Teaching Authorial Style and Literary Technique: Exemplo XI of El Conde Lucanor

This current study proposes a comparative method of teaching authorial style, using four versions of Exemplo XI, an often-anthologized tale about the mago of Toledo, Don Illán, from the Conde Lucanor, a series of interlinked tales by the early fourteenth-century author Don Juan Manuel. Teaching a medieval text in its original form alongside modernized and adapted versions allows students to observe the rich cultural context of the original and comprehend varied literary techniques available to authors to convey their message (see Berg and Martin-Berg). By comparing the tale in four forms: Old Spanish, Modern Spanish, English translation, and the adaptation by Jorge Luis Borges, students notice that grammar and vocabulary changes along with alterations in the focus of the story affect the presentation of the main figure of the story, thus changing the possible interpretations by the reader. While Juan Manuel’s text emphasizes a message of acting with integrity, the Borges adaptation focuses on the sinister side of magic. In order to help students grasp the unfamiliar language of the medieval period, the article also provides a brief discussion of the text’s linguistic features likely to cause confusion for a student previously unfamiliar with Old Spanish.