La corónica. A Journal of Medieval Hispanic Languages, Literatures, and Cultures [25.1]

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Editor George D. Greenia, The College of William and Mary Nn•ging &Utor Isidro J. Rivera, Univ. of Kansas Book Rniew Editor E. Michael Gcrli, Georgetown Univ.

Aaodate &Utor of Information Tedmology and 11i1pan1cStudia MarkJohnston, Illinois State Univ. &lltorial Ammmta Cliff Robcnon, Univ. of Virginia Sarah Misemer, Univ. of Kansas l'.Jtecudft Committee, MIA. DiYlllon on SpaalahllecUnal Languagemcl Uterature Julian Weiss, Univ. of Oregon (1991-96) E. Michael Gerli, Georgetown Univ. (1992-97) Mary Jane Kelley, Ohio Univ. ( 1995-98) Ivy Corfil, Pennsylvania State Univ. (1994-99) Mercedes Vaquero, Brown Univ. ( 1995-2000)

••••• &lltorlal Policy

LIi c:onMieawelcomes studies in English and Spanish dealing with medieval Iberian languages, literatures and their historical contexts. Contributon should submit three copies of their manuscript with text, quotations, footnotes (rather than endnotes) and end bibliography of Works Cited double spaced. Typescripu must adhere in format to TM Ml.A Styu Manual and employ the shon internal reference system. For articles, do not send a diskette with the text until the submission is accepted. Foreign contributon may sublnit har~ copy alone if necessary; consult with the Editor before submitting by e-mail. Guidelines for Articles and Guidelines for Boole.Reviews are available from the Editor, George D. Grccnia, and Boole.Review Editor, E. Michael Gerli, respectively. LIi eorlmieais issued in the fall and spring of each academic year. Subscription rates arc $18/ycar and SS0/2 yean for individuals and $55/year for institutions. Subscription payments, changes of address and rcquesu for back issues should be directed to Isidro J. Rivera, Dept. Spanish & Portuguese, 5062 Wcscoc Hall, University of Kansas, Lawrence, KS 66045-2166. E-mail to [email protected]. In Great Britain, contact John England, Dcpanmcnt of Hispanic Studies, The Univcnity, Sheffield, Sl0 2TN, Great Britain,[email protected].; in Italy, Dra. G. Lizabc de Savastano, Cav. Vittorio Vcneto 4F, Zelo Buon Persico, Milano 20060. En Espana, los que prcficran pagar en pesetas dcben haccr una transfcrcncia o ingrcso por cl importc de la 1uscripci6n a la cucnta de LIi conSNiea,num. 051-05756-29, Banco Exterior de Espana, Oficina Principal, Salamanca, Calle Toro, 29, 57002 Salamanca, Espana. Antes de rcalizar la transfcrencia, cumplimcntc y rcmita cl imprcso recibido por corrco o fax dcl rcprescntantc de la revista en Espana: Jesus D. Rodriguez Velasco, Dpto. de Lcngua Espanola, Facultad de Filologfa, Univcrsidad de ~alamanca, Plaza Anaya 1, 57001 Salamanca, Espana; fax (925) 29 45 86; jrvOgugu.usal.es Editorial correspondence concerning articles, article-reviews and announcements for the Calendar of Conferences and Events and Brief Notices of new publications should be sent to George D. Grecnia, Editor, La cor6nica,Dept. of Modem Languages, College of William & Mary, Williamsburg, VA 2Sl87 USA. Tel 757-221-5676; fax 757-221-!657. E-mail to [email protected]

Submissions of articles and notes for the section on Information Technology and Hispanic Studies should be sent directly to Marie.Johnston, 2949 N. Sheffield #1, Chicago, IL 60657 USA. E-mail to [email protected]. La cor6nicadocs not accept unsolicited book reviews. Books to be reviewed should be sent directly to E. Michael Gcrli, Dept. of Spanish, School of Languages and Linguistics, Georgetown University, Washington, DC 20057 USA E-mail to [email protected]

••••• Copyright Ml.A Division on Spanish Medieval Language and Literature ISSN 019~5892

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1Lacor6ntca

A JOURNAL OF MEDIEVAL UTERATURE

VOLUME

SPANISH LANGUAGE AND

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

From the Editor

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Critical Cluster Gregory S. Hutcheson, Guest Editor, ..Inflecting the Ufflverso Voice" Dayle Seidenspinner-Nuiiez, "Inflecting the Ufflverso Voice: A Commentary on Recent Theories"

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E. Michael Gerli, "PerfQnning Nobility: Mosen Diego de Valera and the Poetics of Ufflverso Identity"

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Gregory S. Hutcheson, "Cracks in the Labyrinth: Juan de Mena, Converso Experience, and the Rise of the Spanish Nation"

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Gregory B. Kaplan, "Toward the Establishment of a Christian Identity: The Ufflversos and Early Castilian Humanism"

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Articles

Laura Bass, "Crossing Borders: Gender, Geography and Class Relations in Three Serranillasof the Marques de Santillana"

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John Gomall, "lwo More Cases of Double Narration in the Cantar tU mio Cit!'

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Mark D. Johnston, "Poetry and Courtliness in Baena's Prologue"

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Jose Marfa Rodriguez-Garcia, "Palabras y acciones en el Llilm tUlsJetsdel rey EnJaume" ·

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Zachary David Zuwiyya, "Royal Fame and Royal Honor in the Rrdumtamiento tUl rre:,Alisandrt"

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Information Technology and Hispanic Studies Two Sessions on Manuscript Studies and the Internet at the 1996 International Congress on Medieval Studies. Reported by Mark D. Johnston.

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Diccionariode la Lmpa Espanola. Edici6n en CD-ROM realizada bajo la supervision del Instituto de Lexicografia de la Real Academia Espanola. Reviewed by George D. Greenia.

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History and CultuRJof Spain/or Windows. 2 CD-ROM disks. Fairfield, CT: Queue, Inc. Reviewed by Mark D. Johnston.

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Forum

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Reviews Binkley, Thomas, and Margit Frenk. spanish Romances of the Sixteenth Century. Reviewed by Israel]. Katz.

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Camarena,Julio y Maxime Chevalier. Catalogotipol6gico del cumto fo/Aloricoespaiwl: Cumtos maravillosos.Reviewed by Harriet Goldberg.

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Circa 1492. Proceedingsof theJerusalem Colloquium: LitteraeJudaeorum in TerraHispanica. Reviewed by Samuel G. Armistead.

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Cruz-Scienz, Michele S. de, with Teresa Catarella. spanish Traditional Ballads from Aragon. Reviewed by Elizabeth Boretz.

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F'IUTU Xulgu, VolumesI y IL Eds. Montserrat Tuero Moris y Xose Lluis Garda Arias. Reviewed by Christopher J. McDonald.

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Gomez Moreno, Angel. Espana y la Italia de los humanistas: Primerosecos.Reviewed by Ignacio Navarrete.

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Martinez Liebana, Evelio. Losjudios de Sahagun en la transici6n del sigloXIV al XV. Piles Ros, Leopoldo. La juderiade Valencia(Estudio historico). Reviewed by Eleazar Gutwirth.

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Mena,Juan de. Laberintode Fortuna y otrosponnas. Ed. Carla De Nigris. Estudio Preliminar por Guillermo Seres. Reviewed by Philip 0. Gericke.

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Menocal, Maria Rosa Shards of Love: Exik and the Origins of the Lyric.Reviewed by Mary Jane Kelley.

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Salvatierra Osorio, Aurora. La mturte, el Destina y la enfer,nd,ad en la obrapoitica tk Y. ha- Levi y l Ibn GabiroLReviewed by Judit Targarona.

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Schippers, Arie. Spanish Hdwew Poetryand the Arabic Litnary Tradition: Arabic Themes in HdwewAndalusian Poetry. Reviewed by Samuel G. Armistead.

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Textosmedievales de caballerias.Ed. JOSCMarfa Vina Liste. Reviewed by Michael Hamey.

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Wiegen, Gerard. Islamic Literaturr in Spanish & Aljamiado. Y,a of Segovia (fl. 1450 ), His Anteadents & Sucussors. Reviewed by Miguel Angel Vazquez.

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Conference Reports La Celestina: Aportaciones Interpretativas Actuales. A Symposium-Cuno sponsored by the Univenidad Internacional Menendez y Pelayo (sede Valencia, Palau de Pineda), March 25-29, 1996. Reported by Joseph T. Snow.

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Aspects of Arabic Literature: Classical, Colloquial, and In-Between. A Conference ... [at] the University of California, Berkeley, April 27-28, 1996. Reported by Samuel G. Armistead.

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Brief Notices

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Calendar of Conferences and Events

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John K. WalshAward

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From the Editor Those of you who subscribe to Mediber, the electronic bulletin board on Medieval Iberia managed byJohn Dagenais of UCLA, know the lively exchanges of information and points of view, professional news and recent publications, and the good natured debates that are shared by Mediber's participants around the world. The author of these lines tries to add his two cents worth every now and then and recently took a bit of friendly ribbing about his "grumpiness" ( atado tU mal humor comatk viejo ,efunfun6n) when he groused about the perceived insufficiencies of a new software producL But overriding the mock pugilism of our spirited give and take is an impressive spirit of respect for the efforts of all who contribute to our fields of research no matter how modestly or how specialized their interests. Sometimes those apparently specialized interests move to center stage and require the thoughtful attention of us all. This iuue's Critical Cluster guest edited by Gregory S. Hutcheson asks us to join Greg, Dalye Speidenspinner-Nuiiez, E. Michael Gerli and Gregory 8. Kaplan in rethinking the modulations and registers of the" convmovoice" in Qlstilian literature of the fifteenth century. As Hutcheson's Introduction makes clear,Jews and Jews who became Christians (to whatever degree) skillfully, intuitively played off the voices of the majority around them and teach us a great deal about the selective echoing implicit in all literary expression. By now it is a commonplace of postmodern discourse that the margins (and the marginalized) do more to define the discursive space of a community than the proclamations coming from the center. La cor6nim has long embraced a sober regard for Semitic studies of all sorts, from the now legendary jarcha debates of a few years ago to more recent contributions by Mary Jane Kelley, Marfa Rosa Menocal, Samuel G. Armistead, J.A de la Pineda and Clark Colahan, and Zachary David Zuwiyya. I was especially pleased by the decision of the Executive Committee of our Ml.A Division on Medieval Spanish Language and Literature to grant this year's Jack K. Walsh Award to Rou Brann, Angel SaehzBadillos andjudit Targarona for their collaborative study on •~mu'el ibn Saion y su poesia hebrea en la Qlstilla del siglo XIV". Sending me word of their decision, the Executive Committee praised the way that this article opened up

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... whole new vistas: it exemplifies the kind of interdisciplinary work that medieval Hispanism should be famous for - not only acrou languages (Hebrew and Castilian), but also across institutions (US and Spain). It also makes us even more aware of the multicultural vitality of mid-fourteenthnverso Voice

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verso court poets, Mosen Diego de Valera, Fernan Diaz de Toledo, Hernando del Pulgar and convmo chroniclers, Diego de San Pedro, Teresa de Cartagena, Inigo.de Mendoza, Fernando de Rojas, and the anonymous authors of Lazarillo tk Tonnesand AbmurrajtJ- can we appreciate the import and complexity of convmo experience.

Works Cited

Baer, Yitzhak. Toldotha-Yehutlimbi-Sejaradha-Not.frit.Tel Aviv: 'Am'oved, 1945 and 1959. Historia tk losjudios m la &panacristiana.Traducido [del hebreo] porJose Luis Lacave. 2 vols. Madrid: Atalena, 1981. A History of theJews in Christian spain. Trans. [from the Hebrew] by Louis Schoffman, et aL 2 vols. Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society of America, 1961-66. Beinart, Baim. Conversoson 1nal: The Inquisition in Ciudad &al. Translated by Yael Guiladi. Jerusalem: Magnes P, Hebrew U, 1981. Los conversosante el tribunal tk la Inquisicion. Trans. [del ingles] por Jose Manuel Alvarez Flores and Angela Perez. Barcelona: Riopiedras, 1983. Castro, Americo. &panam su historia: Cristianos, moms y judios. 2nd ed. Barcelona: Ed. Critica, 1983. Di Camillo, Ottavio. "Humanism in Spain". Rmaissana Humanism: Foundations, Funtand King Albrecht of Bohemia, outsmarting the Bohemian king's most distinguished courtiers at their own game. Stressing the competitive nature of courtly behavior and nobility's underpinning in grand gestures and faithful deeds, the episode highlights the encounter as an opportunity to best the best in a display of patrician qualities and an understan~ing of the notion of what it means to act and be noble. At table, the CA>untpointedly tells King Albrecht in German of having seen in the church of Santa Marfa de la Batalla in Lisbon the Castilian king's battle flag seized at Aljubarrota in 1385. From this, the Count concludes that the king of Castile no longer possessed the right to bear those arms in battle. Grasping only a word here and there, but enough to understand a cunning snub, Valera entreats King Albrecht to relate the CA>unt'swords to him in Latin. Fast upon the translation, Valera kneels before the king and begs license to respond to the slighL Cap-

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Masin was an honorific title traditionally given to the most learned clerks in the Crown of Aragon. A calque on the French monseigneur,it was doubtless also conferred on Valera byJuan n in recognition of his francophilia and ties to Burgundy and France. Valera's fascination with French culture is evidenced in having given his son the name Charles.

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tured in direct speech in the Cnm.ica,Valera's rejoinder is a model of showmanship and uncompromising dignity. Turning to the Count, he says:

Senor, mucho soy maravillado de vos, por ser tan noble e prudente caballero, querer vos decir que el Rey de Castilla, mi soberano senor no puecla traer la vandera real de sus annas; que debfades, Senor, saber quc en las armas se hace tal diferencia que o son de linage o son de dignidad: si son de dignidad, en ninguna manera se pueden perder, salvo perdicndosc la dignidad por raz6n de la qual las armas sc traen . . . E como quiera quel Rey Don Juan, abuelo del Rey mi sobcrano seiior, por un gran desastre de fortuna perdiese una batalla en que fue tomada su vandera, no perdi6 su dignidad, ante sicmpre la posey6, la qual el Rey, mi soberano senor, tiene oy mucho mas acrecentada por muchas villas e fortale7.3Se tierras que de Moros ha ganado. Asf, Seiior, es cierto quel Rey mi soberano sciior puede y debe traer e trae la vandera de sus annas sin ningun reproche. E si alguno hay que quiera afumar el contrario de lo que digo, yo gelo combatire en presencia dcl Seiior Rey, dandome para ello Su Alteza licencia. (533) Hearing Valera's response, King Albrecht pronounces it to be true and tells Valera ..que el no solamente era caballero, mas caballero e Doctor" (533). When news of the incident from Bohemia reached Castile, the cnmica tells us,Juan II --ovodello gran placer, c di6le su devisa dcl collar del ~cama que el claba a muy pocos, e di6le el yelmo de tomeo, e mand6le dar cien doblas para lo hacer, e hizole otras mercedes, e mand6 que dende adelante le llamasen Mosen Diego, e despues siempre le di6 honrrosos cargos en que le sirviese" (534). In this chapter of the Cnm.ica,Valera conspicuously places his knowledge of nobility on public display and, as he acts fearlessly and magnanimously, is seen and recognized by kings for his gallantry, shrewdness, and eloquence. He verbally constructs the image and reputation of his own civil nobility as he majestically portrays himself publicly defending the eminence and reputation of his sovereign at a foreign courL More than a minor gallant incident, upon close inspection it is clear that Valera's behavior is adroitly staged so as to conform to the abstract requisites of civil nobility as defined in his Espejode verdaderanoblezaand to be noticed and appropriately rewarded by his sovereign. Finally, it is important to note that the scene, while it depicts Diego de Valera's stately defense of Juan II (whose tenuous Trastamaran legitimacy was itself alwaysin need of validation), hinges entirely on the question of inher-

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ited w. acquired honors. Even as he vindicates the nobility of the Castilian king, Valera focuses on how the latter is circumstantially won rather than genealogically transmitted. Valera's nobility-seeking deportment in the CTOnicais expreuly composed and enacted for an audienc~ both inside and outside the text: his display of noble qualities in action constitutes a self-advertising dramatization whose end is penonal recognition byJuan II and the members of the court. Indeed, when seen in terms of a public performance, the episode is a masterful instance of what Stephen Greenblatt calls "selffashioning•, or the conscious creation of an integrated rhetoric of the self that captures the codes by which behavior is shaped in response to •the larger networks of meaning in which an author and his works participate" (4). The end purpose here is the production of a scenario of prestige and distinction for Valera himself - a theatricalization of his own eminence and worthineu at court amid the possible stigma of illegitimacy cast upon conversosby Old Christians. Ever vigilant of his status and reputation, Valera was his own best publicist. As Nicholas Round auerts, "the historical image of Mosen Diego --especially his image as an international knight~rrant and his reputation as someone uniquely expert in chivalric lore- are very largely the creations of his own pen. Short of stature, vulnerable in his origins, half-pedant, half-martinet ... Valera had used his travels and his writing to create a public personality" ("The Presence of Mosen Diego" 146; also Salvador Miguel, "Mosen Diego de Valera" 243-44). In another incident in 1448, for example, after having written an audacious letter to Kingjuan counseling peace and reconciliation with Prince Enrique plus mercy for the Counts of Benavente and Alba, whom the king had imprisoned for plotting against Alvaro de Luna ( CTOnicade Don Juan II, 659-60), Mosen Diego wrote and placed in circulation another epistle responding to an unnamed friend who supposedly had written admonishing Valera for his insolent missive to the monarch. The omission of the friend's name and all signs of his identity from Valera's public response, according to Penna, "inducen naturalmente a duclar de la existencia de la carta del amigo incognito" and lead to the conclusion "que la fingiese Valera para contestar con este motivo a las censuras que mas o menos explicitamente se le dirigieran por su atrevimiento en hablar al Rey... " (36). Valera concludes his reply to the phantom friend by self-righteously alluding to his personal sacrifice, invokingjohn 1:20 and Matthew 5:10 ("bienaventurados [son] aquellos que por lajusticia han persecuciones"), and citing the unwavering ideals of loyalty and selfless devotion which have moved him to risk cautioning the king. He closes by saying that, although he is the most

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unworthy of Juan H's servants, he was moved by the need to intervene since seesfortanne scrvir mi Principe, no solamente con las fuer~ corporales, mas aun con las mentales e intelletuales" (O/was 7). That Valera had mastered the rhetoric and techniques of self-fashioning needs no further corroboration; the inseparability of his writings from their wider political and cultural circumstances remains equally clear. 6 Valera had discovered that the understanding of nobility and virtue belonged to an integrated semiotic system organized around public dramatizations, and that their perception could be modified according to the values enacted in each performance. By repeatedly exhibiting his own interpretive authority in all matters of honor, rectitude, and nobility at court, and continuously exercising and recapitulating a civil definition of nobility, he was able to efface his own marginal position vis-a-visthe traditional arguments invoking nobility's origin in blood and ancestry and successfully insinuate himself, as it were, into the corridors of power. In this way Valera proves an arresting contradiction to the image of social, moral, and religious disaffection usually summoned by critics in their discussion of convmos in a fifteenth-century contexL 7 In such works as the Espejock vmlatlera nobla.a, Doctrinalckprincipts, Tratadock las armas,BmJiloquiock virtudes, and Cemnonialckprincipes,as well as in his numerous epistles, Valera both defines and defends the offices and hierarchical power structures of the aristocracy while vindicating their origins in moral attitudes and socially specific civil requiremen ts that have little to do with genealogy, blood, or ancestry, undermining the traditional interpretations of the term and its essentialist premises. Valera's composition and circulation of these worb, more than anything else, were crucial to his perception as someone who was himself noble and they served him as exemplary stage props that authenticated the dramatization of his own personal nobility. For Valera, as for other convmos like Cartagena, nobility had become fundamentally a circumstantial phenomenon and a-matter of display and achievement - a question primarily of moral dignity, con11

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lnjuly of 1462, while attending to his duties as corr,gidorof Palencia, Valera wrote another highly publicized letter, this one to Enrique IV. In it he virtually summarized the nobles' grievances brought against the king later at Avila, faulting Enrique IV for his economic policies, his lack of deference for public order, and his brazen disrespect for the nobility ( Obras,8-9). 7 Stephen Gilman, in his otherwise brilliant discussion of Celatina, for example, perceives convmo identity only in a monologic way. When speaking of Fernando de Rojas, he identifies the convmoas ..un hombre que ha perdido su fe sin ganar ninguna otra y que se complacc en rcsaltar la auscncia de trascendencia moral en cl mundo• (!71).

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science, and law forged out of culturally and historically distinctive sets of circumstances. Whereas some convmos like Ant6n de Montoro intentionally adopted the language of marginalized members of the social periphery and performed roles in consonance with subaltern discursive practices in order to gain access to power, consciously crafting images of difference (Gcrli), Valera embraced a normative, institutionalized rhetoric as he sought to identify with, master, and control the dialogue and the definitions lying at the center of the entire controversy on nobility and social legitimacy at court. The continuous verbal and textual rehearsal of the themes and tenets of nobility was for Valera a constant means of certifying his own eminence in the interminable struggle for recognition and attention at court. At the same time, his unremitting pursuit of nobility forms part of a broader cultural performance implicated in convmo politics and in the larger struggle for civic power and position in fifteenth,entury Castile.

Although the convmos have been defined traditionally in terms of their cultural and religious difference, their initial cultural divergence may, as in the case of Valera, actually be manifested in gestures of rapprochement and revealed as signs of similarity, or transculturation, which produce new, not necessarily dissident, forms of identity. The propinquity of two cultural identities that at first glance may appear contentious may not al~ys be so. As Bhabha notes, "The borderline engagemen ts of cultural difference may as often be consensual as conflictual; they may confound our definitions of tradition and modernity; realign the customary boundaries between the private and the public, high and low; and challenge normative expectations of development and progress" (2). The question of the conversovoiceis problematized and complicated by figures like Mosen Diego de Valera who, rather than adopt a position of discrepancy and contestation, fashioned an identity of consensual proximity aimed at producing assimilation and a form of cultural erasure. Through his expert reiteration of the themes and images of nobility, Valera demonstrates that a dominant ideology does not always have to be imposed but may be voluntarily accepted, and that dominance is created through a complex cultural interplay that involves both consent and willingness to move within a culture as much as it does oppreuion and resistance. He tells us that the converso voice may express a volition that ratifies institutional power and that may in fact be comprised of radically extreme, even contradictory, modulations as it occupies conflicting regions of the social imagination. Its existence as

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a well-defined discunive category reflecting contention, moral disaffection, and clearly delineated anti-castizosubject positions, often outlined in the works of historians like Americo Castro and Antonio Dominguez Ortiz, needs reexamination. The traditional portrait of the convmo as a marginal, alienated individual whose limited participation in mainstream society and public agency has come to dominate Spanish history needs to be reconciled with Spanish historiography's own discursive practices and the ideological assumptions which shaped it (Kamen 19-20). There is no such thing as a typical convmo other than as a product of our desire to reduce the intricacies of human lives and cultures to manageable texts.

Converso views, as well as views on convmos, in Castile during the fifteenth century were, as Valera shows and Edwards, Gutwirth and Kamen have recently argued, remarkably diverse - as varied and complex as the individuals who profeued them. The conception of the convmos as a caste possessing a common dissident temperament in particular displaces their individual personalities away from their concrete historical circumstances and toward the realm of reductive gener- · alities. The image of the convmo as an unwavering form of alternate transcendental self -the Other by whom the figure of the autonomous, unified Old Christian agent of history is defined- needs to be rethought in light of the shifting reconfigurations of the subject and heterogenous social discourses. To lay claim to a normative identity for convmos is, put simply, to maintain the existence of a universal human c~tegory which did not exist (Smith 27-58). Close scrutiny of convmos reveals that they fail to constitute a monolithic Other but comprise a mau of others who, despite the totalizing narratives of Spanish history are in fact all different for different reasons. It is evident that convmos in the fifteenth century could fall all along the ideological and civic spectrum. Some like Valera dramatically contradict the stereotypical image of the convmo as a homogeneous· social type who shares a moral and political agenda with his fellow converts. It is clear that Valera had readily auimilated and mastered the discourses of the ruling class, identified with and became part of il & other converts followed his. lead, they served their aristocratically empowered patrons both loyally and well. Othen, however, forged a counterdiscoursc to authority and adopted a posture of opposition, skepticism, and disaffection. The case of Mosen Diego de Valera reinforces the notion that all identity is both socially and circumstantially constructed. This is not to say that human beings are more apt to be oppreued or defiant rather than free and consensual as they seek to invest in a set of social and

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political possibilities. High, low, "Old" Christian or New", human subjects in fifteenth-century Castile -as now- were constituted not through single but multiple discourses and ideologies and were compelled to negotiate the intersection of varying interests and contradictions. Both conversosand Old Christians alike were skillful at mediating socially and politically prescribed roles through improvisation and the constitution of new discunive configurations as they exploited the possibilities rather than the limitations of their estate. Mosen Diego de Valera, a highly successful conversoat court in fifteenth-century Castile, illustrates the point that a multiplicity of disparate positions may exist for a variety of human subjects located in the same social space and ideological milieu. Valera's preoccupation with nobility should doubtless be situated amidst the immediate cultural contingencies which it sought to transcend.

Works Cited

Amasuno Sarraga, Marcelino. Alfonso Chirino, un midico de monarcas castellanos.Salamanca: Junta de Castilla y Leon, 1993. Bhabha, Homi K. The Location of Cultun. London: Routledge, 1994. Baron, S.W. "The Jewish Factor in Medieval Civilization". Procudings of the American Acadnny for Jewish &search 12 (1942): 36-49. Bauman, Richard. "Performance and Honor in 13th-Century Iceland". Journal of AmericanFolJclore 99 (1986): 131-150. Cartagena, Alonso de. Alonso de Cartagena y el Defensorium Unitatis Christianae. Trad. Guillermo Verdin Dfaz. Oviedo: Universidad de Oviedo, 1989. Castro, Americo. "Las castas y lo castizo". La TOfff 35-36 (1961): 65-85. --. Aspectosdel vivir hispanico. 2nd ed. Madrid: Alianza, 1970. Cr6nicade Don.Juan II. In Cr6nicasde los "Jes de Castilla.BAE, 68. Madrid: Rivadeneyra, 1877. 273-695. Di Camillo, Ottavio. "Las teorfas de la nobleza en el pensamiento etico de Mosen Diego de Valera". Nunca Juepen.a mayorEstudiosde literatura espaiiolaen homenaje a Brian Dutton. Eds. Ana Menendez Collera, Victoriano Roncero Lopez. Cuenca: Ediciones de la Universidad de Castilla-La Mancha, 1996. 223-237. Dominguez Ortiz, Antonio. La clasesocial delos conversosen la Etlad Media. Madrid: Istmo, 1956.

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Edwards,John. Convmos,Judaism, and the Language of Monarchy in Fifteenth-century Castile". Circa 1492: Proceedings of tlae]mualffn Cai loquium: Littn-ae Juda«rrum in Terra Hispanica. Ed. Isaac Benabu. Jerusalem: Hebrew Univenity of Jerusalem and MisgavYerushalayim, 1992. 207-23. Forti, Fiorenzo. Magnanimitade: studi su un Inna tlantaco. Bologna: Patron, 1977. Geertz, Clifford. N~ara: The Thmter Stau in J9th-(;mtury Bali. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1980. Gerli, E. Michael. "Anton de Montoro and the Wages of Eloquence: Poverty, Patronage, and Poetry in 15th-c. Castile". Romana PhilologJ 48 ( 1994-95): 265-76. Gilman, Stephen. La Celestina: Arte, estroctura.Trad. Margit Frenk de Alatorre. Madrid: Taurus, 1974. Goffman, Erving. The Presmtation of the Self in EVfflUJ'JLift. Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1959. Gonzalez Palencia, Angel. Alonso Chirino, medico de Juan II y padre de Mosen Diego de Valera". Boktin de la Bibliot«a Menmda. , Pelayo 6 (1924): 42-62. Greenblatt, Stephen. Rmais.sana Self-Fashioning:FfflfflMore to S~ Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1980. Gutwirth, Eleazar. Elementos etnicos e historicos en las relaciones judeoconversas en Segovia". Jews and Conwrsos: Studi«s in Societyand the Inquisition. Proceedings of the Eighth World Congress of Jewish Studies, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, August 16-21, 1981. Ed. Yosef Kaplan. Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 1985. 83-102. Kamen, Henry ... Limpiez.aand the Ghost of Americo Castro: Racism as a Tool of Literary Analysis". Hispanic Review 64 (1996): 19-29. Keen, Maurice. Nobks, Knights and Mm-at-arms in the Middle Ages. London: Hambledon Press, 1996. --. Chivalry. New Haven and London: Yale UP, 1984. Moxo, Salvador de. "De la nobleza vieja a la nobleza nueva. La transformacion nobiliaria castellana en la Baja Edad Media". Cuadernos de Historia 3 (1969): 1-210. La nobler.a castellana en el siglo XV". Anuario deEstudiosMedievales 7 (1970-71): 493-511. Netanyahu, Benzion. The Originsof the Inquisitionin Fifteenth-antury spain. New York: Random House, 1995. Penna, Mario. See Valera, Diego de. Obras. Rodriguez Velasco, Jesus D. El debate sabre la caballeria en el siglo XV. Salamanca: Junta de Castilla y Leon, 1996. 11

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Round, Nicholas G. "The Presence of Mosen Diego de Valera in Carul tU.Amor".TM Ag, of lM UJtholicMonarchs, 1474-1516. LiteraryStudies in MemoryofKeithWhinno,n_ Ed.Alan Deyermond & Ian Macpherson. Liverpool: Liverpool UP, 1989. 144-54. --. TM GreatestMan Unt:rOWnMJ: A Study of tM Fall ofDon Alavro tULuna. London: Tamcsis, 1986. --. "Politics, Style and Group Attitudes in the Jnstrucci6nda &latm". Bulletin of Hispanic Studies 46 (1969): 289-319. Salvador Miguel, Nicasio. La poesia cancionnil. Madrid: Alhambra, 1977. Sicroff, Albert A. US contravenes tks statuts tU 'J,urditUsang' m &pap du XV au XV/Ji siick. Paris: Marcel Didier, 1960. Sim6n Dfaz,Jose. "La familia Chirino en Cuenca". Guia: Revista semanal tU msma,u,a y oposiciona1, no. 171 (1944): 3-6. Smith, Pauljulian. Iupmmting 1M Other: 'Rau~ Text, and Genderin Spanish and spanish Amnican Narrative. Oxford, New York, Toronto: Oxford UP, 1992. Torre y Franco-Romero, Luis de. Masin Diego tk Vala-a: apuntaciones biograftcasseguidastUms poesiasy varios tlocumentos.Madrid: Fortanet, 1914. Valera, Diego de. Memorialtk tliversashazanas. Ed.Juan de Mata Carriazo. Colecci6n Cr6nicas de Espana, 4. Madrid: Espasa-Calpe, 1941. --. Olwas.In Prosistascasullanos Ml sigloXV. I. Ed. Mario Penna. BAE, CXVI. Madrid: Atlas, 1959. 3-202. Weiss,Julian. •La Qiiisti6n mtR dos cavaUeros:un nuevo tratado politico del siglo XV".Revista tk Literatura Medieval 4 ( 1992): 9-39; 7 ( 1995): 187-207. Willard, Charity Cannon. "The Concept of True Nobility at the Burgundian Court". Studia in tM Rmaissanu 14 ( 1967): 33-48.

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CRACKS IN THE LABYRINTH: JUAN DE MENA, CONVERSOEXPERIENCE, AND THE RISE OF THE SPANISH NATION Gregory S. Hutcheson University of Dlinois at Chicago

Although scholarship on the European Renaiuance is by no means of a single mind, virtually all accounts agree on one point - Spain, it would seem, miued the boaL I This idea has chagrined Hispanists for centuries, so much so that not a few have been intent on contriving for Spain a Renaissance that begins not with Garcilaso, but in an earlier, more naive age, with poets the likes of the Marques de Santillana and Juan de Mena. They form together with Jorge Manrique the poetic triumvirate of the fifteenth century, the so-called "tres grandes", deemed by positivists as those figures most representative of late-medieval Spanish letters. Their works -or rather, the most decorous and tasteful of their works- are the most anthologized from the period, and each ha.1

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By way of example, of the more than 150 sources referenced by Philippe Aries and Georges Duby in the general bibliography of A History of Privau Lif,: Pauions of thl .Rnaawanu, only four deal primarily with Spain; of these, two address the matter of reading and literacy. Spain is, in other words, a passive receptor -a reader of the Renaissance- certainly not the cultural engine that was Italy, France, England,. or _Germany. The extent to which even Hispanists subscribe to this hierarchy is evidenced by the apologetic tone of Jeremy Lawrance's otherwise sound contribution to the Cultuml Atlas of the .Rnaai.uana.He implies that oriental influence kept late-medieval Iberia from full participation in the Renaissance; with the succession of the Catholic Mon¥chs, however, • [w] ithin an astoundingly short period of time the old image of Iberia cut ofJ from the rest of Christian Europe had been overturned. Spain was poised to embark upon a century of imperial expansion, religious fer.,>r and artistic creativity• (185-86). Helen Nader maintains that the problem lies precisely with our subscription to the idea of •the Renaissance• as the yardstick by which to measure cultural production in the early modern period ( 16). And Paul Julian Smith goes so far as to suggest that Golden · Age Spain itself was the author ofits own marginality: •1u supplement, trace, or parergon, Golden Age writing defines by its very marginality the arbitrary paramcten of th~ European culture which cannot absorb it and dare not admit it• ( Writing in 1M Margin 205).

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