JUAN MANUEL, INFANTE OF CASTILE. - Writer, b. in the castle of Escalona (Toledo) in 1282, d. around 1348. Nephew of St. Ferdinand III, he took part in deeds of arms and in the political events of his time, especially during the minority of Ferdinand IV and of Alfonso XI, his ward, whose throne he plotted against, in concert with the king of Aragon.
The restlessness of his life did not prevent a vast literary activity. In the Libro de Patronio or Conde Lucanor (1335), a distinguished document of Castilian prose that gathers up and surpasses with aristocratic refinement the many narrative currents of the Middle Ages, Count Lucanor puts to the wise counsellor Patronio various questions of social ethics, which the latter resolves with 50 apologues or tales of varied nature and source (Aesopic tradition, the East, the Bible, medieval legendaries) and closed by an appropriate "moral" in rhyme. Some themes were taken up by Shakespeare (The Taming of the Shrew), Cervantes (Retablo de las meravillas), Andersen and others.
The Libro de los estados (1330) was composed at the age of 48 in a phase of spiritual crisis and physical suffering. Religious interests predominate in it and, besides numerous autobiographical touches, it contains a Christian adaptation of the legend of the Buddha, through an Arabic or Latin text of the romance of Barlaam and Josaphat.
Also to be remembered are the Libro del caballero et del escudero (1326) and, a singular document of J. M.'s devotion to the Virgin, the Tractado en que se prueba por razón que Sancta María está en cuerpo y alma en paraíso.
His physical features have been handed down by a portrait (the first known of a Spanish writer), the work of Barnaba da Modena, which is preserved in the cathedral of Murcia. His moral physiognomy is characterized by a decided presence of contrasts, intrigue and devotion alternating and coexisting in him, restlessness and the search for solitude and study, morality and a certain Machiavellianism ante verbum.
Bibliography5 works
Enzo Navarra