University of North Carolina Press Reading, Performing, and Imagining the Libro del Arcipreste (North Carolina Studies in the Romance Languages and Literatures): 307

Product Description Reading, Performing, and Imagining the Libro del Arcipreste, examines how reading, writing, and interpretation reside at the core of the cultural history of the Castilian Libro del Arcipreste (often called the Libro de buen amor) from the moment of its creation in the first part of the fourteenth century. The study comprises three sections. In the first, the author situates the Libro within the tradition of Augustinian hermeneutics and exegetics, relating the work to the schools at Toledo and Salamanca. The second part develops hypotheses concerning the performative cues in the Libro, emphasizing the audible/visible aspect of medieval reading and performance. The final section deals with the rewriting and reimagining of the Libro on into modernity. The last chapter of this section presents a troubling case study of the modern American reception of the book and the figure of its putative author, Juan Ruiz. Review "Well-grounded in the secondary scholarship on the LBA, the novelty of this study is Gerli’s insightful teasing out of how medieval and fifteenth-century Spanish scholars and readers most likely read and performed the text, as well as how the work became one of several scandalous threads in a twentieth-century American murder case. Gerli’s study will be of value to scholars of medieval literature, particularly those interested in modern reception of medieval texts."― Bulletin of Spanish Studies, 95.7 About the Author E. Michael Gerli is Commonwealth Professor of Hispanic Studies at the University of Virginia. North Carolina Studies in the Romance Languages and Literatures