SOURCE: Vasvari, Louise O. “‘Chica cosa es dos nuezes’: Lost Sexual Humor in the Libro del Arcipreste.” Revista de Estudios Hispanicos 24, no. 1 (January 1990): 1-22.

In the following essay, Vasvari contends that certain problematic portions of the The Book of Good Love are attributable to early expurgations of the text.

The Libro del Arcipreste (=LdA), as we read it today contains numerous contradicions and several truncated and elusive episodes. The difficulty of some episodes is, I believe, due to two factors, incompatibility of some new intercalated passages within the surrounding context of an earlier version of the text and the fact that several passages have become devoid of sense because the songs to which they serve as a narrative introduction are missing, likely having been removed by early expurgators.¹

Several particularly enigmatic narrative episodes are, perhaps not coincidentally, interpolations found only in the later so-called 1343 redaction which also have...