The Archpriest of Hita and the Imitators of Ovid: A Study in the Ovidian Background of the "Libro de buen amor"

Abstract

Archpriest of Hita and the Imitators of Ovid: A Study in the Ovidian Background of the Libro de buen amor. By Richard Burkard. Newark, DE: Juan de la Cuesta, 1999. 200 pages. While the Ovidian subtext of the Archpriest's book has become a commonplace of Libro de buen amor criticism, Burkard argues in his Preface that Juan Ruiz probably had no direct knowledge of the Ars amatoria--nor for that matter of any authentic work by the Roman poet--but rather depended on imitative Ovidian literature, most notably the amatoria, the Pamphilus de amore, and the vetula. six subsequent chapters of his book exhaustively document and reiterate this assertion. In Chapter One, The Ars Amatoria and the Latin Middle Ages, Burkard notes that Ovid's amatory works were widely circulated throughout the twelfth century and expounded upon in the clerical schools, spawning a veritable classroom industry of imitative verse. He typifies this derivative production as combining the sacred and the profane, promoting sexual promiscuity, satirically portraying prevailing social and ecclesiastical conventions, presenting standard themes in accordance with rhetorical guidelines, resorting to parody and the farcical, and purporting to represent personal experience and the autobiographical, characteristics that also apply to Ovid's original poetry. Burkard then examines the Pamphilus, the amatoria, and the amore by Andreas Capellanus as twelfth-century imitations that mediated the Ovidian tradition to Juan Ruiz. In Chapter Two, De Amore, Burkard revisits Lecoy's suggested parallels between the texts of the Archpriest and the Chaplain; by contrasting Juan Ruiz's use of a known source text (the Pamphilus) with his purported use of the amore, he eschews any direct dependency. His reasoning strikes me as neither compelling nor persuasive. While the contrast indicates that the Archpriest (obviously) did not translate the amore as he did the Pamphilus, it does not justify Burkard's consequent dismissal of the Latin treatise as a source, particularly since he does not address Dorothy Clotelle Clarke's detailed and insightful analysis (Juan Ruiz and Andreas Capellanus, Hispanic Review 40 [1972]: 390-411). Burkard's most substantive contribution, in my view, is his third chapter, Pseudo-Ars Amatoria, where he convincingly establishes the mid-to late twelfth-century Pseudo-Ars-rather than Ovid's ars amandi--as the principal source for Don Amor's lecture (st. 423-575) to the disgruntled Archpriest-protagonist. Tracing ten precepts of love that appear in both the Don Amor lecture and the pseudo-Ovidian composition, Burkard posits that, while Juan Ruiz did not confine himself to a single source for his amatory notions, the provided him with a skeletal outline for linking previously independent pieces (the tale of the lazy suitors, Pitas Payas, the power of money, the drunken hermit). …