Debating Arms and Letters: Curial e Güelfa and Noble Ambitions in the Fifteenth Century

The fifteenth-century Catalan prose romance Curial e Güelfa (ca. 1440-1460) has puzzled scholars for its ambiguous use of genre. Montserrat Piera convincingly argues that it is most appropriately situated within the broader European romance genre; she makes a persuasive case that the attempts by critics to subcategorize it -as a sentimental, chivalric, travel, or Byzantine romance (among others)- tend to obfuscate rather than clarify (Curial e Güelfa y las novelas de caballerías españolas 12-16, 39-75). Another perplexing feature of the romance is its contradictory treatment of formal education as part of the preparation of idealized Iberian cultural elites, a topic addressed by Piera ("Lectores y lectoras"), Jeremy Lawrance's review of Pamela Waley's translation of Curial and Guelfa, Lola Badia ("De la 'reverenda letradura'"), Patricia Boehne ("The Presence of Petrarch"), Julia Butiñá Jiménez (Tras los orígenes del humanismo), and Jaume Torró i Torrent ("Sobre el Curial, Virgili i Petrarca").

The anonymous author both affirms the expectation that members of the nobility possess a basic education and eschews that very same quality by marginalizing those characters whose erudition outshines their martial prowess. These learned figures -women who are helpless to change their fate and men accused of acting as Jews- are cast as the powerless "other". In addition to undermining the importance of educational attainment by characterizing learned figures as weak, Curial e Güelfa includes several illustrative passages that idealize aggression as a characteristic that elevates knights who possess it over other men who populate the court.

The romance charts the social ascent of Curial, a young man of meager means. Güelfa, the beautiful and recently widowed sister of the Marquis of Montferrat, falls in love with handsome Curial, the marquis's favorite page. Intent on making Curial into a nobleman through her financial support, Güelfa outfits him as a knight; he soon gains renown for his abilities on and off the battlefield. The second book documents Curial's rise to international celebrity. His seamless assimilation into elite culture comes to an abrupt halt toward the end of the second book. Motivated by jealousy, Güelfa terminates her financial support. Without her patronage, Curial is rejected from all the European courts. In the third and final book, Curial travels to the Holy Land, but he is taken captive and sold as a slave in Tunisia after a shipwreck. Through the assistance of a noble Moorish maiden named Camar, Curial escapes, returns to Europe, regains respect by fighting several important battles against the Ottomans, rekindles his relationship with Güelfa, and the pair live happily ever after.

After Curial gains the admiration of the court through his good looks and courtly demeanor, he solidifies his position by besting his rivals in battles, which secures the support of well-connected members of aristocracy. The work uses the proverbial debate between arms and letters to illuminate perceived tensions in the ability of noble elites to contribute to their society by actively contrasting educational attainment and violent exploits.¹ I argue that there is an undercurrent to the narrative that is highly suspicious of education, both as an institution increasingly associated with the marginal "other" and as one that cannot be productive in a society that rewards participation in battle and successes attained through violent means. Rather, the work idealizes aggressive masculine behavior on the battlefield at the expense of characteristics typically associated with chivalric heroes, such as courtesy or virtue. Even as it stresses the importance of brute strength, however, the romance highlights the ways in which Iberian elites constantly employ and then reject the importance of cultural refinement for social success. This ambiguous treatment of education for Iberian men in Curial e Güelfa has significant implications for the broader arms-and-letters debate in fifteenth-century Iberia.

The potential for education to disrupt traditional social hierarchies first appears as a trope early in the narrative. At the beginning of the romance the penniless Curial is sent away by his widowed mother to make his...