Illusory Space in Exemplo 11 of Conde Lucanor

Abstract

Magic and necromancy play an essential dramatic role in exemplo 11 of Don Juan Manuel’s celebrated Conde Lucanor. Within magic, scholars have mostly focused on the role that tiempo mágico or magical time plays in the dramatic economy of the story, overlooking the equally important aspect of space within the magical illusion. The representation of space is vague, imprecise, and often contradictory. This study looks at the spaces that divide the real world from the illusory world, arguing that the underground spaces, which Manueline scholarship has accepted as factual, exist only in the Dean of Santiago’s imagination. The magical subterranean loci, this paper concludes, are employed to evoke the local myths of Hercules’s cave and the traditional stories about a family of Ylláns who allegedly practiced necromancy in Toledo, not to represent them as real.