Blanquerna

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Blanquerna is a

eponymous hero. It is the first major work of literature written in Balearic Islands
.

Structure

Raymond Llull

The novel is divided into five parts.[1] Llull's Llibre d'Amic e d'Amat (Book of the Friend and Beloved) is often included as a semiautonomous section within Blanquerna.[2]

Plot summary

The central character of the novel named after him, Blanquerna, was born to Evast and Aloma. Before marrying, Evast, a nobleman, had wanted to follow a religious life but at the same time wished to experience matrimony. He became a merchant after his marriage to Aloma, and he gives his son an education based on religious and philosophical pursuits.

In the second part of the novel, Blanquerna confronts the same choice his father did: between a celibate life and a married one. Blanquerna decides to become a hermit, which saddens his mother; she tries to have her son marry the beautiful Cana. But Blanquerna persuades Cana to become a nun, and she later becomes an abbess.[3] Blanquerna also faces sexual temptation in the form of a maiden named Natana. This second part includes a description of the seven sins.

In parts three through five of the novel, Blanquerna, having chosen a religious life, becomes a monk (though he desires to become a hermit instead), and quickly becomes an abbot. In time, he is elected pope.

The road to the

papacy is not easy; Blanquerna is constantly faced with troublesome decisions and temptations, and he is not perfect. Indeed, Blanquerna "is made credible precisely because he is prone to make mistakes and to experience temptation, and in the end this gives him an authority which other authorities are obliged to recognize."[4] Blanquerna's life takes him through widely varying places and social strata, from uninhabited forests and wildernesses to the dense Roman urban landscape of thieves and prostitutes, from interactions with young maidens to interactions with popes and emperors.[4]

As he matures, Blanquerna listens to the advice of a

Sufi preachers,' as a guide to contemplation within the apostolic utopia of a reform of contemporary Christendom."[2]

Selected verses

27 The bird was singing in the garden of the Beloved. The Lover came and said to the bird: - If we don’t understand each other through language, let’s communicate through love, because your song represents my Beloved to my eyes.

295 The Lover was in danger in the great sea of love; and he trusted his Beloved, who came to rescue him with tribulations, thoughts, tears and cries, sighs and sorrows, since the sea was one of love and also made to honour his principles.

See also

References

  1. ^ a b Robert M. Place, Buddha Tarot (Llewellyn Worldwide: 2004), 56.
  2. ^ a b Josiah Blackmore; Gregory S. Hutcheson, Queer Iberia: Sexualities, Cultures, and Crossings from the Middle Ages to the Renaissance (Duke University Press: 1999), 170.
  3. ^ Ramon Lull; E. Allison Peers (translator), Book of the Lover and the Beloved (Kessinger, 2003), 16.
  4. ^ a b Arthur Terry, A Companion to Catalan Literature (Boydell & Brewer, 2003), 14.

External links

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