SOURCE: Brown, Catherine. “The Meretricious Letter of the Libro de Buen Amor.” Exemplaria 9, no. 1 (spring 1997): 63-90.

In the following essay, Brown explains that the The Book of Good Love defies easy understanding because of numerous internal contradictions.

Quoniam non cognovi litteraturam, introibo in potentias Domini.

Because I have not known letters, I shall enter into the powers of the Lord.

Ps. 70:15-16

In medieval as well as modern usage, the word “reading” covers a wide range of activities, from the pedagogical (reading a lecture, reading Classics at Oxford) to the hermeneutic (reading cinema, fashion, and obscure human motivation). These readings of “reading,” no matter how non-textual their context, are built upon and intimately related to cultural understandings of the letter. Isidore of Seville, for example, defines his letters thus: “Litterae autem dictae quasi legiterae, quod iter legentibus praestent, vel quod in legendo iterentur” (“letters are so called from...