Alegoria Apocalipsis: encuentros equinos en el Libro de buen amor

III The book of the archpriest, or more well known as The book of good love, is one of the masterpieces of the Middle Ages in Spain. The copy of the LBA that I have used in this dissertation is the one that was found in Salamanca, which differs mainly from the two others in its accessus and the signature of a scribe, Alfonso de Paradinas. Besides the fact that another copy was found in the Library of the Cathedral of Toledo, historical documents suggest that the LBA circulated between the community of readers of Toledo and Salamanca. Within this ecclesiastical context of literate readers, this dissertation proposes the possibility to connect the main idea of the accessus, that of vía, with the four ways of interpretation of biblical exegesis. These four ways may also underlie the cuaderna vía, which traditionally has only been considered as an external form. In my dissertation I offer the possibility to read the four wild serranas allegorically as the four horses of the apocalypse. In this episode the text invites us to navigate through it´s ocean of meanings, and there are constant references to vía as 'camino, vereda' and all the visual images that we have related to vía. Nevertheless, the presence of all these references along with the invitation of the text to go beyond a literal meaning is no coincidence. In this case, some studies have been published about a possible allegorical interpretation of the passage, but the way I differ from these critics is that I use allegory in a sense that corresponds more with an ecclesiastical context, where it was used to comprehend the Bible. The episode becomes not only a new source of data about horses from the fourteenth century in Spain, but more important it helps us understand better how this medieval community of readers may have interpreted this passage, as an eschatological reference to the biblical apocalypse.

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