Elogio del testo (e dell’autore): il caso del ‘Conde Lucanor’ di Juan Manuel

A good number of studies devoted to Conde Lucanor last twenty years have insisted on the ambiguity, the problematic, the aporias traceable in his system of signification, that would make necessary, even in its first part, an active interpretive cooperation of the recipient, which ultimate responsibility for the ‘production of meaning’ would be left. This ductility hermeneutics would prove even more striking by the comparison between the different ‘states’ hired by the text in the course of its spread: the micro and macro variance exhibited by a witness over the other and the inclusion in different contexts library would prove that it lent, or rather invited, to multiple readings, variously oriented. However a text is never inert matter that is offered to every possible dreft of its meanings, but in it there is «una quiddità a cui le nostre affermazioni devono necessariamente far riferimento» (Cesare Segre), if we are really groped to deepen understanding. This applies even more so for an avowedly educational text, slightly secretive and whit a strong authorial imprint as the Conde Lucanor; it is known that, especially in the first section of the book, Don Juan Manuel introduces a complex device of mediations and implications required to perform a threefold mission: interpreting, generalizing and pragmatic. It is from these considerations that, by examining three cases ‘exemplary’ (enxiemplo 1, enxiemplo 39, some peculiarities of the manuscript P), the report will try to review the issue, which involves, as is clear, methodological implications not secondary.