biography
| name: |
Ruiz, Juan
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| |
known as Arcipreste de Hita
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pronunciation:
[rooeeth]
| sex:
| male
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| lived:
| (c.1283–c.1350)
|
| biography:
| Writer of the Libro de buen amor, with the Poema de mio Cid the most important long poem to survive from mediaeval Spain. Nothing is recorded of his life apart from what emerges from his book, and it has been suggested that any dates or facts found in the poem might be interpolations and that even the name ‘Juan Ruiz’ might be a pseudonym or a later invention. If the text is reliable, he was born at Alcalá de Henares, was educated at Toledo (where he could have come into contact with the Islamic culture evident throughout his book), and by 1330 had finished the first recension of the Libro de buen amor at Hita, a village in the Alcarria 30 miles E of Alcalá, where he was archpriest. By that time he was already well known for his popular songs (such as those in stanzas 1513–14). It has been suggested that he composed either the 1330 version or the enlarged 1343 version of the Libro while in a Toledo prison on the orders of the archbishop, but modern scholars have suggested that his references to imprisonment should rather be interpreted metaphorically, meaning for instance that he was perhaps a ‘prisoner’ of old age or infirmity. |
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