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Literary Theory and Medieval Texts: Authority and the Worldly Power of Language in "ElConde Lucanor"Author(s): James MandrellSource: South Central Review, Vol. 8, No. 2 (Summer, 1991), pp. 1-18Published by: The Johns Hopkins University Press on behalf of The South Central ModernLanguage AssociationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3189180Accessed: 28/04/2010 08:13

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Literary Theory and Medieval Texts:

Authority and the Worldly Power of

Language in El Conde Lucanor JAMES MANDRELL Brandeis University

One of the more serious challenges to traditional methodologies em- ployed in the study of medieval Hispanic literature has come from recent developments in literary theory, in particular, theories of textuality. This challenge consists in part of a revision of assumptions regarding the value and importance or even the meaning and nature of literature. But it also is true that recent literary theory oftentimes tends towards the restatement of notions that are by now cliches of medieval scholarship, even as it does so in a new-and distinctly uncomfortable-way.

It might be said that the problem begins with the concept of the text itself. Peter Haidu remarks:

the notion of the "text" turns out to be as problematic as that of its "author" Where we assume fixity in the textual identity of any given poem or narrative, medieval lyrics quite normally are copied and repro- duced with stanzas in various orders, and sometimes even with stanzas omitted. . . . And when at least relative textual fixity is attained with narrative romance (the point is arguable), the conventionality, which makes much of the text interchangeable with equivalent conventional syntagms in other texts of the same type, gravely undercuts our notion of textual individuality and identity.1

Complementing the problematic notion of the text is that of textuality, of which Eugene Vance remarks, 'Among the topics of modern critical debate most vital to medieval thought... is that of textuality, by which one may mean many different things, including the opposition between speech and writing, the social function of writing, the relationship between literacy and consciousness, and the ways in which a text reflects its participation in a larger network or order of texts."2 In fact, Vance's presentation of textuality sounds uncommonly like the phenomenon summed up by Jose Antonio Maravall, that "el libro es un transunto del universo, un microcosmos en el que se refleja en signos, descifrables por el sapiente, cuanto el mundo contiene, mundo que a su vez es como libro en el que los sabios poseen el arte de leer esos signos en que aparece escrito."3 Yet, in its more modern

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guise, the notion of textuality becomes Jacques Derrida's dictum, "I1 n'y a

pas de hors texte."4 There is, however, another twist to this formulation. Not only is reality reduced to textuality, language as such is cut loose from

any stable notion of meaning, since language, in its relation with the external world of matter and sense, is important in and of itself. Within this scheme of things, textuality is opposed to referentiality. The only meaning of language is to be found in the relationship between one word and another, in the play of difference among signifiers. What appears at least

initially to be a restatement of an obvious point turns out to have much more serious consequences.

Some of these consequences are anticipated by practitioners of decon- struction or advocates of broadly poststructuralist hermeneutics. Barbara Johnson comments, "Texts have been seen as commentaries on their own

production or reception through their pervasive thematizations of textual-

ity-the myriad letters, books, tombstones, wills, inscriptions, road signs, maps, birthmarks, tracks, footprints, textiles, tapestries, veils, sheets, brown

stockings, and self-abolishing laces that serve in one way or another as

figures for the text to be deciphered or unraveled or embroidered upon."5 But Edward W. Said offers what could serve as a cautionary footnote to Johnson's somewhat blithe list:

From being a bold interventionary movement across lines of specializa- tion, American literary theory of the late seventies had retreated into the labyrinth of "textuality," dragging along with it the most recent apostles of European revolutionary textuality-Derrida and Foucault-whose trans-Atlantic canonization and domestication they themselves seemed sadly enough to be encouraging. It is not too much to say that American or even European literary theory now explicitly accepts the principle of non-interference, and that its peculiar mode of appropriating its subject matter (to use Althusser's formula) is not to appropriate anything that is worldly, circumstantial, or socially contam- inated. "Textuality" is the somewhat mystical and disinfected subject matter of literary theory.6

If contemporary literary theory has indeed begun to challenge the tradi- tional approaches to medieval Hispanic literature studies, the response thus far has tended to manifest itself in an acceptance of the new terms rather than an interrogation of their use, origin, and function, which is not to say that there are no critics of medieval Hispanic literature working with contem-

porary theory.7 Still, what often results is a series of textual explications from a variety of theoretical stances, explications that are, generally speak- ing, illuminating in terms of literary analysis. But the process of explication rarely passes from the act of reading to a consideration of the real import or

utility of these new means of reading, a point that I wish to examine here. In other words, do these new methodologies or strategies deliver as much as they promise? Do they do anything for us that the individual texts do

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not themselves propose to the astute reader? Finally, does the contempo- rary notion of textuality really express what is at stake in the medieval view of the cosmos?

Although these issues could be taken up in a general discussion, it is, I think, important to consider them in terms of a specific literary text. For a number of reasons, some of which will be explored here, Don Juan Manuel's El Conde Lucanor has stimulated some of the more theoretically sophisticated explications of medieval Spanish literature and is, therefore, a logical liter- ary pretext for this consideration. Moreover, if somewhat more tangen- tially, Don Juan Manuel's book of exempla can be linked to contemporary critical concerns via one of his more ardent readers and a favorite of poststructuralist theorists, Jorge Luis Borges. In his Historia universal de la infamia, Borges includes a short modernized version of Don Juan Manuel's eleventh exemplum, "De'lo que contescio a'vn dean de Sanctiago con don Yllan, el grand maestro de Toledo," along with other tales of "magic," including selections from the Thousand and One Nights. Entitled "El brujo postergado," this same short narrative is included with some slight changes in theAntologfa de la literaturafantdstica (1940) that Borges edited with Silvina Ocampo and Adolfo Bioy Casares, which confirms his fascination with the story. Finally, Michel Foucault begins his Les mots et les choses: Unearchdologie des sciences humaines by citing Borges as the occasion for the book: "Ce livre a son lieu de naissance dans un texte de Borges."8 Poststructuralism's ongo- ing interest in Borges's logical alogisms is not surprising; likewise, Borges's inclusion of "El brujo postergado" in two collections of fictions indicates a text potentially-and actually-susceptible to poststructural literary analy- sis.

In terms of critical considerations of El Conde Lucanor, a major concern involves the problems posed by the variety of narrative levels in the text, levels that range from the third- and first-person narration in the two prologues to the narrative frame of the exempla.9 The specific problem raised by the narrative frame and the structure of the exempla pertains, of course, to the relationship between and among three sorts of figures, which can be distinguished as follows: the Don Juan Manuel who is the author of the verses at the end of each exemplum, the Don Juan Manuel who appears in and narrates the two prologues with which El Conde Lucanor begins, and the Don Juan Manuel who is the real flesh and blood author of the text.

A sophisticated version of the traditional conception of the author and his relation to the text in question is found in Alan Deyermond's recent consideration of the self-conscious elements of Don Juan Manuel's works. Insisting on a dual context for this self-consciousness, Deyermond signals, on the one hand, the importance of real-life experiences and literary tech- niques; on the other, he refuses to opt either for a positivistic approach, for the external hegemony of the real author, or for the reification of the text as an inviolably univocal entity.10 This move on Deyermond's part maintains

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the distinctions between the real and the ideal, the real world and its textual

representation. In so doing, Deyermond opposes one of the tenets of post- structuralist critical strategies. In Jonathan Culler's words, "To deconstruct a discourse is to show how it undermines the philosophy it asserts, or the hierarchical opposition on which it relies, by identifying in the text the rhetorical operations that produce the supposed ground of argument, the

key concept or premise."'l By maintaining the distinction between the real and the ideal, Deyermond falls into the "trap" of the Western philosophical tradition of a system of binary oppositions. To be sure, we could say not

only that Deyermond opposes poststructuralism but that he refuses to

recognize the power of poststructuralist thought, revealing his own blind- ness (another key term from the poststructuralist lexicon).12 But that is

precisely why these questions ought to be addressed in a literary-and not

merely in an abstract or philosophical-context.13 Now, poststructuralist critical methodologies need not be explicitly en-

dorsed for them to make their mark on an interpretation. An early approx- imation of a poststructuralist posture in regard to El Conde Lucanor can be found in Peter N. Dunn's treatment of the divided Don Juan Manuel. For Dunn, Don Juan Manuel appears in the work "as a double persona," in both the prologues and the exempla themselves. Moreover, the "two masks

converge in the Don Juan who wrote the verses at the end of each section. . In this sense, the viessos, because they introduce a level of generality

beyond that proposed by the reporter Don Juan, lead us back to the Don Juan of the prologue, making his book with his mind, with judgment, with words (fiz este libro compuesto de las rds apuestas palabras que yo pude) and with pictures.'14 Essentially, Dunn resolves the "divided" Don Juan Man- uel, the author and his textual embodiment, within the text itself, by confining himself to El Conde Lucanor as it is composed of prologues and

exempla. It is, of course, reasonable to assert that an author is present only as a function of a literary text, is identifiable as an author only in relation to what he has written and as this text reflects him, or, indeed, creates the

impression of an authorial reflection. Yet Dunn is up to something else, though it takes a later critic to develop-and to depart from-Dunn's

position. At first blush, Marta Ana Diz's view of El Conde Lucanor is similar to that

of Dunn. However, in a radical departure from Dunn's position, Diz asserts that the verses concluding each exemplum are not spoken by the narrative voice or by Don Juan Manuel or, indeed, by any voice at all. The verses function as an enunciation of themselves "porque, en rigor, son su propia voz, se dicen a si mismos. Se trata de una escritura peculiar, sin mas existencia en el ambito de lo realizable que la de estos amagos de discurso

que no son discursos porque nadie los enuncia.'15 For Diz, the dialogue between Patronio and the Conde Lucanor closes in upon itself, in part because Patronio and the Count are merely facets of the same personality, which is to say, Patronio, the counselor, is the Conde Lucanor's wisdom.

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This interiority of the narrative corresponds to the interior wisdom, the self-knowledge of every individual; the narrative structure duplicates itself in a psychological sense in the dialogue. According to Diz, and in a move that places her squarely if not explicitly in the poststructuralist camp, this process forms a kind of literary paradox, since the book is, "al mismo tiempo, el sitio de lo diferente y de lo igual, de la distancia y de la uni6n, de lo diverso y de lo uno" (34). Not even the reader is exempt from this process of interiorization in Diz's schema. As the five books of El Conde Lucanor draw to a close, "el lector de Patronio llega al quinto libro, donde la lectura de ese credo constituye una experiencia inquietante, pues puede ir anticipando las palabras de esa oraci6n que sabe de memoria y tiene, por momentos, la sensaci6n de que es el mismo quien de algun modo esta dictando el texto que lee. . . . Pero es, sobre todo, la palabra viva, oral y compartida, que inscribe a quien la pronuncia en una historia colectiva e intima a la vez" (176). The narrator, the author, the reader, and the world all become func- tions of the text, or, more to the point, all become texts in and of themselves. In fact, both Dunn and Diz argue for a hierarchized polysemy in relation to El Conde Lucanor, Dunn claiming, "Whatever brilliance they [the exempla] may have is contributory to their function, which is to represent the variety and openness of the world, and to present this world to a mind which is capable of reflecting on it" (53), and Diz asserting, "En los ejemplos de Patronio hay personajes que leen bien; hay otros que leen mal; hay, sobre todo, quienes no leen, porque no perciben la realidad como texto que necesite inter- pretaci6n" (173).

Like Derrida's affirmation of the textuality or textualization of the real world, the reduction of El Conde Lucanor to an enclosed and unified textual entity-which is not to say interpretive field16-corresponds in large part to medieval notions of literature and the world. But, as Jesse M. Gellrich observes in an extensive comparison of the proximity of the two theoretical stances, the one medieval, the other contemporary:

Although these possibilities may be intriguing, they should be pursued only in full appreciation of the extent to which signs and signification remained committed to a larger intellectual preoccupation with stabi- lizing the sign, moving it out of the realm of potential arbitrariness, and tracing the utterance back to a fixed origin, such as the primal Word Spoken by God the Father17

In other words, the material world always refers to the realm of the ideal. It is in this perspective misguided to insist on the radical or absolute closure of a medieval text. Whether or not a work adheres completely to the theological notion of the ideal referentiality of every text, there is a necessary correlation between the real world and the ideal as it is mediated by the text. Thus, in terms of El Conde Lucanor, the resolution or textualization of Don Juan Manuel-and the reader-cannot be as total or complete as either Dunn or Diz would appear to suggest. But how are we to resolve the

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distinctions between the "real" author and his textual equivalent? between the first- and third-person narrative voices in the text? between the various avatars of the narrator? between the text and the material world, literature and reality?

Clearly, questions as large and as vexing as these can only be answered in the most speculative fashion. Yet, by considering these issues in terms of one literary text and by drawing on previous scholarship pertaining to El Conde Lucanor, I hope to be able to show one way they might be addressed. Specifically, I shall discuss first the way in which the play of paradox, of similarity and difference, at work throughout Don Juan Manuel's "libro de enxienplos" is a strategic device that serves to exemplify the utility of the book in particular and literature in general; second, how the different narrative registers in the text correspond to differing conceptions and presentations of authorial roles; and, finally, how the emphasis on the importance of reading in current critical treatments of El Conde Lucanor is misplaced in that it slights the medium of production, language. It is my contention, broadly speaking, that Don Juan Manuel uses concrete situa- tions in the exempla not merely as an end to resolving worldly problems, but as a demonstration of the power of language in the creation of narrative and worldly authority. Indeed, one of the primary lessons of Don Juan Manuel's book is that language is only of importance-and then of crucial importance-as it works in the world. Or, as Patronio makes abundantly clear in the fiftieth exemplum, it is necessary to pay attention to "amas las carreras, que son lo de Dios et del mundo," which is to say, to pay attention to the real world in which man must act as well as the ideal realm of Christian truth.l8

The specular play of similarity among the different levels of the narration is nowhere more obvious in El Conde Lucanor than in the first exemplum of the first part, "De lo que contes&io a vn rey con vn su priuado."19 In this episode the Conde Lucanor asks his adviser, Patronio, about a tricky situa- tion with a friend who is a "muy grande omne." Without introducing any extraneous details, the narrator begins this and every one of the exempla directly, leaving aside any gesture that would serve to establish a general scenario: "Acaes&io vna vez que el conde Lucanor estaua fablando en su

poridat con Patronio, su consegero, et dixol: -Patronio, a'mi acaesqio que vn muy grande omne et mucho onrado, et muy poderoso, et que da a'en- tender que es ya quanto mio amigo, que me dixo pocos dias ha, en muy grant poridat, que por algunas cosas quel acaescieran, que era su voluntad de'se

partir desta tierra et non tornar a'ella en ninguna manera" (33). Linking the

causality of the literal situation of the exemplum with that of the Conde's own life ("Acaes;io vna vez . . . . a mi acaessio . . . algunas cosas quel acaessieran"; "en su poridat ... en muy grant poridat"), the narrator enters immediately into the story and turns the narrative function over to Patronio, just as, in the two prologues, the narrative voice shifts from the third- to the first-person.

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One salient aspect of these varying levels of the narration is the way in which Patronio's story recapitulates the prefatory frame as well as antici- pates the dynamics of personal relationships. The situation in which the Count finds himself and about which he seeks advice from his counselor is paralleled by Patronio's story of a man who has a similar problem and who turns for counsel to a wise prisoner in his household. The recommendations of the "catiuo" are, of course, good, and Patronio's protagonist acts upon them, just as the Conde Lucanor acts upon the advice found in the story: "El conde se fallo por bien aconsejado del consejo de Patronio, su consejero, et fizo lo commo el le consejara, et fallose ende bien" (37). In like fashion, Don Juan Manuel, seeing how good the story and the advice it contained were, includes it in his book. There are, then, as Alberto V'arvaro quite rightly observes, three distinct moments that come together into one com- mon text of didactic intent, one moment particular to the story contained in each exemplum, another corresponding to the action between the Count and Patronio, and yet another in which the narrator has Don Juan Manuel make his appearance as the author. As Varvaro sees it, each one of these moments moves the didactic material to a greater level of generalization as first the characters within Patronio's story, then the Count, and finally Don Juan Manuel, see the practical nature of the counselor's wisdom.20

The duplications apparent in the organization and play of narrative voices are also at work in the arrangement of the fictional material. Here, internal duplications of the situations reveal the inherent similarity of all men and all human situations, confirming the validity of a book of exempla in its essential utility. Moreover, there are semantic repetitions in this first exemplum that tend both to unify the narration itself and to tie this material to the prologues. In addition to the recurrence of the words "acaesqer" and "poridat" in the opening paragraphs of the first episode, two other words receive special emphasis, "aconsejar" (and its variants "consejo" and "con- sejero") and "manera."

These repetitions are important not only for the formal density that they lend to the text but also for the meanings that, slowly but surely, they create, meanings that have to do with action and authority. The passage-cited previously-in which the Conde Lucanor receives and tests Patronio's advice stresses the acts of giving and acting upon counsel. No less than four times in that single sentence does the word "consejo" in its various forms occur; and in the entire exemplum, the word and its variants appear another six times. The cumulative effect of this constant reference to counsel-to the act of giving advice to an individual as well as to the act of taking advice from someone-is to foreground in the play or economy of worldly author- ity and action the necessary reliance of individuals on the opinions, ideas, and experiences of others. The situation of the Conde Lucanor with respect to Patronio is precisely the situation of the reader with respect to the book El Conde Lucanor and, metonymically, to its author. At every level of the literary text, from fictional character to author to reader, the ontological

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status of the individual is the same: he is in search of some element of truth that will guide him through the complexities of human relationships in the world.21

The notion of practical experience as it is elaborated in the use of counsel is found as well in the many references to the "manera," the means or manner in which something was or is to be done: "Et de que vieron que por otra manera non pudieron acabar lo que querian fazer" (34); and the word is used in this way in the first episode another six times (35, 36, 39). But "manera" also means "reason," as in the following: "Et aquellos otros que buscauan mal a aquel su priuado dixieron le vna manera muy engannosa en commo podria prouar que era verdat. . . . Et que, por aquella manera, pensaua que le avriaDios merged del. . . . Quando el priuado del reyesto le oyo dezir, estranno gelo mucho, deziendol muchas maneras por que'lo non deuia fazer . . . et asi, por esta manera, tenia que dexaua recabdo en toda su fazienda" (34-35; my emphasis). The result of the dual denotative value of "manera" is the linking of reason with means, of justification with action. The inherent ambiguity in the notion of right-action, of taking the appro- priate decision, becomes tied to the process by which an individual arrives at that decision, meaning that the validity of an action is determined a priori. Thus, because Don Juan Manuel realizes that "estos exienplos eran muy buenos" not from his own experience but from those experiences of other fictional personages, and because he "fizo los escribir en este libro" (37), the "maneras" of his didacticism, both the reason and the means of his social message, are one and the same. The overdetermination of the word "manera" is not, however, confined to the first exemplum alone. In the second of the two prologues, the word is used seven times; in six instances it clearly refers to the means or manner in which something is done and in four of these cases the use is unambiguous. By contrast, in the sixth and seventh cases, the normative meaning of "manera" is combined in the same sentence with a more unusual use of the word. Introducing the fiction proper, Don Juan Manuel says in the second prologue, "Et pues el prologo es acabado, de aqui adelante comen~are la manera del libro, en manera de un grand sennor que fablaua con vn su consegero" (29). Here, the substance of the book, "la manera del libro," joins with the means of telling the story, just as the tangible reason for right-action was at one and the same time the means of the action itself. Tying the distinct levels of the narrative together, the word "manera" as it appears in the second prologue and the first

exemplum shows how what is on the one hand the means to an end for Patronio, or even a reason, becomes, for Don Juan Manuel, on the other, the matter itself, the stuff of his book.

Thus, the play of similarity and difference as it appears in the prologues and first exemplum adumbrates the nature of exemplary literature. Apart from the many manifest differences in human nature and worldly aspira- tion, it is possible to divine a consistency and constancy that make of man a comprehensible actor in the drama of the material world and that, in turn,

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make El Conde Lucanor applicable to all situations (27-28). This play of similarity and difference is evident at several levels. In terms of semantics, the means of representation-the "maneras" that are at one and the same time reason and action as well as substance-exemplify the possibility of knowing that which is complex, the real world, by portraying it in a manner that is, of necessity, simple and straightforward, the book. In regard to the characters in the various exempla, despite the fact that they are endowed with human attributes, which would tend to make of them individuals, they are nonetheless universals as well, representative of all men. Finally, at the level of narrative organization, the diegetic and situational repetitions tend towards the commonality of everyday existence. It is the nature of El Conde Lucanor to extend outwards in an increasingly generalized way and not to close in upon itself, either as a function of its being read or of its being the embodiment of the author who created the fiction and the role that he plays.

Not surprisingly, Don Juan Manuel's manipulation of the narrative voice and the nature of authorial presence have much to do with medieval theories of authorship. As Alistair Minnis points out in his discussion of St Bonaventure and the nature of authorship, "God is the source of all auctoritas; after Him comes the human auctor who is responsible for what is actually said in a given text, and finally there is the person who compiles the sayings of the human auctor."22 According to St. Bonaventure, there is the scribe, who "writes the materials of others, adding or changing nothing"; the compiler, who "writes the materials of others, adding, but nothing of his own"; the commentator, who "writes both the materials of other men, and of his own, but the materials of others are the principal materials, and his own annexed for the purpose of clarifying them"; and there is the author, who "writes both his own materials and those of others, but his own as the principal materials, and the materials of others annexed for the purpose of confirming his own" (Minnis 94). For Bonaventure, then, writing in and of itself does not constitute authorship. Indeed, the actual writing of a work, the writing out, need not be done by the author, but rather, can easily be delegated to a scribe.

Clearly, Don Juan Manuel is aware of these distinctions and of his rela- tionship as an author to divine authority. To begin once again with the prologues, Don Juan Manuel opens his book by establishing an implicit comparison between the work of the author and of God. The first prologue begins in this way: "Este libro fizo don Iohan, fijo del muy noble infante don Manuel. . . . Et seria marauilla si de qual quier cosa que acaezca a'qual quier omne, non fallare en este libro su semejan5a que acaes&io a otro" (23). The second prologue opens by acknowledging, appropriately enough, the supreme author, God: "En'el nonbre de Dios: amen. Entre muchas cosas estrannas et marabillosas que nuestro sennor Dios fizo, touo por bien de fazer vna muy marabillosa: esta es que de quantos omnes en'el mundo son, non a vno que semeje a otro en'la cara" (27). Then Don Juan Manuel introduces himself and his intent into text: "Por ende, yo, don Iohan, fijo

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del infante don Manuel, adelantado mayor de'la frontera et del regno de Mursia, fiz este libro conpuesto de'las mas apuestas palabras que yo pude" (28). If, in the first prologue, what Don Juan Manuel did is paramount, and, in the second, the opening paragraphs treat that which "nuestro sennor Dios fizo," then the following paragraphs, in which the author presents what he has done, are in the manner of a translation of the material substance of this world into the textual substance of El Conde Lucanor. The prologues move towards one specific thing, the linking of Don Juan Manuel with God.

In the prologues, then, Dios is to be identified as the author of the world and Don Juan Manuel as his terrestrial agent. Furthermore, if Don Juan Manuel has succeeded in representing the sum total of human actions, then he has, indeed, succeeded in creating a textual realm equivalent to the real world created by "Dios." In so doing he has therefore empowered himself with a transcendent force, one that is, perhaps, characteristic of an author, but one, in this case, intended to allow him to shape not only the events of the fiction but of the real world, too. Just as Patronio acknowledges the wisdom of the Conde Lucanor, Don Juan Manuel acknowledges God as the maker of all, even as he does so in the text and context of that which he himself has made.23

The hegemony of authorial remove continues into the exempla them- selves, in which the primary narrator or story-teller appears to be Patronio; and it is here that the distinctions that seem so obvious begin to break down. As Dunn and Diz note, Don Juan Manuel is reintroduced into the conclud- ing paragraphs of each exemplum and what was initially to seem real becomes part of the fiction proper. The inclusion of Don Juan Manuel at this point not only brings into the body of the fiction the putative author, it also details the authorial process by which El Conde Lucanor was com- posed. Don Juan Manuel takes advantage of the exemplarity of the tales of Patronio and includes them in his book, which means that, according to St. Bonaventure's formulation, Don Juan Manuel is not precisely an author, since the real point at which he writes or creates-as opposed to command-

ing something be written-is when he reduces the moral to poetic form. In the manner of an inverse gloss, in which verse explicates a passage of prose, El Conde Lucanor shows Don Juan Manuel not as an author or a compiler or even merely a scribe, but, rather, as a kind of "commentator," as Ian Mac- Pherson rightly points out in the context of the Libro de las armas: "Don Juan dares to compare his creative process with that of medieval commentators on the scriptures, who produce a work of synthesis from multiple sources."24 In other words, the nature of the authorial intent asserted in the prologues is here qualified by the shape and disposition of the narrative itself.

There is obviously something peculiar taking place in this text with

respect to the notion of authorship, and it has to do, I believe, with the issue of similarity and difference with which we began, since the distinctions maintained at the beginning of El Conde Lucanor have begun to break down

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in the first exemplum. With the appearance of differing avatars of the narrative and authorial functions, the narrator has begun to narrate Don Juan Manuel into being, making of the author a literary character compara- ble to Patronio and the Conde Lucanor. Yet there is another distinction to be made when we consider the play of third- and first-person narrations, one between the author and the authorial functions as they appear in El Conde Lucanor. If the effect of this switch in narrative voice is to cast the author as a character in his own fiction, then it seems as if the controlling narrative hand were authoring the putative author of the text. Indeed, at the conclusion of the fiftieth exemplum, it is Patronio who announces the end of the first book of El Conde Lucanor: "Et por ende, vos digo que'lo vno por esto, et lo al por el trabajo que he tomado en'las otras respuestas que vos di, que vos non quiero mas responder a otras preguntas que vos

fagades, que en'este enxienplo et en otro que se sigue adelante deste vos quiero fazer fin a'este libro" (422).

The distinctions so carefully delineated continue to break down and to reorganize in the subsequent four parts of the work when Don Juan Manuel appears as the first-person narrator of the second part, the "razonamiento que faze don Juan por amor de don Jaime, sennor de Xerica" (439), and then reintroduces Patronio and the Conde Lucanor and their conversations:

Et la manera del I libro es que Patronio fabla con el Conde Lucanor segund adelante veredes.

Razonamiento quefaze Patronio al conde de muy buenos exemplos.

-Sennor conde Lucanor-dixo Patronio-, yo vos fable fasta agora lo mas declarada mente que yo pude, et por que se que'lo queredes, fablar vos he daqui adelante essa misma manera, mas por essa que en'el otro libro ante deste.

Et pues el otro es acabado, este libro comienqa assi: (441-42)

Note, first, the similarity between the narrative gesture with which the Count and Patronio are introduced in this book and the way the first book begins; note also the change in the order of the presentation of master and servant, which marks a subtle change in the relationship between the two individuals. Furthermore, Patronio is acutely aware of the other book in which he figures as a character and he demonstrates this familiarity by using one of the words that we discussed previously, "manera," making it appear as if he were now the author of "este libro," especially since the second book of El Conde Lucanor seems to have two beginnings ("Et la manera del libro es que Patronio fabla . . . "; "Et pues el otro es acabado, este libro comiensa assi"). The authority in the first book, Don Juan Manuel, complies with the wishes of Don Jaime; and Patronio, clearly paternal in his role as counselor, becomes explicitly so in the second book, in which he brings the text into being.

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This tendency towards presenting Patronio in the guise of the authorial function is confirmed in the third book; and it carries over into the fourth book as well as into the fifth, where El Conde Lucanor is brought to a close with these words:

Agora, sennor conde Lucanor, demas de'los enxienplos et prouerbios que son en este libro, vos he dicho assaz a'mi cuydar para poder guardar el alma et avn el cuerpo et la onra et la fazienda et el estado, et, loado a'Dios, segund el mio flaco entendimiento, tengo que vos he complido et acabado todo lo que vos dixe.

Et pues assi es, en esto fago fin a este libro. Et I acabolo don Iohan en Salmeron, lunes, XII dias de

junio, era de mil et CCC et LXX et tres annos. (491)

What began as an invocation of God and then continued with the presen- tation of Don Juan Manuel, his purpose and intention in writing the book, finds its closure in this final third-person reference to the Count, which

corresponds, in a formal sense, to the play of third- and first-person dis- course in the prologues. Yet, during the course of the many pages of the text, Patronio, counselor to the Conde Lucanor-and implicitly to Don Juan Manuel and to us-has been filling the role of first-person narrator to such an extent that, by the end of the book, we must wonder who has written- has authored-the book that we hold.

What has happened is that Don Juan Manuel has manipulated the narra- tive voice in such a way that he has successfully disclosed the complexities underlying the concept of authorial presence and authority. Constantly shifting and reorganizing the various matrices of authority-in terms of the dialectic of aconsejado-consejero, master-servant, as well as in terms of narra- tive voice and authorial function-, the author makes such sorts of distinct

categories as those in Bonaventure's explanation of authorship appear vague and distorted, because, in the course of El Conde Lucanor, the roles are filled at one time or another by one character or another. But again, the

important point to grasp here is that, among the porous author-narrator- character relationships, the several differences reveal the similarity of their

aspirations: the uniform quest of man searching for the truth of this world, the ways of access into another.

This is, of course, a standard medieval concern. Don Juan Manuel openly appeals to the reader to appreciate the manifest truth of his words, despite any inherent lapses that might be encountered, by invoking the deity:

Et Dios . . . quiera que'los que este libro leyeren . . . . [et] lo que y fallaren que non es tan bien dicho, non pongan la culpa a'la mi

entenqion, mas pongan la a'la mengua del mio entendimiento. Et si

alguna cosa fallaren bien dicha o aprouechosa, gradescan lo a'Dios, ca el es aquel por quien todos los buenos dichos et fechos se dizen et se fazen. (28)

In the final moments of the fifth book, Don Juan Manuel modestly mentions

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"la mengua del mio entendimiento," which corresponds to the way that Patronio excuses himself before his master, the Count, citing "el mio flaco entendimiento" and which serves to unify the entire text. Yet, in the last analysis, Don Juan Manuel cedes the authorship and control of his text to another who is even more powerful than he is; and in so doing he breaks down the many relationships between and among authors and narrators by inscribing himself in his work for the greater glory and good of his Master and Maker.

The fact that Don Juan Manuel's attempt to honor God is carried out in linguistic form leads us back to a central concern in El Conde Lucanor and in

contemporary literary theory, the power of language and its relationship to truth, which is nowhere more obvious than in the most famous of Don Juan Manuel's exempla, the eleventh, "De'lo que contescio a'vn dean de Sanc- tiago con don Yllan, el grand maestro de Toledo." Based on a scenario of what will be designated in the twenty-sixth exemplum as a "mentira senziella" (211), this exemplum details a type of contractual obligation between the dean de Sanctiago and Don Yllan, an expert in the art of

necromancy. At least initially it appears as if, in the opposition of the "dark" arts to religious orthodoxy, Don Yllan were the one most likely to make and in turn to fail to keep a promise. Yet, as the sorcerer's magic-and the narrator's artistry-proves time and again, it is the Dean who, in using speech to his own end, reneges on his obligations to "el grand maestro de Toledo." Because the Dean continually defers and then refuses outright to pass on to Don Yllan any benefit that would accrue to him in the future, the student shows himself to be a cheat. The moral of this story is not unex- pected: "Al que mucho ayudares et non te lo conosqiere, / menos ayuda abras del desque en grand onra subiere" (102).

The genius in this exemplum rests, first, with Don Yllan, who, by means of his necromancy contrives to demonstrate not once but at least four times the extent of the Dean's ingratitude, and, second, with the narrator, who, like the "maestro" who dupes his student, tricks the reader by means of the strict diegesis of his narrative presentation. What in the case of Don Yllan is sorcery, is, in the narrator's case, nothing less than the power of speech, its ability to create specific situations and then to undo them, as in the case of the partridges that are awaiting the spit. Using the partridges-a com- mon symbol for deceit-as an indication of the present moment, the narra- tor creates a temporal parenthesis into which he inserts the proof of the Dean's potential lack of gratitude. The demonstration foregrounds Don Yllan; but it also demonstrates the very real power of language, not only at the levels of signification and of contractual obligations or in the blunt assertion of truth or even in the spinning of falsehoods, but also as the contrivance of narrative situations in which truth is first revealed and then upheld. As understood in El Conde Lucanor, language is not, therefore, absolute, either good or bad, transparent or opaque, true or false. Because these categories depend on the interest and intent of the speaker, language

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may be any of those things. Yet language is only enduring when it is linked to truth in the context of individual action, which in turn has a bearing on how we understand Don Juan Manuel and his book.

Of the ends to which language might be put, of right-action, Patronio says in the fifth book of El Conde Lucanor that "Fazer omne buena obra es toda cosa que omne faze por Dios, mas es mester que se faga bien, et esto es que se faga a buena entencion, non por vana gloria, nin por ypocresia, nin por otra entension, sinon sola mente por seruicio de Dios; otrosi, que lo faga por escogimiento" (480). According to Patronio, intention is an integral part of all actions and enters-or ought to enter-into considerations of the everyday world. This formulation is quite close to Aristotle's in the Nico- machean Ethics, where he discusses various virtues, their nature and form:

acts done in conformity with the virtues are not done justly or temper- ately if they themselves are of a certain sort, but only if the agent also is in a certain state of mind when he does them: first he must act with knowledge; secondly he must deliberately choose the act, and choose it for its own sake; and thirdly the act must spring from a fixed and permanent disposition of character. . . . It is correct therefore to say that a man becomes just by doing just actions and temperate by doing temperate actions; and no one can have the remotest chance of becom- ing good without doing them.25

In terms of the exempla and intention, it is clear that, at least in linguistic terms, lies and falsehoods do not fulfill the letter of intent necessary of good deeds. Beyond this, it is also clear that good acts and intentions are part and parcel of the individual, the real world, and the way that the individual conducts himself in the world. For example, in the fortieth exemplum, the will of the devil is joined to the supposed good works of a "senescal de Carcaxona." It turns out that the senescal provided for every contingency in terms of his life and salvation. But, as a "muger demoniada" points out after the senescal's death and supposed salvation, the deceased had acted in bad faith. His intention was not to do good, regardless of the state of his soul; he intended that good works be performed for the good of his soul

after his death, meaning that, if he should have lived, no good works would have been done. Thus, good works are intimately linked to the intention of the individual, such that the good deeds in and of themselves are not

enough if the intention behind them was otherwise. Although a necessary part of every action, intent, even if good, must be scrutinized closely, since intent is of importance in the world as a means of gaining entrance into the other, ideal world, and not vice versa.

The power of good works, their linguistic and personal resonance, is at stake in the next exemplum as well, XLI, "De'lo que contescio a'vn rey de Cordoua quel dizian Alhaquem." Here it is the timeless nature of good acts, their capacity to engender and to perpetuate the reputation of an individual

through all time: "el bien nunca muere," because, as Patronio tells the

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Count, "por fuerqa las gentes avran de loar los vuestros buenos fechos" (326). Equally important is the fact that appearances, and not merely inten- tions and deeds, can give rise to one's reputation. As the philosopher learns in Exenplo XLVI, people are all too quick to attribute the worst to any action, despite the intent with which it was carried out. This has to do yet again with intent and outcome, the means and the end to which they are put, for, "en'la buena ventura et en'la desauentura contesse assi: a'las vegadas es fallada et buscada, et algunas vegadas es fallada et non buscada" (381). The linguistic result of the forty-sixth exemplum is the connection of action and intent-or acting within the confines of the temporal nature of the real world-with eternal afterlife, in the realm of Dios and in the real world by means of "fama."

The role that language plays in engendering and perpetuating the repu- tation of an individual is, therefore, twofold. On the one hand, there is the reputation that will be passed from person to person, mouth to mouth, as in the case of the king of C6rdoba, Alhaquem. On the other, there is the text that is El Conde Lucanor and the ways that this text can engender and embody the renown of its author, Don Juan Manuel. It is not erroneous to consider the document both a work of exemplary literature and a work that exempli- fies the exemplarity of its author. In this way, El Conde Lucanor is indeed a translation of the world, is a textual rendering or even a textualization of the real world. Yet it nevertheless has force in the real world, the world of which it is a part. There is, then, an ideal aspect to the book, perhaps to the very notion of any book, since exemplary literature speaks to the ideal condition as a means of gaining access to the realm of the ideal. But there is also a worldly point to the book and to literature, since the intent of El Conde Lucanor is to engender human action in the material world, is to create the possibility of right-action, positive intent, and enduring reputation, for the author as well as for the individual.

In this way, the author is a dual entity, a real as well as an ideal figure. Moreover, the two aspects of the author are not, finally reducible to any neat formulation of the ideal author as he is represented in the text, to the real author, or to the authorial function. Rather, the reputation of Don Juan Manuel as an author indicates that he is all of these things. And his genius in the creation of El Conde Lucanor is the fact that he shows precisely the variety and extent of those roles even as he creates for himself thefiction of an ideal authority. If the progression of the text and the roles of the fictional Count and Patronio tend towards the effacement of Don Juan Manuel's authorial presence, they also attest to his rigorous conception of the power of language and literature as well as the orthodoxy of his authorial relation- ship with respect to the supreme Author, present inside and outside all temporal words and deeds, Dios. In this sense, Don Juan Manuel evinces an understanding of the nature of literature and the world that is at least equal to, if not greater than, that of his present-day critics. In El Conde Lucanor he has both demonstrated a knowledge of the issues addressed by

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the concept of textuality and provided an answer to those issues. The questions of textuality as raised by contemporary theoreticians of

literature are neither insignificant nor specious. Indeed, the concept of

textuality is germane to discussions of literary texts and of profound im-

portance to an understanding of the role played by literature in the real world. Yet it is ultimately a misguided type of blindness, if you will, merely to apply theory to a text without considering the theory of reading pro- posed by the text itself. That is, medieval texts oftentimes anticipate a

process of reading that would possibly reduce literature to the level of sheer

textuality and they then respond to that possibility by insisting on the

necessarily worldly aspects of language, intent, and, finally, meaning. Time and again the narrative style and structure of El Conde Lucanor

demonstrate a profound awareness of the porousness and contingency of Don Juan Manuel's worldly authority as well as his dependence in a narrative sense on those who will represent the author's voice and cause. There is, thus, nothing aporetic in Don Juan Manuel's text, despite the

specularity of the narrative. Since everything in the fourteenth-century world for which El Conde Lucanor was written refers upward in the hierar- chical chain of being toward that which is ineffable and all-powerful, the book cannot exist as an enclosed, hermetic entity. Likewise, it cannot be viewed as just one more example of the textualization of the world. Without the real world, the material world of which Don Juan Manuel was a part, there would have been no need for a book of exempla. It is only when the real and the ideal are mediated by the book that worldly and ideal authority come together. That both depend on a narrative authority to effect this union becomes, of course, problematic later, as the power of language to create and to undo is made more apparent, for instance, in Diego de San Pedro's Cdrcel de Amor, in the Lazarillo de Tormes, and, of course, in the texts of Cervantes. However, it must have been reassuring, even as the world of

fourteenth-century Spain was beginning to change, to think in terms of the

stability and fixity of meaning-worldly, literary, ideal-, in the power of

language, and in the authority of (divine) authorship.

NOTES

An earlier-and much different-version of this paper was presented to the Medieval

Hispanic Research Seminar at Westfield College, University of London. I am grateful to Alan

Deyermond both for his invitation to speak at the Seminar and for his incisive comments on

my work. I should also like to thank Barry Taylor, Julian Weiss, and Barbara Kurtz for their comments and suggestions.

1 "Making it (New) in the Middle Ages-Towards a Problematics of Alterity," Diacritics 4

(1974): 3. 2 "Medievalisms and Models of Textuality," Diacritics 15 (1985): 55. 3 Estudios de historia del pensamiento espaiol, 3rd ed. (Madrid: Cultura Hispanica, 1983) 233. 4

Of Grammatology, trans. Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1974)

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158. 5 A World of Difference (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1987) 18. 6 The World, the Text, and the Critic (Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1983) 3. 7 On the contrary. A number of critics work openly with literary theory, and Cesareo Bandera

has intentionally broached the topic of medieval literature and modern theory as well as the lessons each might learn from the other ("De la apertura del Libro de Juan Ruiz a Derrida y vicecersa," Dispositio 2 [1977]: 54-66). But there remains a certain degree of controversy over the wisdom of such methodological rapprochements. In this regard see Haidu, "Making It"; Eugene Vance, "Medievalisms," and "The Modernity of the Middle Ages in the Future, Romanic Review 64 (1973): 140-51; and Hans Robert Jauss "The Alterity and Modernity of Medieval Literature," New Literary History 10 (1979): 181-230. All of these deal in large part, explicitly or implicitly, with Paul Zumthor's monumental Essai de po6tique medievale (Paris: Seuil, 1972).

8 Les mots et les choses: Une archeologie des sciences humaines, Bibliotheque des Sciences Humaines (Paris: Gallimard, 1966) 7.

9 There has been some controversy over the two prologues with which most editions of El Conde Lucanor begin. For a conservative approach to the question, see Alberto Blecua, La transmisi6n textual deEl Conde Lucanor (Barcelona: Universidad Aut6noma de Barcelona, 1980). For an overview of the criticism and a sensitive reading of the text, see Reinaldo Ayerbe-Chaux, "Don Juan Manuel y la conciencia de su propia autoria," La Cor6nica 10 (1982): 186-90.

10 See Deyermond's Estudio preliminar to Ayerbe-Chaux's modernized edition of the Libro del Conde Lucanor (Madrid: Alhambra, 1985), especially 24-26.

11 On Deconstruction: Theory and Criticism after Structuralism (Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1985) 86. 12 See Paul de Man's extended meditation on misreading in contemporary criticism, where

he remarks that, "Since interpretation is nothing but the possibility of error, by claiming that a certain degree of blindness is part of the specificity of all literature we also reaffirm the absolute dependence of the interpretation on the text and of the text on the interpretation" (Blindness and Insight: Essays in the Rhetoric of Contemporary Criticism [New York: Oxford UP, 1971] 141). The notions of blindness and misreading are also central to the theory of influence propounded by Harold Bloom, most notably in TheAnxiety of Influence: A Theory of Poetry (New York: Oxford UP, 1973).

13 Derrida and de Man have both sought to exploit the inherently figurative nature of language as a means of revealing the essentially artificial boundaries between philosophical and literary discourse. See, for example, Derrida's "The Supplement of Copula: Philosophy Before Linguistics," Textual Strategies: Perspectives in Post-Structuralist Criticism, ed. Josue V. Harari (Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1979) 82-120, and "White Mythology: Metaphor in the Text of Philosophy," New Literary History 6 (1974): 5-74 (both of which are included in Margins of Philosophy, trans. Alan Bass [Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1982] 175-205 and 207-71, respectively) and de Man's "Nietzsche's Theory of Rhetoric," Symposium 28 (1974): 33-51, and 'Action and Identity in Nietzsche," Yale French Studies 52 (1975): 16-30 (rpt. in Allegories of Reading: Figural Language in Rousseau, Nietzsche, Rilke, and Proust [New Haven: Yale UP, 1979] as "Rhetoric of Tropes [Nietzsche]," 103-18, and as "Rhetoric of Persuasion [Nietzsche]," 119-31, respectively). In this regard, see as well John Searle's predictably scathing but nevertheless astute overview of deconstruction's philosophical excesses and blunders in his review of Culler's On Deconstruc- tion, "The World Turned Upside Down," The New York Review of Books 27 October 1983. One suspects that much of Searle's animus on this particular occasion can be traced back to his exchange with Derrida in the pages of Glyph, specifically Derrida's "Signature Event Context," Glyph 1 (1977): 172-97 (also rpt. in Margins of Philosophy 307-30), Searle's "Reiterating the Differences: A Reply to Derrida," Glyph 2(1977): 198-208, and Derrida's "Limited Inc abc ... " Glyph 2 (1977): 162-245. See also Rodolphe Gasche's brilliant discussion of Derrida's relation- ship to the philosophical tradition in The Tain of the Mirror: Derrida and the Philosophy of Reflection (Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1986).

14 "The Structures of Didacticism: Private Myths and Public Fictions," Juan Manuel Studies, ed. Ian MacPherson (London: Tamesis, 1977) 66. Further references will be given in the text.

1Patronio y Lucanor: La lectura inteligente "en el tiempo que es turbio, " Scripta Humanistica 2

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(Potomac: Scripta Humanistica, 1984) 33. Further references will be given in the text. 16 Most recently Anibal A. Biglieri has considered El Conde Lucanor in the light of recent

literary theory and recent explications in Hacia una poetica del relato diddctico: Ocho estudios sobre El Conde Lucanor, North Carolina Studies in the Romance Languages and Literatures 233 (Chapel Hill: Romance Languages, U of North Carolina, 1988). He concludes that "una de las afirmaciones mas polemicas de estos ocho estudios y que, con toda seguridad, no dejara de ser

impugnada, es la de haberse insistido tanto en considerar El Conde Lucanor como una colecci6n de relatos mas o menos 'cerrados'" (214). Here Biglieri claims that Don Juan Manuel's exempla are open to one interpretation and not a variety of different meanings. This gives an idea of how difficult it is to use poststructuralist and deconstructive critical tools, since the conse-

quences of one theoretical posture often entail other positions that must be either embraced as

part and parcel of the model or rejected as inappropriate. Thus, Biglieri notes in his discussion of mise en abyme, "se ha de seguir en lo esencial el modelo de Lucien Dallenbach, el mas completo y sistematico hasta la fecha, ajustandolo, eso sf, a las necesidades especificas del relato de Don Juan Manuel" (162).

17The Idea of the Book in the MiddleAges: Language Theory, Mythology, and Fiction (Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1985) 21.

18 Don Juan Manuel, El Conde Lucanor, ed. Jose Manuel Blecua, Obras completas, 2 vols.

(Madrid: Gredos, 1982-1983) 2:414. All citations are from this edition and will be given by page number.

19 The structural importance of this exemplum has been duly noted and commented on by several critics, among them Harlan Sturm, "The Conde Lucanor: The First Ejemplo," MLN 84 (1969): 286-92; Robert B. Tate, "Don Juan Manuel and His Sources: Ejemplos 48, 28, 1," Studia

Hispanica in Honorem R. Lapesa, 2 vols. (Madrid: Catedra-Seminario Menendez Pidal and Gredos, 1972) 1: 549-61; Daniel Devoto, Introducci6n al estudio de Don Juan Manuel y en particular de "El Conde Lucanor." Una bibliografta (Madrid: Castalia, 1972) 357-60; and Reinaldo Ayerbe-Chaux, El Conde Lucanor: Materia tradicional y originalidadcreadora (Madrid: Porria Turanzas, 1975) 2-7. With respect to the notion and nature of the author, indispensable studies include Ian MacPher- son, "Dios y el mundo'-the Didacticism of El Conde Lucanor,"Romance Philology 24 (1970): 26-38, and "Don Juan Manuel: The Literary Process," Studies in Philology 70 (1973): 1-18; Kenneth R.

Scholberg, "Modestia y orgullo: Una nota sobre Don Juan Manuel," Hispania 42 (1959): 24-31, and "Juan Manuel: Personaje y autocritico," Hispania 44 (1961): 457-60; and Ayerbe-Chaux, "Don

Juan Manuel y la conciencia de su propia autoria." On the narrative frame see James F Burke, "Frame and Structure in the Conde Lucanor," Revista Canadiense de Estudios Hispdnicos 8 (1984): 263-74.

20 "La cornice de Conde Lucanor," Studi diletteratura spagnola (Rome: Universita di Roma, 1964) 187-95.

21 In point of fact, the relationships between and among the sabio catiuo and priuado, Patronio and the Count, Don Juan Manuel and the reader, are not strictly identical, principally because of the reversal of social distinctions obtaining between Don Juan Manuel and the readers, since the author was most likely superior in nobility to those who read his book. This difference

aside, the essential nature of the relationship is indeed similar. 22 Medieval Theory of Authorship, 2nd ed. (Philadelphia: U of Pennsylvania P, 1988) 95. 23 On the relationship between the Count and Patronio see Sturm, "The Conde Lucanor" and

"Author and Authority in El Conde Lucanor," Hispan6fila 18 (1974-1975): 1-9. 24 "Don Juan Manuel: The Literary Process" 5. 25 Nicomachean Ethics, trans. H. Rackham (London and New York: William Heineman and G.

P Putnam, 1926) 24.3-5.

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