The Archpriest is one of the greatest European poets of the Middle Ages. His work, El libro de buen amor, constitutes a great poetic corpus, of more than seven thousand verses. Its basic literary structure is that of the 'mester de clerecía'. Of an exuberant and overflowing personality, his work seems to be built in a hurry that prevents him from stopping to organize his writings in a strict plan. His stories have an abundance of sincerity and are writing with a  goodhearted feeling, sympathy, and optimism. HIs is a work that for the most part surrenders to the pleasures of the world, mixed with scattered displays of anger and pain. For the most part, the book is an adaptation of the Ars amandi, by the poet Ovidio, although the author also adapts other medieval Latin texts. 

The tone of the work is diverse, ambivalent, and parodic-like at times, serious and devout at other times. The author enhances the realism of what he tells by exposing a wide repertoire of lovemaking possibilities, ranging from the rough shepherd to the great lady, from the single to the married, from the blackberry to the nun, among others. All this is intertwined with a zigzagging theory of love, between cynical and repentant,  spiritually and decidedly carnal, mixing prayers and conversations with Amor and Venus, fables, advice, moralities, and satires. Besides all of this,  his religious faith is also true, even if morality yields to the irrepressible nature of his fresh vitality. His work reflects a restless, flirtatious person, a great enjoyer of sensations and pleasures, always attentive to observe with great detail the people and places he meets, to later describe them with great care and plasticity of literary images.

El libro de buen amor is a work falsely autobiographical in structure, being the narrator and commentator also the protagonist in most of the episodes. The book is structured around the common thread of this fictional autobiography of the Archpriest, which mixes abundant scattered materials. The main sources of the Book are very varied. It contains a large number of examples, that is, fables and stories, which appear in the dialogue as a demonstration of the reasoning of the characters. There is also an abundance of sermons, religious prose and lyric, classical fables (Ovid and his Ars Amandi, fabliaux), medieval Latin theater, popular lyric, and medieval minstrel stories. To some extent, the work also contains aspects of the Muslim and Jewish literature of medieval Spain, as well as satires, such as the one on the properties of money and lyrical poetry, some religious (cantigas and praise to the Virgin), and others profane (for example, to the mountains).

The metric is not uniform. Ruiz is a poet of the' mester de clerecía',  writing a good deal of the poetry in 'cuaderna via', although there are also lyrical poems where he uses the short minstrel meters. The book contains a style of extraordinary lexical richness, of intense descriptive plasticity, with extremely sharp comparisons both to exalt and to denigrate. The author bitterly complains about the contradiction of this world, designed by a Supreme Being, that prohibits material pleasures when nature inclines everyone towards them. This is the reason why the characters of all of his stories live in continuous tension, acting in a world where everything created appears subject to desire. Reality is a sinister game of opposing forces in conflict in the midst of which man is lost. It is this mixture of the transcendent plane and the human-social plane that shows the crisis of the Castilian fourteenth century, that of the feudal system that heralds the breakdown of the closed and organic horizons of the Middle Ages.

El libro de buen amor

El libro de buen amor deals with loves, some frustrated and others reciprocated, recounted by Juan Ruiz, Arcipreste de Hita. With an ambiguous autobiographical sense, the author defends a tolerant and plural vision

 of society, under the background of coexistence between Christian, Jewish and Muslim cultures.

Poetry

The Baroque is period characterized by a cultural development unwind due to the Counter-Reformation and the Council of Trent. In many respects, Baroque supposes a  return to the Middle Ages, ceasing the clear Renaissance separation between the natural and the supernatural. The Inquisition watches over any intellectual activity that does not highlight or otherwise avoids the transcendental. Scientific research and rational philosophy practically end in Spain, with Theology taking their place. Superstition supplants religiosity in people's minds and so-called miracles ubiquitously flourish. 

In this context, the Spanish genius, unable to create intellectually in other areas, takes refuge in the aesthetic task, with an impressive list of painters, sculptors, and architects who live in this era. The literature demonstrates the same splendor. When Cervantes was still alive,  other outstanding authors such as Lope de Vega, Góngora, and Quevedo wrote their literary masterpieces. Shortly after this giants of the Spanish literature history died, began his careers the last genius of the Baroque era, Calderón de la Barca and Gracián. Somehow, the limitation in freedom of expression is offset by an increase in artifice and exaggeration in style, subjecting the language of the Renaissance to an intense elaboration that gives rise to the two great movements of the time: the 'culteranismo' and the 'conceptismo'.

Middle Ages

Crónica Najerense

Guía de Perplejos, by Maimónides

Poema del Mio Cid

Batalla de las Navas

Fernando III, King of Castile and León

Libro de Apolonio

Historia Gothica, by Rodrigo Jiménez de Rada

Alfonso X crowned king of Castile, León and Galicia

Alfonso X crowned king

Universidad de Valladolid

Estudios Generales de Alcalá

Libro del Caballero Zifar

Libro de Buen Amor

El conde Lucanor, by don Juan Manuel

Fratricídio de Montiel

Historia universal, by Ibh Jaldún

Rimado de palacio, by López de Ayala

Compromiso de Caspe

Debete on the Talmud

Cancionero de Baena

Corbacho, by Arcipreste de Talavera

Cancionero de palacio

Coplas de Ay, panadera

Isabel la Católica crowned queen

Inquisition is stablished in Castile

Conquest of Granada

The Jews are expeled from Spain

Treaty of Tordesillas

Cancionero, by Juan del Encina

La Celestina, by Fernando de Rojas

De amore, by Andreas Capellanus

Saladino recovers Jerusalen

Third crusade

Harmonia Mundi, by Kepler

Novum Organum, by Bacon

University of Bologna

IV Council of Letrán

Frederic II crowned emperor

Canticle of the sun, by Francis of Assisi

University of Montpellier and Toulouse

Carmina Burana

Roman de la Rose, by Guillarme de Lorris

Chronicon Mundi, by Lucas de Tuy

Seventh crusade

Tractatus, by Étiene de Bourbon

Opus Maius, by Roger Bacon

Tractatus, by Humberto de Romans

Eighth crusade

Roman de la Rose, by Jean de Meun

Marco Polo writes a manuscript about his travels 

Travels of Marco Polo

Divine Comedy, by Dante Alighieri

Poems from Petrarca

One Hundred Years War starts

Black Death

The Decameron, by Boccaccio

Canterbury Tales, by Chaucer

Benedict XIII pope

Council of Constanza 

End of the Western Schism

Council of Basilea

El libro de buen amor (1330 and 1343)

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El libro de buen amor (1330 and 1343)

By Juan, Ruiz (Arcipreste de Hita

Time Period: Middle Ages

Genre: Poetry

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