These creatures destroy the “natural” order of society by defying its control. Attempts to tame them may fail, for only the annointed few are equal to the task. In contrast, the profeminist discourse of Juan Rodríguez del Padrón, Mosón Diego de Valera, Álvaro de Luna, and Fray Martín de Córdoba raises women up to a potential paradise of harmony and respect between the sexes, but below the surface of these portrayals of exemplary wives, widows, and virgins, we see the continuing discourse of male control. Indeed, this control is now tightened, so that even perfect women are tested, to see which will fall. Finally, we come to Teresa de Cartagena, this group's only female voice. Teresa borrows from both male-determined discourses and then subverts them so that she can at last free herself with the very words meant to imprison her and, by extension, all women. men.

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Thesis (doctoral)--University of Göteborg, 1986. / Added t.p. with thesis statement, inserted. Includes bibliographical references (p. 300-311) and index.

Thesis (doctoral)--University of Göteborg, 1986. / Added t.p. with thesis statement, inserted. Includes bibliographical references (p. 300-311) and index.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Wisconsin--Madison, 1968. / Typescript. Vita. Description based on print version record. Includes bibliographical references.

Inaug.-Diss.--Fribourg. / Bibliography: p. 275-295.

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