Violence and Language in Grisel y Mirabella

Abstract

This study analyzes the intersection between violence and language in Juan de Flores’s sentimental romance, Grisel y Mirabella. As a vehicle for civil discourse and human expression, language often serves the purpose of averting violence by finding common ground and compromise. In Flores’s romance, however, verbal interactions mostly trigger spurts of aggression that lead to death. Griselis structured around four dialectical debates, which seek to resolve a particular problem, but, rather than achieving its heuristic purpose, each debate is followed by violence and death. Flores makes a distinction between truthful language and empty words. This article shows the fatal consequences of failing to match word to action, which represents a veiled criticism of the world of courtly love that dominated social discourse in Flores’s fifteenth-century Castile.