Juan Ruiz
Juan Ruiz | |
---|---|
Born | c. 1283 |
Died | c. 1350 |
Occupation | Poet, cleric |
Nationality | Spanish |
Citizenship | Castile |
Period | Medieval Spanish |
Notable works | The Book of Good Love |
Juan Ruiz (c. 1283 – c. 1350), known as the
Biography
Origins
He was born in
Imprisonment
According to his own book, he was imprisoned for years, thought to be between 1337 and 1350, as punishment for some of his deeds (if the poem is any guide, they were quite inconsistent with his position as
Death
It has been estimated that he died around 1350 (presumably in prison); by 1351, he no longer held the title of archpriest of Hita.
The Book of Good Love
El Libro de Buen Amor (The Book of Good Love) is a massive and episodic work that combines poems to Jesus and Mary; Ruiz's unrequited love, and fables. The poem itself is 1,728 stanzas long. The breadth of the writer's scope, and the exuberance of his style have caused some to term him "the Castilian Chaucer." Speculation regarding whether or not the book was actually an autobiography is incessant.
His language is characterized by its richness and its sermon-like tendency to repeat the same concept in several different ways. Noted for being very creative and alive, his work utilizes colloquial, popular vocabulary. His natural gifts were supplemented by his varied culture; he clearly had a considerable knowledge of the colloquial (and perhaps also of literary)
All these heterogeneous materials are fused in the substance of his versified autobiography, into which he intercalates devout songs, parodies of epic or forensic formulae, and lyrical digressions on every aspect of life. He shows a profound knowledge of human emotion and is able to strike a balance between gentleness and brazenness in his shrewd and frequently ironic writing. Ruiz, in fact, offers a complete picture of picaresque society in the most complex and rich cultural geography of Europe during the first half of the 14th century, and his impartial irony lends a deeper tone to his rich coloring. He knows the weaknesses of both clergy and laity, and he dwells with equal complacency on the amorous adventures of great ladies, on the perverse intrigues arranged by demure nuns behind their convent walls, and on the simpler instinctive animalism of country lasses and Moorish dancing-girls.
In addition to the faculty of genial observation Ruiz has the gift of creating characters and presenting types of human nature: from his Don Furón is derived the hungry gentleman in Lazarillo de Tormes, in Don Melón and Doña Endrina he anticipates Calisto and Melibea in the Celestina, and Celestina herself is developed from the Trotaconventos of Ruiz. Moreover, Ruiz was justly proud of his metrical innovations: the Libro de buen amor is mainly written in the cuaderna via modelled on the French alexandrine, but he imparts to the measure a variety and rapidity previously unknown in Castilian, and he experiments by introducing internal rhymes or by shortening the fourth line into an octosyllabic verse; or he boldly recasts the form of the stanza, extending it to six or seven lines with alternate verses of eight and five syllables. But his technical skill never sinks to triviality. All his writing bears the stamp of a unique personality, and, if he never attempts a sublime flight, he conveys with contagious force his enthusiasm for life under any conditions — in town, country, vagabondage or gaol.
Johan Ruys (original spelling), arcipreste de la Hita, was imprisoned by the Inquisition for a few years due to his one-sided love affair with a lady of the nobility. In our modern society, he would have been charged with "harassment". He is said to have died 7 or 8 years after his release from the Inquisition's holding facility.
There are today three manuscripts of the Libro de Buen Amor. The Salamanca version, denoted S, resides in Madrid's Biblioteca Real and is considered the best of the three codices. The other two are the Academia Española version, known as Gayoso (G), and the Toledo (T) manuscript.
Legacy
Ruiz's influence is visible in El Corbacho, the work of another jovial
Notes
References
- Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). . Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 23 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. pp. 823–824.
Further reading
- Abellán, José Luis (1977) Del itinerario literario al histórico de Juan Ruiz. Madrid: Diario Informaciones, 21-VII-1977.
- Brownlee, Marina Scordilis (1985) The Status of the Reading Subject in the Libro de buen amor. Chapel Hill: U.N.C. Dept. of Romance Languages (Distributed by University of North Carolina Press).
- Burkard, Richard W. (1999) The Archpriest of Hita and the Imitators of Ovid: a Study in the Ovidian Background of the "Libro de buen amor". Newark, DE: Juan de la Cuesta
- Caba, Rubén(1976-IX) Juan Ruiz y sus parodias. Madrid: Diario Informaciones, 23-IX-1976.
- Caba, Rubén (1976) Por la ruta serrana del Arcipreste. Madrid: Libertarias-Prodhufi, 1995, 3ª edición. ISBN 84-7954-239-X. (1ª edición: 1976. 2ª edición: 1977). (El autor fija el itinerario serrano del Arcipreste de Hita que él mismo recorrió en la primavera de 1973).
- Dagenais, John (1994) The Ethics of Reading in Manuscript Culture: Glossing the "Libro de buen amor". Princeton: Princeton University Press
- Deyermond, Alan (2004) The "Libro de Buen Amor" in England: a tribute to Gerald Gybbon-Monypenny. Manchester: Dept of Spanish and Portuguese Studies, University of Manchester
- Gybbon-Monypenny, G. B., ed. (1970) Libro de Buen Amor Studies. London: Támesis.
- Haywood, Louise M., and Vasvàri, Louise O., eds. (2004) A Companion to the "Libro de buen amor". Woodbridge: Támesis
- Lecoy, Félix (1938) Recherches sur le "Libro de buen amor", de Juan Ruiz, Archiprêtre de Hita. Paris: E. Droz.
- Marmo, Vittorio (1983) Dalle fonti alle forme: studi sul "Libro de buen amor". Naples: Liguori
- Ruiz, Juan (1992) El libro de buen amor; edited by Alberto Blecua. Madrid: Cátedra.
- Vetterling, Mary-nne. "A Bibliography for Juan Ruiz's Libro de buen amor (A)". Archived from the original on 2012-12-20. Retrieved 2009-06-06. (Continually updated.)
- Wacks, David (2006). "Reading Jaume Roig's Spill and the Libro de buen amor in the Iberian <maqâma'> tradition". Bulletin of Spanish Studies. 83 (5): 597–616. S2CID 194131667.
- Zahareas, Anthony N. (1965) The Art of Juan Ruiz, Archpriest of Hita. Madrid: Estudios de Literatura Española.