SOURCE: Gaddy, Barbara E. “Myth in the Libro de Buen Amor.” In Estudios Alfonsinos y Otros Escritos: En Homenaje a John Esten Keller y a Anibal A. Biglieri, edited by Nicolas Toscano Liria, pp. 70-76. New York: The National Endowment for the Humanities and the National Hispanic Foundation for the Humanities, 1991.

In the following essay, Gaddy considers Ruiz's literary use of Venus, the goddess of love.

Critics have all agreed, after years of research, that Juan Ruiz's Libro de Buen Amor is not original in literary convention, motif, etc. Ruiz himself never did make such a claim but, instead, pointed out that his work was an exposition of said literary conventions and invited his reader to gloss as he saw fit(1631).¹ Ruiz varied form as best he could in his presentation of the exhaustive repertory of literary lore of the Middle Ages. The reader recognizes the Libro as...