Mountain Women From the Spanish “Book of Good Love” (14th Century) as a Variant of the “Wild Man”

Among the numerous examples of “wild people” in medieval literature, one of the most striking is the image of the mountain women (serrana) in the Spanish Book of Good Love (Libro de buen amor, 14 th century). Among the book’s many romantic adventures, a special place is given to the Archpriest’s journey to the mountains, where he meets the serranas, who graze cattle and guard the mountain passes. The description of each encounter has a dual perspective: first, the Archpriest describes the encounter as a real event, and then the narrator composes “songs of the mountain women” about these events. If the canticas are obviously a parody of the courtly genre of pastorals, then the portraits of the mountain women in the hero’s stories can hardly be considered merely a parody of the portrait of the Lady of courtly poetry (the prevailing point of view). The author of the article agrees with those researchers who trace the genesis of the “mountain maidens” back to the prototype of the “wild woman” and suggests that the appearance of monstrous and wild mountain maidens serves a dual function in The Book of Good Love: on the one hand, their characteristics can indeed be seen as the antithesis of the courtly ideal, which is significant in the parodic context of the book, and on the other hand, their contrast with the images of shepherdesses from the songs allows the medieval author to emphasize the distance between “reality” and poetic conventions.

Folklore, Mythology, and Literature Studies · Historical, Literary, and Cultural Studies · Medieval Iberian Studies