Towards a History of Literary Composition in Medieval Spain

Colbert Nepaulsingh has written a new kind of history of medieval Spanish literature, one based on hermeneutic principles derived from such literary theorists as hans-Georg Gadamer. Through a close and original reading of selected major texts such as Razon de amor and Libro de buen amor, he answers some of the fundamental questions about how literary works were composed during the medieval period.

Professor Nepaulsingh brings into clear focus the evolution of a series of sophisticated compositional techniques over three centuries. In early thirteenth-century texts, stringing and juxtaposing techniques predominated; at the end of the thirteenth and through the fourteenth century a more dialectical method of composing texts became more dominant, in the fifteenth century the most popular compositional device was the wheel of Fortune. Nepaulsingh deftly places these developments in the wider context of the biblical and apocalyptical traditions that overwhelmingly dominated medieval Spanish literature.

Students of medieval Spanish literature and of literature in general, will appreciate the originality of the author's approach and the breadth and depth of his scholarship.

COLBERT I. NEPAULSINGH is an associate professor of Hispanic and Italian studies, State University of New York at Albany. He is the author of El dezir a las syete virtudes y otros poemas.