A Companion to Mester de Clerecía Poetry

Robin M. Bower, Ph.D. (2001, Columbia University), is Associate Professor at the Pennsylvania State University, Beaver Campus. She has published widely and her monograph In the Doorway of All Worlds: Gonzalo de Berceo's Translation of the Saints is forthcoming. Matthew V. Desing, Ph.D. (2008, University of Minnesota) continues researching as an independent scholar after pausing his role in the professoriate to pursue an MFA in creative writing. His scholarship has appeared in La corónica, Hispanic Review, and other venues.

Acknowledgements

Note on Stylistic Conventions

List of Maps and Figures

Notes on Contributors



Introduction: Critics and Clerks

 Robin M. Bower and Matthew V. Desing



PART 1: Contexts of Production and Reception



Introduction to Part One

 Robin M. Bower and Matthew V. Desing

1 The Matter of Meter: Cuaderna Vía and the Castilian Romance of Antiquity

 Clara Pascual-Argente

2 The Work of the Word: the Authority of Writing in Mester de Clerecía Poetry

 Olivier Biaggini

3 Beyond the Letter: Rhythm in the Mester de Clerecía

 Fernando Baños Vallejo

4 The Libro de Alexandre and the Limits of Modernitas

 María Cristina Balestrini



PART 2: Matters of Formal Transmission



Introduction to Part Two

 Robin M. Bower and Matthew V. Desing

5 Fire and False Prophets: Ecdotica and the Audiences of Early Thirteenth-Century Poetry

 Anthony John Lappin

6 The Last Line of the Monorhyme Quatrain and the Artistry of the Cleric’s Craft

 Pablo Ancos

7 Reading Epiphany in the Libro de Apolonio and Its Codicological Context: Divinity Materialized in Escorial Manuscript K-III-4

 Carina Zubillaga

8 Reorienting Mester de Clerecía Transmission: Escorial Manuscript K-III-4 as Travel Literature in Late Medieval Aragon

 Matthew V. Desing



PART 3: Cultural Studies Approaches



Introduction to Part Three

 Robin M. Bower and Matthew V. Desing

9 Gonzalo de Berceo: the Authority to Write and the Dictates of Humility

 Connie L. Scarborough

10 The Sacred Re-Imagined: Ekphrasis and Berceo’s Milagros de Nuestra Señora

 Martha M. Daas

11 The Ascetic Body of St Dominic of Silos

 Andrew M. Beresford

12 Feeling Like a King: the Libro de Apolonio and the History of the Emotions

 Emily C. Francomano



PART 4: Mester de Clerecía in a Broader Context



Introduction to Part Four

 Robin M. Bower and Matthew V. Desing

13 ‘Sweet Tweets and Cries’: the Wonders of Poro’s Palace in the Libro de Alexandre

 Michelle M. Hamilton

14 The Thornbush and the Tattered Garment: Shared Metaphors in the Libro de buen amor and Proverbios Morales

 Ryan D. Giles

15 The Coplas de Yosef: a Medieval Hebrew-Aljamiado Poem of Heroism and Courtly Composure

 Donald W. Wood



Epilogue: Prequels and Afterlives: the Exemplarity of Fernán González

 Robin M. Bower



Index