Abstract

The present study examines the ways in which medieval theories of language, interaction, performance, and verbal meaning find expression within the Libro de buen amor. Focusing on the fictional disputation between the Greeks and the Romans found between stanzas 46–64, I call attention to the ways in which this episode encodes and dramatizes a serious concern with the pragmatic aspects of linguistic signification. The central argument of the present study rests upon the idea that the Libro de buen amor’s theorization of language and meaning stems at once from scholarly, clerical modes of textual interpretation and an awareness of the highly contingent, locally structured frameworks of interaction that shape poetic performance.

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