The Book of Good Love of the Archpriest of Hita, Juan Ruiz
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Authors
Kane, Elisha Kent
Ruiz, Juan
Issue Date
1933
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Type
Book, Whole
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Abstract
At last I have had the leisure to tackle this large work from the fourteenth century. I was happy to find on the web a good list of the twenty-four fables involved--and of ten other similar stories. (I find another truncated fable of The Wolf and the Goats at 766). The structure of the work is loose. One main structural section seems to start with a lament to Sir Love. He leads to the seven capital sins and he has not brought this priest success! Love replies that he has not gone about it correctly. His advice here includes careful suggestions not to overdrink, for example. Venus gives even better and more aggressive advice than her husband, Sir Love. Both depend on sources like Ovid and represent similar viewpoints to his. The author then pursues love with several women. The first is his neighbor, Lady Sloe. Trota is his go-between. With her help he is successful here and later with a nun. There is a set of works revolving around encounters with a rural shepherdess/guide on the road. A long section is devoted to the battle between Lady Lent and Sir Carnal. The finish of this section involves a near-blasphemous acclamation of Sir Carnal on Easter Sunday. The wooing of the nun is followed by a song and epitaph for his dead trot and several apparently unrelated songs and hymns to the Virgin and from a blind man. I find Kane's translation in rhyming quatrains vigorous. It is enhanced by the impish cartoon initials. In the preface, in the kind of formulae that prefaces are full of, Kane thanks himself first! What I note about the fables here is that, while most are standard fables from the Aesopic tradition, many have twists that are surprising. Thus the bun which the thief gives the guard dog has pins and glass inside (#174). After the horse kills the lion with a kick to his head, he flees with a full belly and dies (#298). Insulted by the ass, the old lion kills himself by tearing his own heart out (#311). The monkey judge seems to penalize neither the wolf nor the fox (#321). A female frog offers to take a male mouse (mole?) onto her back in a flood (#407). The hares still run, even after they hear an enlightened speech unmasking their fears (#1445). The fables are clustered in perhaps the first and last quarters of the work. The last nine come within #1348-1450.
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Publisher
Priv. print. [The Printing house of William Edwin Rudge]
Privately Printed for Elisha K. Kane at the Printing House of William Edwin Rudge, NY
Privately Printed for Elisha K. Kane at the Printing House of William Edwin Rudge, NY
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Identifier
4007 (Access ID)