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This dissertation explores the ways in which feminine culpability is verbally articulated by the male courtly lover to his beloved lady within the amorous relationship in three fifteenth-century Spanish sentimental novels: Diego de San Pedro’s Cárcel de amor, published in 1492, and two of Juan de Flores' sentimental novels, Grimalte y Gradissa and Grisel and Mirabella, both published in approximately 1495, and how these motifs of feminine culpability are subverted in the anonymous fifteenth-century Catalan chivalric novel Curial e Güelfa. This subversion of culpability motifs is facilitated in Curial e Güelfa since there is also a subversion of gender roles within the amorous relationship of the novel's protagonists: a female lover, Güelfa, who courts her male beloved, Curial. To execute this study, I begin by discussing the origins of this rhetoric of feminine culpability in patristic, Biblical and philosophical texts, illustrating their sedimentation into the collective ideologies of medieval audiences. I also examine these feminine culpability models in Provençal lyric poetry written and recited by Occitan troubadours between the eleventh and thirteenth centuries, as one of its particular genres, the mala cansó, aims to not only blame the beloved lady, but also to publicly defame her, a threat that is also ever-present in the words of the male lover in the sentimental novel. After analyzing the tactics used by the male courtly lover to blame the beloved lady for his suffering and the demise of the relationship, I demonstrate how these same tactics are employed by the female characters of Curial e Güelfa toward the beloved man. However, feminine blame still occurs in Curial e Güelfa, manifested as feminine self-blame and blame between women, while the male characters engage in self-absolution, absolution of other men, and utter shirking of the blame. The theoretical framework employed is that of medieval canon law, and the way in which culpability was determined under this law from the twelfth century onward, which was by the intentions of the offender at the time of the crime or transgression rather than the consequences of the transgression. If we examine these fifteenth-century courtly love texts, it becomes clear that the beloved lady is innocent, while the male lover himself is the culpable party. Finally, following Rouben C. Cholakian's reading of the troubadour poetry through the work of twentieth-century psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan, I conclude that although the poet-lover verbally enunciates erotic metaphors and adulating language toward his beloved lady in the guise of courtly love, the true desire that he cannot articulate is to dominate, to overpower, and possibly to eradicate the feminine. Thus, in a Lacanian sense the notion that courtly love literature praises the woman is a fallacy. Both the poet-lover of the Provençal lyric and the courtly lover of the sentimental novel subvert the concept of alleged feminine superiority and exaltation in these texts. / Spanish

This doctoral dissertation examines the manifestation of Christian reconciliation in three thirteenth century literary works from the Iberian Peninsula and the island of Mallorca, then part of the Crown of Aragon. This study discusses interpretations of the term “reconciliation” and applies the term to each work with regard to three aspects: reconciliation of self with self, of self with society, and of self with the divine. Chapter 1 discusses the various connotations of the term “reconciliation.” It outlines reconciliation as a synonym of penance, as in the four-steps in the Catholic Sacrament of Penance, now referred to as the Sacrament of Reconciliation. It also discusses the related Pauline concept of reconciliation and Paul’s possible sources. Chapter 2 will analyze these three aspects of reconciliation in an anonymous thirteenth century Castilian work in verse: La Vida de Santa María Egipciaca, or the Life of Santa María, the Egyptian. The prepubescent Alexandrian prostitute has an epiphany outside a church in Jerusalem, realizes the error of her ways, repents at the moment of intersection between human activity and divine intervention, and changes how she views herself, interacts with society, and regards the connection between earthly life and divinity. Chapter 3 takes a look at Gonzalo de Berceo’s cuaderna vía poem, written in Castilian about 1250 , Vida de Santa Oria, the Life of Saint Oria, through the same three lenses of reconciliation. This time the female figure is the Egyptian’s polar opposite. Oria is a young anchoress who has behaved in a saintly way mortifying the flesh since childhood. It might seem that in her case there is no need of reconciliation with herself because her virtue exceeds that of the majority of humans around her. I posit that, even in her case, there is room for acceptance of inner conflict. In addition, Oria reconciles herself to society (which admires her but tries to pull her back toward Earth against her will) and to the divine (which promises she will receive what she most desires when God deems it time). Chapter 4 studies the Romanç d’Evast e Blaquerna, a prose work in Catalan which dates from 1283-85. This early text provides an opportunity to analyze not only the protagonist’s reconciliation with self, society, and the divine but also that of an array of fictional characters including family members, his potential fiancée and the many people he meets along his journey to become a hermit. Finally, the Epilogue suggests that the idealistic notion of reconciliation has already been put to practical use in modern times in large-scale conflicts within and across borders. Coming to terms and living peaceably with differences, even grave ones, was accomplished at moments in Medieval Iberia among the three monotheistic religions: Christianity, Judaism, and Islam, and hope remains that such moments of peace will extend beyond borders and be found again today. / Spanish

This dissertation is a study of the links between the poem Signos que aparecerán antes del juicio final of Gonzalo de Berceo and the Spanish medieval architecture. The analysis is based on a comparative and systematic contrast between the literary work of Berceo and the monumental sculptures present in three cathedrals that represent the Spanish medieval architecture. The iconographies found in the portals of these cathedrals have thematic and symbolic similarities with the poem of Gonzalo de Berceo. / Spanish

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