SOURCE: Lawrance, Jeremy N. H. “The Audience of the Libro de buen amor.” Comparative Literature 36, no. 3 (1984): 220-37.

In the following essay, Lawrance contends that Ruiz's intended audience was much more sophisticated than is generally supposed.

Juan Ruiz's relationship to three great literary traditions—the Arabic, the Hebrew, and the medieval Latin—has been hotly debated. The chief weapon in the debate has been source-hunting. Félix Lecoy established beyond all doubt that Juan Ruiz was thoroughly familiar with the Latin and French courtly and scholarly literature of his day.¹ The influence of confession manuals, sermon handbooks, and exemplum-collections; the adaptations of Ovid, of Pamphilus, of Walter Map's animal fables, of Goliardic parody and satire; and the allusions to the liturgy, to the medieval auctores, to the native lyric tradition, and to many other literary genres reveal that, however fresh and spontaneous Ruiz's treatment, the fundamental inspiration behind his...