SOURCE: “Boccaccio and Capellanus: Tradition and Innovation in Arcipreste de Talavera,” in Revista de Estudios Hispánicos, Vol. 12, No. 2, May, 1978, pp.255-74.

[In the following essay, Gerli outlines the indebtedness of Alfonso Martínez de Toledo's Arcipreste de Talavera to Capellanus's De Amore. ]

The principal sources of Arcipreste de Talavera have been identified through the diligence of Erich Von Richthofen.¹ However, the importance of the Corbacho, lies not in its literary and folkloric antecedents, but almost exclusively in the original tone, style, and artistry of Alfonso Martínez de Toledo. For over thirty years the German scholar's erudite study has been considered the definitive statement on the work, rather than as it should be, the learned basis upon which new investigations be carried out. Von Richthofen thoroughly established the intellectual and artistic inheritance of Arcipreste de Talavera, describing its place in the didactic literary tradition of the Middle Ages. Nevertheless, as Pedro Salinas wisely points out, “la tradición es la forma más plena de libertad que le cabe a un escritor. Su materia, las obras maestras del pasado, despliegan ante el hombre una pluralidad de actitudes espirituales, de procedimientos de objectivación, de triunfos sobre lo inanimado, de vías de acceso a la realización de la obra, ofrecido todo generosamente al recién llegado. De nada sirve una libertad que no tiene para ejercerse más que el vacío … El artista que logre señorear la tradición será más libre al tener más carreras por donde aventurar sus pasos.”² Up until now, the Corbacho has not been carefully looked at in the light of Alfonso Martínez's own contribution to his literary tradition.

Arcipreste de Talavera somewhere between the time of its completion (1438) and its first printed edition (1498) acquired the popular title of Corbacho through association with Boccaccio's misogynistic narrative, Il Corbaccio. However, Arcipreste de Talavera's relation to this work ends with its title and antifeministic, satirical theme. Although Arturo Farinelli sees a similarity between the Spanish Corbacho and the Italian work,³ a true textual, structural, or stylistic interdependence is untenable.

Arcipreste de Talavera's presumed association with Il Corbaccio was probably generated unwittingly by Alfonso Martínez himself, for in Part II, Ch. 3 of his work he presents a long and often quoted imprecation against woman's deceitful and excessive use of cosmetics. After a detailed, ironic enumeration of the preparations women employ “para las manos e la cara ablandar e purificar,”⁴ he parenthetically notes that “aun desto fabló Juan Bocaçio … aunque non tan largamente” (p. 91).⁵ Possibly through this allusion to the Italian humanist, Arcipreste de Talavera became popularly known as El Corbacho. For as Farinelli states, “fù il Corbaccio l'opera boccaccesca in volgare più letta e gustata nell' Età Media.”⁶ When Talavera's work appeared more than eighty years after Boccaccio's, readers of the manuscripts might naturally have associated the Spanish misogynistic treatise with the earlier Italian composition, and in their minds identified it as another Corbaccio. Hence, the reason why the Hispanicized version of the Italian name has been applied to the Archpriest's tractate ever since.⁷

Erich Von Richthofen's analysis of Martínez's sources proves Boccaccio was indeed the inspiration for the condemnation of cosmetics in Arcipreste de Talavera. However, the Spaniard's source was not the vernacular Corbaccio, as Farinelli presumes. Rather, the Archpriest was influenced by the Certaldese's De casibus virorum illustrium, an important didactic treatise of exempla drawn from antiquity and directed against the spiritual decadence of Florence in the 1350's.⁸ It is in Book I, Chp. 18, “In mulieres,” of De casibus that Talavera found the model for his diatribe against womanly make-up. Nevertheless, even a partial comparison of the two passages reveals the Spanish author's creative genius and independence from his source:

las çejas byen peladas, altas, puestas en arco; los ojos alcoholados; la fruente toda pelada y aun toda la cara—grandes e chicos pelos—con pelador de pes, trementina e azeyte de mançanilla; los beços muy bermejos, no de lo natural, synon pie de palo mina grana, con el brasil con alunbre mesclado; los dientes anosegados o fregados con manbre, yerva que llaman de Yndia; las uñas alheñadas, las uñas grandes e cresçidas, más que más las de los merguellites, asý como de blancheta, e aun las trae encañutadas en oro; la cara rreluziente como de una espada con el agua que de suso ya dixe. Mudas para la cara diez vezes se las pone, una tras otra, al día una vegada; que quando puestas no las tyene paresce mora de Yndia; çumo de fojas de rrávanos, açúcar, xabón de Chipre, fecho ungüento, otramente azeyte de almendras … E sy por aventura su vezina tan fermosa fuese que desalabar su fermosura non puede, que es notorio a todo el mundo, en aquel punto comiença a menear el cuello, faziendo mill desgayres con los ojos e la boca, diziendo asý: “Pues, verdad es que es fermosa, pero non tanto allá como la alabades. ¿Nunca vimos otra muger fermosa? ¡Más pues! ¡Pues más! ¡Ay, Dios, pues qué más! ¿Qué contesçió? ¡Yuy, y qué miraglo atán grande! ¡Sy vimos nunca tal, y quantas maravillas vistes y qué miraglos por non nada! ¿Aquélla es fermosa? Fermosa es por çierto la que es buena de su cuerpo. Pues, yo sé que me sé, e desto callarme he …

(pp. 94-96).

Hinc fuscos aquis aureos reddere crines porreticos calamistro crispos & anulatos facere frontem minus latam subtractione pilorum amplificare supercilia extēsa iunctaque forcipe disiungere et in tenuem reducere gyruz. Dentes casu sublatos ebore reformare exili nitro quos alias carpere nouacula nequiuere pilos e facie tollere cutisque crassitu dinem radētes minuere. Seque suis artibus tales facere cognouere: vt quas incompositas ante putasses deformes: cultas ipsaz venerem arbitrareris. Quid si addidero quibus modis crines flauos componāt: quibus ornent floribus: quibus corollis: quibus aureis gemmeisque infulis aut coronis ceu tenuissimis et in aurem paululum demissis velis insigniant. Quid si vestes scipsero; Ad regum purporas deuenereauro preciosisque lapillis refulgentes. Haec allobrogas heduos illa ista cyprios alia aegyptos aaut graecos fingit rituvl’ arabas: Quū italo nō susficiat habitu incendere. Demū astutia muliebri metes hoim obtenebrāt sensere ei acutius quis incedendi modus: quando pectoris deliciae quando cruris paululum ostendendum sit qua oculi prospiciendi sint homines qua lubrica gesticulatione trahendi quis faciem deceatbrisus at (quod optime nouerunt) dum tempus est id nole quod velint ostendere.⁹

Although Martínez's innovativeness is clearly demonstrated by the above comparison, later in the work he virtually translates Boccaccio directly. He thus felt himself free to copy or modify his sources at will.

Although Martínez, as we have seen, closely patterns passages of his tractate on the Latin narrative, such borrowings were not uncommon in the Middle Ages. Authors were not obsessed by the concept of originality as were post-Renaissance writers. Indeed, a formal artistic precedent upon which one's efforts were based was desirable and recommended by some medieval literary preceptists.¹⁰ In his work the Archpriest makes no attempt to conceal the sources of his material. For example, he openly introduces his certamen of Poverty and Fortune, another episode borrowed from De casibus (Book II, Ch. 1), with the words: “otra rrazón te diré, la qual Juan Bocaçio prosygue, de la qual pone un enxemplo tal …” (p. 201).

However, to judge Alfonso Martínez de Toledo a simple imitator is to gravely misconstrue the nature of his art. The key to understanding the esthetics of Arcipreste de Talavera is the realization that the work's importance lies not in what is said, but how it is said. Through textual comparison with Boccaccio it becomes evident Talavera's masterful style is alone a valid criterion for his artistry. The Latin narrative is terse, flat, uninteresting when pitted against the Archpriest's version of the same episode. Indeed, Boccaccio's allegory of Poverty and Fortune serves only as a point of departure for the genius of the Castilian.

A short passage from this episode in De casibus reads: “Sedebat forsan in triuio paupertas amicta centunculo & obducto supercilio secum (ut moris est) plurima reuoluebat” (Boccaccio, fol. xxii, v). This single sentence is cleverly transformed by Talavera into a detailed, imaginative, novelistic description—a virtual character vignette. The sparse Latin is infused with new life, for in the Spanish text Poverty becomes the vivid, dynamic image of a disconsolate beggar “muy triste e como trabajada, pensativa, e muy dolorida e muy flaca, en solo los huesos e la pelleja, negra, fea, magra, e llena toda de sarrna, los ojos somidos, los dientes rregañando, su sarrna rascando, la pelleja curtida arrugada, muy espantable fiera” (p. 201). The same is true of Fortune, whose “plena mollisq cutis, Roseus color, et purpurea vestis” (Boccaccio, fol. xxiii, r) are metamorphosed to form a figure recalling the richly adorned, late Gothic, International Style of painting (Broederlam, the Limbourg Brothers, etc.). Coming down the road, she is described in the Spanish work as “muy poderosa, de hedad de treynta años, muy loçana e valiente, rriendo e cantando e con mucha alegría, en somo de un cavallo muy grueso e fermoso, una guirnalda de flores en la cabeça, muy çeñida por el cuerpo e frescamente arreada segund la gala del mundo” (pp. 201-202). Martínez's Fortune is the image of youthful prosperity and haughty self-confidence.

Talavera is clearly no servile imitator, for between the two works there is a manifest stylistic and creative difference. The Latin source is a simple documentary exposition concerned more with ethics and theology than with art. In contrast, the Archpriest's narrative is a richly colored, forceful, personal, and altogether ingenious characterization of people, not allegorical puppets. Martínez's characters are vitalized. They illustrate and embody the concepts of poverty and fortune as individuals with diverse concerns, while in Boccaccio they remain abstract principles in human dress. Through Martínez de Toledo the Italian's impersonal figures become living beings closely related to the author's and his readers' immediate experience: a grubby, snorting, diseased beggar; a glib, willful, pompous, and dandy noblewoman. Selecting, intensifying, analyzing, and imagining life-like detail, Talavera creates a reality through literary illusion far surpassing the artistic complexity of his model.

Another somewhat static passage in De casibus states:

Et in eam irruens vt vertici manu posita illam
in centrum vsque premeret vlnis ab expedita
pauptate suscepta est. Diuq per aerem vacuum
volutata et tādē psternata solo subcubuit.
Cuius pectus acuto genu calcās pauptas et
calce guttur premens. Non ante illam multa
in vanum conantē etiam respirare permisit.
Quam se deiectam victamque fateretur. Et
iureiurando firmaret datam sibi legem
seruaturam integre

(Boccaccio, fol. xxiii, r and v).

As before, this is taken by Martínez as the framework for a long, much more dynamic and plastic version of his own. Movement, metaphor, sound, dialogue, detail, and colloquial language are Talavera's dominant contributions to the scene:

Desçendió la Fortuna del cavallo muy
soberviamente, e soltóle las rriendas por
tierra e vínose fazia la Pobreza a grandes
pasos contados, a manera de gigante, todo
asý como venía loçana con sus arreos,
faziendo grandes continentes a manera de
luchador; e apretóse mucho el cuerpo,
viniendo de puntillas en tierra, meneando
los onbros, estirándose como gato, bramando
como león, los ojos encarniçados, los
dientes apretando, pensado sumir la
Pobreza luego que della travase …
pero la Pobreza entendió la manera
disiendo entre sý: “Fortuna, entendida
eres, e non te pienses espantarme con
tus gestos bravos de león, a manera de
ytalianos, genoveses, o lonbardos; que
de corsario a corsario non ay ganançia
synón de puñadas … yo te entiendo.”
… las dos, Fortuna e Pobreza, juntá-
ronse ya en uno e andovieron un rrato en
torno buscando presas, la una contra la
otra. La Pobreza tomó a la Fortuna la
una mano a los pechos e la otra a la
çintura. La Fortuna echó mano a la
Pobreza, la una mano al cuello, la otra
al braço derecho, e començáronse a tentar
de fuerça … sonavan sus huesos como
nuezes en costal, e armóle la mediana,
cuydándola derribar … púsole un
transpié … tentóla de sacaliña …
Vido que a mal nin a byen non la podía
de tierra arrancar; tomó tanta malencolía
que cuydava rrebentar … La Pobresa
emaginó en sý: “Esta villana está gruesa
como toro …” armóle de rezio e paróle
la ancha e alçóle las piernas en el ayre,
la cabeça escontra la tierra, e dexóla
venir, e dio con ella una tan grand caýda
que la cuydó çiertamente rrebentar …
luego saltóle ençima e púsole el un pie
en la garganta que la quería afogar …
Diole en la cara e en los ojos tantos de
golpes que apenas los ojos le pareçían,
diziendo: “¡Fuera, fuera fermosura! ¡Non
es tienpo de más aquí estar … !” Luego
la Pobresa dexó a la Fortuna levantar …
E la Fortuna de continente, las manos junta-
das, las rodillas en tierra, desnuda como
nasçiera, e la cabeça ynclinada fazia la
tierra, e los ojos baxos, mansa e muy
omilde, la Pobresa se asentó ençima de un
valladar … E luego la Pobreza tomó a
la Fortuna e llevóla a una grand palanca
que estava fincada, e allý con fuertes
cadenas la ató para syenpre, donde nunca
se pudo partir, nin yr, nin soltar …
partióse luego la Pobreza de allý, e fuese
luego para Boloña, e desde ally andovo e
anda fasta oy día por todo el mundo …

(pp. 212-220).

The Corbacho version not only quantitatively, but qualitatively overwhelms its source with dramatic power, human insight, and plastic detail. Boccaccio's schematic figures are brought to life through action. Infused with psychological realism and willful dynamism, their every movement and hesitation is chronicled for the reader. Martínez registers Poverty's reticence in a crude, although nevertheless novelistic, free indirect style: “la Pobresa emaginó en sý: ‘Esta villana está gruesa como toro …’” (p. 214). Even as the flurry of dialogue and physical activity dominates the scene, the Archpriest briefly halts the action to confide to his reader that he is not totally unsympathetic to Fortune's predicament: “¡E de la cuytada. Quién la vido poco tienpo avía e después la vido en tierra vençida e medio muerta, non syento persona tan cruel que de los ojos non llorara!” (p. 215). Through dialogue, description, and personal intervention, then, Talavera convincingly creates two literary characters endowed with independent and opposing wills, two irreconcilable perspectives on reality in psychological and even physical conflict. However, this diversity in point of view is complicated all the more by his subjective commentary on the action. In this way, Boccaccio's narrative is dislodged from the unidimensional world of allegory and made seemingly to coexist with the Castilian author's own multifaceted reality. For the Archpriest contemplates his literary world from within, commenting upon it as if he were a material witness to the human struggle of Poverty and Fortune.

Action, dialogue, point of view, indeed characterization, are not the only embellishments contributed by Martínez to his source. He also amplifies ideas, varies and adds themes not found in the Certaldese's work. Part IV of Arcipreste de Talavera is a long scholastic essay affirming the doctrine of Free Will. As Boccaccio does in De casibus, Martínez uses the certamen of Poverty and Fortune to exemplify this difficult dogma. However, in the course of his narrative, the disputants become spokesmen for other important, albeit subordinate, moral and metaphysical beliefs. Thus, in the Corbacho Poverty is accorded a lengthy critical digression reminiscent of the Danza general de la muerte and Ayala's Rimado de palacio. In this she bitterly chastizes churchmen that

desean [la muerte al Papa] … por suçeder
otro en su lugar … [el] fijo [que]
desea la muerte al padre por ser él rrey e
señor. El hermano del rrey [que] desea a su
hermano la muerte por suçeder en el rreyno;
e … los duques, condes, cavalleros,
gentileshombres, çibdadanos, burgueses,
mercadores e menestrales [que desean] la
muerte unos a otros, asý los parientes como
estraños, por heredar, más alcançar e más
valer, e de mayores estados ser … Eso
mesmo de los patriarcas, protonotarios,
arçobispos, e obispos, abades, deanes,
arçedianos, e otros eclesyásticos e capellanes

(pp. 204-206).

The purpose to all of this is a thorough condemnation of avarice ending in the assertion that “servir, amar, e conplazer” (p. 208) God is the only worthwhile activity in life: Talavera's central theme, and one which is not openly expressed in De casibus.

Martínez de Toledo incorporates, and at the same time varies, the themes and situations found in the Latin version of the struggle of Poverty and Fortune. He assimilates Boccaccio's motif to the overall thematic necessities and structure of his work in order to prove his thesis that “nuestro señor Dios, todopoderoso sobre todas las cosas mundanas e transytorias deve ser amado; non por miedo de pena que los malos perpetua dará, salvo por puro amor e delecçión dél, que es tal e tan bueno que es digno e meresçedor de ser amado” (p. 2).

The Archpriest cuts and adds to his sources, carefully fitting them into an organic narrative plan that makes continuous contrapuntal reference to his main idea—the love of God above all things. This concept serves as the unifying element of his work, the synthesizing agent of the disparate sources he employs. Through this common denominator Boccaccio and, as remains to be shown, Andreas Capellanus are incorporated to form an orderly, well structured, internally original condemnation of worldly love.

Anna Krause, while attempting to define the genre of Arcipreste de Talavera, associates Martínez's work with De amore libri tres of Andreas Capellanus. Although she does not pursue the issue beyond saying that the latter “adduces arguments similar to those presented by the Archpriest to combat incontinence, and launches upon similar invective against woman and the sins commonly attributed to her by Churchmen in the Middle Ages—avarice, envy, slander, disobedience, pride, vanity, and son forth,”¹¹ she almost unwittingly hits upon the principal source of the Corbacho. Erich von Richthofen amplifies Miss Krause's marginal observations proving that the Archpriest's work is not only very much like Andreas' famous book, but that the latter is indeed the Castilian author's most important and immediate model. He concludes that “Alfonso Martínez hat dessen drittes Buch der De amore libri, ‘De reprobatione amoris’ als Vorlage benützt und den Inhalt bis auf geringe Streichungen fast wörtliche auf den ersten und zweiten Teil seines Werkes übertragen.”¹² Book III of De amore is, then, the skeleton upon which the first two parts of the Corbacho are built. However, as with Boccaccio, Martínez adapts what he borrows from Andreas to suit his own purposes. While “De reprobatione amoris” is a conclusion to Capellanus' work, it is the starting point and inspiration that is examined, glossed, varied, and developed in the Castilian masterpiece.

Capellanus plays a fundamental role in the creation of Martínez's work, for De amore and the Corbacho are both structured in terms of a dialogue. Andreas addresses his troubled young friend, Gualterius, while Talavera converses with another disciple, his reader. For example:

Si haec igitur, quae ad nimiam tuae petitionis
instantiam vigili cogitatione conscripsimus,
Gualteri amice, attenta curaveris aure
percipere, nil tibi poterit in amoris arte
deficere. Nam propter nimiae dilectionis
affectum tuis penitus cupientes annuere
precibus confertissimam, plenamque amoris
doctrinam in hoc tibi libello edidimus.(13)

This familiar tone is taken up by Martínez beginning in Ch. 1 and is a recurring motif throughout Parts I and II of Arcipreste de Talavera. The Archpriest speaks to his reader in the second person familiar, establishing a constant dialogue well suited to his didactic designs: “Pensar puedes, amigo, que sy nuestro señor Dios quisyera quel pecado de la fornicaçión pudiese ser fecho syn pecado, non oviera rrazón de mandar matrimonio çelebrar …” (p. 7). However, as von Richthofen points out, the moralizing tone of the Archpriest's work proves more severe than that of De amore, Book III ( Art. cit., p. 452).

Talavera ably and liberally adapts themes, situations, and the structure from Andreas' book while at times reversing the order of the episodes and expanding the Latin passages to nearly three times their original length. Indeed, he so considerably modifies his source through amplification and digression that Capellanus' presence is barely noticeable. And it is significant that modern criticism did not note De reprobatione amoris' contribution to the Castilian work until Anna Krause's essay in 1929. Had the Corbacho simply translated from De amore, it is inconceivable Menéndez y Pelayo, Arturo Farinelli, and other scholars would have failed to identify Andreas' influence. Talavera was too accomplished an artist in his own right to literally transpose the Latin work into Castilian. The dialogic structure and some of the motifs in the Chaplain's Book III become merely a framework upon which he builds a new and original tractate of totally different intention.

The Archpriest's chief contribution to fifteenth century Castilian didactic literature lies in his use of dramatized exempla filled with rapid, direct, indeed realistic dialogues and monologues. He amplifies almost every abstract concept adduced by Capellanus with a delightful, usually ironic, dramatic scene. Von Richthofen perceives this essential difference and notes: “Alfonso Martínez unterbricht sich in den eingeschalteten Innenerzähllungen, die er natürlichen Sprache des einfachen Mannes berichtet, selbst. Von ihnen geht zweifellos die grössere Wirkung auf den Lesser aus, denn sie stecken voller Reize.”¹⁴

Perhaps the most famous passages of Arcipreste de Talavera are the monologues of the women who lost the hen and the egg. These exempla are found in Part II, Ch. 1, a place in the narrative where Martínez, as Mario Penna rightly notes, “si limita a tenere davanti la reprobatio per seguire lo svolgimento della argomentazione, che egli svolge con ampiezza straordinariamente maggiore ed in forma assolutamente originale.”¹⁵ Altering the lineal development of Andreas' work, Talavera inverts the order in which these episodes are alluded to in De amore and creates one of the most forceful and amusing scenes in early Spanish literature. From the following declarative Latin sentence he invents a highly detailed, dramatic exemplum that gives birth to a verbal realism culminating a half century later in the Celestina: ¹⁶

Est et omnis femina virlingosa, quia nulla est, quae suam noverit a maledictis compescere linguam, et quae pro unius ovi omissione die tota velut canis latrando non clamaret et totam pro re modica viciniam non turbaret

(Capellanus, p. 237).

Stylistically the highly original raving monologues of the two women in Part II, Ch. 1 of the Corbacho are the predecessors of the narrative-dramatic technique which María Rosa Lida de Malkiel describes under the chapter heading of “La acotación” in her La originalidad artística de la Celestina. ¹⁷ Curiously, however, Mrs. Malkiel gives no credit to Martínez de Toledo for being the precursor of the method found in Rojas' work.

Although Talavera's passage on the woman who had her egg stolen is a monologue, at first reading it gives the impression of a dialogue. The extraordinary abundance of interrogatives (more than half of the sentences in the sequence) suggests the presence of another person whom the ranting woman is accusing. There are also numerous condemnatory exclamations evoking, along with the accumulation of questions, another character in the scene. Again and again the frantic woman declaims:

¿Qué se fizo este huevo? ¿Quién lo tomó? ¿quién lo levó? ¿Adóle este huevo? Aunque vedes que es blanco, quiçá negro será oy este huevo. ¡Puta, fija de puta! Dime, ¿quién tomó este huevo? Quién comió este huevo comida sea de mala rravia! ¡Ay, huevo mío de dos yemas, que para echar vos guardava yo! ¡Ay, huevo … ! ¡Ay, puta Marica, rrostros de golosa, que tú me as lançado por puertas! ¡Yo te juro que los rostros te queme, doña vil, suzia, golosa!

(p. 82).

The familiar subject pronoun tú, the vocative use of a name (“¡Ay, puta Marica … !”), plus the somewhat ironic description of the invoked person (“rrostros de golosa …”) lead the reader to presume the physical presence of someone else besides the lamenting old woman. The second character remains silent throughout the tirade, but all the same the immediacy of his presence is felt. It is inconsequential that there be a person engaged in open dialogue with the frenetic comadre, for the very manner in which the scene is written supposes the existence, if not the active participation, of a silent interlocutor.

Although Mrs. Malkiel explains similar monologues and dialogues in the Celestina in terms of the comedia humanística, another possible source for Rojas' technique may indeed have been Arcipreste de Talavera. It is, I believe, unnecessary to look to Italian humanistic comedy for Rojas' precursors, when the Spanish tradition itself offered him a literary master to emulate.

With the above in mind we see how the Archpriest not only infuses Andreas' comparatively terse narrative with vivid, expansive, humanizing dialogue and monologue, but at once creates a new dramatic technique producing strong echoes in a later, extremely important, literary work. The passive, abstract statements of De amore are vitalized, given immediacy, and are acted out by characters in open, impulsive conflict. Moreover, the characters in Martínez's exempla and their physical environments are not flat. Their intense, colloquial, exclamatory, and interrogative harangues transcend the written word to suggest people, things, and situations beyond the work itself. Talavera dramatically evokes, rather than narrates, a world populated with living beings whose presence is felt, though not overtly described. It is here that the celebrated “realism” of the Corbacho is rooted. For Martínez, instead of recounting a dialogue, lets his characters speak for themselves. Their voices prod the reader's imagination to intuit their emotional states and their surroundings. And it is precisely this quality that leads Dámaso Alonso to describe the art of Arcipreste de Talavera as an “intuitivo desentrañar del alma humana por medio del lenguaje directo.”¹⁸

Martínez's main modification of his sources lies in stylistic change, shrewd observation, and the free reign of his fecund imagination. These techniques are complicated by reorganizing, glossing, and digressing upon the concepts of Capellanus' reprobatio. In the first place there is a fundamental thematic difference between the two works, for Talavera's vision of worldly love is far more ascetic than the Frenchman's. While it is true that both artists see love as a catastrophic force contrary to the will of God, the Castilian places much more emphasis on the doctrinal consequences of “amor desordenado” than Andreas. Capellanus, as von Richthofen points out, concedes a soothing effect to love, provided one goes about it properly.¹⁹ Nevertheless, when he condemns, he virtually limits himself to describing in abstract form the immediate social evils of women and blind passion. The Archpriest, in contrast, spends all of Part I of the Corbacho carefully dramatizing how worldly love transgresses every moral and religious doctrine. Andreas only briefly mentions that by abstaining from physical desire “rex coelestis in cunctis tibi propitius permanebit et in hoc saeculo prosperos mereberis hebere successus et universa laudabilia et honesta desideria cordis implere, ac in futuro gloriam et vitam possedebis aeternam” (Capellanus, p. 239). “Amor desordenado” for Martínez violates the Ten Commandments (pp. 45-59), is the cause for committing the Seven Deadly Sins (pp. 60-68), and is contrary to the Four Cardinal Virtues (pp. 68-77). And it is not until he has proven this through exemplary anecdotes that he resoundingly concludes that “por amor vienen todos los males” (pp. 77-78), reaffirming the thesis that “conviene a Él sólo amar e las mundanas cosas e transytorias del todo dexar e olvidar, e, por quanto, verdaderamente la su ynfinida gloria non es dubda que la alcançaremos para siempre jamás” (p. 2).

In the course of demonstrating the spiritual evils of carnal passion Talavera is often sidetracked, continually digressing on subordinate themes sometimes unconsciously suggested to him by his Latin source. For Andreas a simple abstract imprecation against woman's vanity and love's sinful ways are sufficient. However, the Archpriest is not content with a trite censure of feminine vainglory and concupiscence. Rather he prefers to drive home the point by dramatizing these themes while novelistically analyzing their motives and consequences, indeed their every facet.

Satisfied only in declaring the innate pretentiousness of women, Capellanus succinctly states: “Sed et nulla mulier invenitur ex tam infimo genere nata, quae se non asserat egregios habere parentes et a magnatum stipite derivari, et quae se omni iactantia non extollat” (Capellanus, p. 237). Martínez uses this statement to launch an original excursus not only on feminine social climbing and vanity, but the deception of appearances in general. He accordingly transcends the thematic boundries imposed upon him by the reprobatio, narrating a humorous, graphic, almost picaresque episode in which a woman borrows gowns, livery, and even cosmetics so as to parade through the streets putting on airs. Constantly calling attention to herself during her brief whirl in the sphere of appearances, she belittles her borrowed raiment and exclaims at every step:

¡Yuy, qué mala sylla! ¡Yuy, qué mala mula! El paso lieva alto; toda vo quebrantada, trota e non anbla. Duéleme la mano de dar sofrenadas, cuytada. Molida me lieva toda. ¿Qué será de mi?

(p. 116).

In this scene worthy of Quevedo, Talavera, in addition to plumbing the psychological depths of mock self-pity, explores the favorite Hispanic theme of perspectivism, severely concluding and warning his reader that ser and parecer are indeed two very different things.

The few textual comparisons we have made between Arcipreste de Talavera and its two most immediate sources, De casibus virorum illustrium and De amore, reveal its author as an extraordinary raconteur of original and creative talent whose capacity for fantasy led him to invent new situations and themes from old material. Stylistically Martínez also proves his forceful artistic independence from the Latin models, rendering his work in a rich, natural language that vividly defines the characters populating his literary world. In short, Talavera creatively adapts his sources to his own unique ends, selecting crucial didactic passages of Latin prose and converting them into equally instructive scenes of more effective dramatic action, thematic complexity, and didactic efficacy. When filtered through the imagination and pen of Alfonso Martínez de Toledo, the topoi of medieval literature acquire a youth and vigor not attained in their original form.

Notes

1. “Alfonso Martínez de Toledo und sein Arcipreste de Talauera, ein kastilisches Prosawerk des 15. Jahrhunderts,” ZRPh, 61 (1941), pp. 417-537.

2. Jorge Manrique, o tradición y originalidad, 3rd ed. (Buenos Aires: Editorial Sudamericana, 1962), pp. 123-124.

3. “Note sulla fortuna del Corbaccio nella Spagna medievale,” in Bausteine zur romanischen Philologies Festgabe für Adolfo Mussafia (Halle: M. Niemeyer, 1905), pp. 414-424.

4. Alfonso Martínez de Toledo, Arcipreste de Talavera, ed. Mario Penna (Torino: Rosenberg and Sellier, 1955), p. 91. All page references in the text are to this edition.

5. Farinelli points to a generically similar condemnation of feminine vanity in Il Corbaccio (art. cit., p. 419), but a close examination of the textual comparison adduced is not convincing.

6. Ibid., p. 401.

7. Ludwig Lemcke, one of the earliest modern critics to deal with Martinez's work, insisted on calling Arcipreste de Talavera the Corbacho, thus perpetuating its popular fifteenth century title. Cf. Handbuch der spanischen Litteratur (Leipzig: Friedrich Fleischer, 1855), I, 105. Théodore Joseph Boudet, Comte de Puymaigre, sees an etymological difference in the titles of the two works: “Il Corbaccio signifie le mauvais corbeau, el Corbacho le nerf de boeuf (d'où sans doute notre mot cravache). Ce dernier titre est plus explicable, les rudes coups qu'Alfonso Martínez fait pleuvoir sur le beau sexe pouvant rappeler l'emploi du nerf de boeuf.” La cour litteraire de don Juan II (Paris: Librairie A. Franck, 1873), I, pp. 156, n. 1.

8. Von Richthofen, pp. 470-471. De casibus was translated into Castilian sometime before 1407 under the title of Caýda de príncipes. Cf. C. B. Bourland, “Boccaccio and the Decameron in Castilian and Catalan Literature,” RH, 12 (1905), p. 3.

9. Joannis Boccaci Certaldi, De Casibus Illustrium Virorum, ed. Louis Brewer Hall (1520: rpt. Gainesville, Florida: Scholars' Facsimiles and Reprints, 1962), fol. xi, v. All subsequent citations from this work will be given in parenthesis with folio numbers within the text.

10. See, for example, Geoffrey of Vinsauf, Documentum de Modo et Arte Dictandi et Versificandi, II, 3, pp. 137-138, in Edmund Faral, Les artes poétiques du XII. ^e siècle, Bibliothèque de l'École des Hautes Études, 238 (Paris: Honoré Champion, 1924), p. 310.

11. “Further Remarks on the ‘Archpriest of Talavera,’” BSS, 6 (1929), 59.

12. Von Richthofen, p. 451.

13. “De reprobatione amoris,” in Arcipreste de Talavera, ed. cit., All subsequent page references will be given within the text preceded by the name “Capellanus.” For the sake of convenience I have used Penna's reproduction of the Reprobatio appearing as an appendix to his edition of Martínez's work.

14. Von Richthofen, pp. 449-450.

15. Arcipreste de Talavera, ed. cit., p. 81, n. **.

16. Menendez y Pelayo recognizes this and notes that “ El Corbacho es el único antecedente digno de tenerse en cuenta para explicarnos de algún modo la perfección de la prosa de la Celestina.” Orígenes de la novela, Nueva Biblioteca de Autores Españoles, no. 1 (Madrid: Bailly-Bailliere, 1910), I, cxiii-cxiv.

17. 2nd ed. (Buenos Aires: EUDEBA, 1970), pp. 81-107, but especially pp. 91-92.

18. De los siglos oscuros al de oro, 2nd ed. (Madrid: Gredos, 1964), p. 126.

19. Art. cit., pp. 460-461.