SOURCE: Read, M. K. “Man against Language: A Linguistic Perspective on the Theme of Alienation in the Libro de buen amor.” Modern Language Notes 96, no. 2 (March 1981): 237-60.

In the following essay, Read interprets The Book of Good Love as a work that reflects Ruiz's recognition of a crisis in language and the anxiety that results from it.

La salud e la vida muy aina se muda: en un punto se pierde, quando omne non cuda; el bien que farás cras, palabra es desnuda: vestidla con la obra ante que muerte acuda.(1) 

(1532)

I

The Libro de buen amor has suffered as much as any other literary work in the past, and perhaps a good deal more than most, from exaggerated critical concern with its source material and other matters extraneous to the text, and Hispanists would now generally acknowledge the progress that has resulted from focusing on its...