The Book of Good Love

"The words of good love are secret words...', he wrote. But Juan Ruiz revealed them to the world. Love is the life-giving spirit, the axle on which the world turns. The infinite tenderness of God for His creation; the Christian's yearning for his Lord. Yet following - at times parodying - this heavenly model, comes the love between women and men. Desires ethereal, ardent - even animalistic: The Book of Good Love honours them all. Spiritual and scurrilous, romantic and rumbustious: Juan Ruiz's enormous technical versatility is matched by his astonishing variety of tone. Arabic, Jewish and Christian influences jostled and intermingled in the heaving crucible of fourteenth-century Spain. In the Archpriest's incomparable masterpiece, this culture found unforgettable voice, heard here as if for the first time in Elizabeth Drayson MacDonald's dazzling new translation. The most comprehensive paperback edition available, with introduction, notes, selected criticism, text summary and