Love in El Victorial by Gutierre Diaz de Games

This paper studies the representation and understanding of love in El Victorial by Gutierre Diaz de Games. Following the tradition of chivalric biographies and manuals, in that chivalric biography love is regarded as an ennobling force, closely related to virtue, honor and military prowess. This concept of chivalric love, which also lies at the heart of medieval warrior aristocratic ideology, coexists in El Victorial with other representations, more common among literary, medical or religious genres. The goal of this paper is to analise how these different ideas of love intertwine in a crucial text to understand the function of love within the late-medieval aristocratic context.