SOURCE: Eisenberg, Daniel. “Juan Ruiz's Heterosexual Good Love.” In Queen Iberia: Sexualities, Cultures, and Crossings from the Middle Ages to the Renaissance, edited by Josiah Blackmore and Gregory S. Hutcheson, pp. 250-74. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1999.

In the following essay, Eisenberg contends that the The Book of Good Love was written to promote an alternative to the homosexual love of young men.

Provar omne las cosas non es por end peor, e saber bien e mal, e usar lo mejor. 

—Juan Ruiz, Libro de buen amor

e 

                    [To try things out is not so bad; Knowing good and evil, one can choose the best.] 

The topic of this essay is the meaning of the most canonical work from the rich Spanish corpus of erotic and sexological literature, the work that is customarily dished out, in small doses, to students of Spanish literature. The topic of the...