Treating of Virtue: Intertextuality in a Fifteenth-Century Spanish Miscellany

Madrid, Biblioteca Nacional 4.236 is one of the five extant manuscripts containing significant portions of the Conde Lucanor by the fourteenth-century Castilian nobleman, Don Juan Manuel. Studies of BN 4.236 tend to privilege the Conde Lucanor at the expense of other texts thought to be of lesser importance. This article seeks to remove the Conde Lucanor from its position of privilege and read the manuscript as a whole book. When the texts in this manuscript are read together, certain thematic connections emerge. The article suggests that the whole book presents to the reader a discourse on virtue in theory and practice.