THE BOOK OF GOOD LOVE

Perhaps no single work typifies the medieval character so completely as Juan Ruiz' Libro de Buen Amor, a product of the fourteenth century which, like medieval man, is a curious combination of the sublimely sacred and the unabashedly profane, of prayers and pornography. Mr. Kane's translation, running to six thousand lines of verse, is a minor masterpiece of scholarly flexibility, running the gamut (as does the original) from the solemn cadences of medieval piety to the cant and slang of the streets to the ribaldry that has always overlaid darker aspects of the Spanish character. This is the first translation available of the work of the man who has been called ""the Spanish Chaucer,"" ""the Spanish Boccaccio"" and, with more justification, ""the Spanish LaFontaine."" Hitherto, the book has been available only to those who read Spanish--and medieval Spanish, to boot. Scholars and students of medieval literature, as well as the libraries who serve that audience, will find Mr. Kane's translation a valuable contribution.