Palabras públicas y privadas en el Libro de los engaños

Abstract

When the stepmother allegorizes the figure of King Alcos with that of a pig in the Libro de los engaños, it does not show any evident symptom of anger or passion that snatches the judgment. This is striking considering that, at this point in the narrative, the king is immersed in a process where he is deciding whether or not to kill his own and only son, in the face of an explosive reaction of ira regia. It should be considered that a private, previously, showed a forceful worldview of the power of the royal figure by symbolizing the figure of a monarch with that of a lion. A first impression of this could make us think that Alcos has been insulted by the woman, and there seems to be no explanation for his passivity towards it. This situational and conceptual paradigm, behind its apparent simplicity, can make us reflect on the figure of the king in the contextual situation of the first translation of the Libro de los engaños in Spain in the Middle Ages. It can give us data and clues of a sociocultural worldview and the fabric of power closest to the king portrayed in the text, but also provide us with an idea of the complicated handling of narrative spaces with which we could understand the reasons why Alcos, powerful and passionate, keep calm when compared to a pig, and give us an idea of the unsuspected spatial arrangement of the story, which was perhaps understandable for a mind like the medieval.