JUAN MANUEL, DON (1282-1349), infante of Castile, son of the infante Don Manuel and Beatrix of Savoy and grand son of St. Ferdinand, born at Escalona, May 5,1282. A favourite of Sancho IV., he served in his twelfth year as adelantado mayor of Murcia against the Moors at Granada. In 1304 he successfully conducted political negotiations with James II. of Aragon on be half of Ferdinand IV., then under age ; his marriage with James II.'s daughter, Constantina, added to his prestige. Regent until the proclamation of Alphonso XI.'s majority (1325), his ambi tious designs of continuing in power were defeated by the king, who married Constanza, his daughter, and removed Juan Manuel from the scene by nominating him adelantado mayor de la fron tera. Alphonso XJ.'s repudiation of Constanza led to civil war. Don Juan Manuel (whose wife Constantina died in 1327) married Dofia Blanca de la Cerda, secured the support of Juan Nunez, alferez of Castile, won over Portugal by promising the hand of the ex-queen Constanza to its infante, and entered into alliance with Mahomet III. of Granada. Faced by this formidable coali tion, Alphonso XI. sued for terms in 1328. War speedily broke out anew, and lasted till 1331, when Alphonso XI. invited Juan Manuel and Juan Nunez to a banquet with the intention, it was believed, of assassinating them; the plot failed and Juan Manuel joined forces with Peter IV. of Aragon. Besieged by Alphonso XI. at Garci-Nuliez, he escaped on July 3o, 1336, fled into exile, and kept the rebellion alive till 1338, when he made his peace with the king. He proved his loyalty by serving in further expe ditions against the Moors of Granada and Africa, and died a tranquil death in Distinguished as an astute politician, Don Juan Manuel is an author of the highest eminence and, considering the circumstances of his stormy life, his voluminousness is remarkable. Setting aside the works that have disappeared—Libro de los Sabios, Libro de Engeflos, Reglas de como se debe trobar, Libro de los Cantares (all written before 1329), Libro de la Caballeria (c. 1320-1322)— there remain the Cronica abreviada (c. 132o-1324), the Libro de la Caza (c. 1325-1326), the Libro del Caballero et del Escudero, the Libro de los Estados (133o), El Conde Lucanor (1328-1335), a devout Tractado on the Virgin (dedicated to the prior of Pena fiel Monastery, to which Juan Manuel bequeathed his manu scripts), the Libro de los Castigos, Libro infenido (c. 1334), Las
Maneras de Amor and the Libro de las Arms, both about '337.
The historical summaries, pious dissertations and miscellaneous writings are of secondary interest. The Libro del Caballero et del Escudero is on another plane ; it is no doubt suggested by Lull's Libre del orde de Cavalleria, but the morbid mysticism of Lull is rejected and the carefully finished style justifies the special pride which the author took in this performance. The influence of Lull's Blanquerna is likewise visible in the Libro de los Estados, but the marked divergences of substance prove Juan Manuel's acquaintance with some version of the Barlaam and Josaphat legend. Nothing is more striking than the curious and varied erudition of the turbulent prince who weaves his personal experi ences with historical or legendary incidents, with reminiscences of Aesop and Phaedrus, with the Disciplina clericalis, with Kalilali and Dimnah, with countless oriental traditions and with all the material of anecdotic literature which he embodies in El Conde Lucanor (or Libro de Patronio). This work, printed in 1575, revealed Juan Manuel as a master of prose composition, and as the predecessor of Boccaccio in the province of romantic narrative.
A conscious artist, deliberative and selective in his methods, Juan Manuel has not Boccaccio's festive fancy nor his construc tive skill ; he is too persistently didactic ; but he excels in knowl edge of human nature, in the faculty of ironical presentation, in tolerant wisdom and in luminous conciseness. He naturalizes the eastern apologue in Spain, and by the laconic picturesqueness of his expression imparts a new quality into Spanish prose. Lope de Vega, Ruiz de Alarcon and Calderon drew on his themes for dramatic purposes, and there is an evident, though remote, relation between Enxemplo. xxxv. and The Taming of the Shrew; and a more direct connection exists between some of the enxemplos and some of Andersen's fairy tales.
See Obras, ed. P. de Gayangos (1857) ; El Conde Lucanor, ed. H. Knust and A. Birch-Hirschfeld (Leipzig, 1900) ; El Libro de la Caza, ed. G. Baist (Halle, 188o) ; El Libro del Caballero y del Escudero, ed. S. Grafenberg (Romanische Forschungen, vii., 1893) ; J. B. Trend, Introd. to Count Lucanor . . . trans. J. York, 1868 (1924).