With the end of the thirteenth and the begin ning of the the fourteenth century the use of the cuaderna via began to yield to prose in didactic composition. Contemporary with this change appeared the first true poet in Spanish literature, Juan Ruiz, who is known as the Archpriest of Mtn. He belonged to the reign of Alfonso XI. (1312-50). and he was impris oned by his superiors because of his evil life; but, like the French poet Villon, he sang with the true note of passion. In his Cantares (called by him El libro de linen. amor) he recounts his erotic adventures, interspersing here and there many fa bles, descriptions of his disputes with Love (Don Amor), an account of a lesson which Venus, wife of Don Amor, gave him, etc.
Spanish prose, at first clumsy and labored, ear liest appeared in law codes and official docu ments. The first use of Spanish prose for chron icle purposes is seen in the two Anales Toledanos put together before 3250. Between 1217 and 3223 were written certain genealogies and translations from Latin chroniclers were made in following years. Under the direction of Saint Ferdinand was begun the encyclopedic Septenario, which his son, Alfonso, completed, and there was planned a codification of Castilian laws. The prose thus formed, employed largely for didactic and his torical works, was applied to fiction in the framework tales of Juan Manuel. Alfonso X., the Wise, wrote, or had written under his direc tion, many works dealing with the science of the time. Great value attaches to the so-called Cr&Ilea. general, in which, availing himself of earlier Latin chronicles, he dealt with the history of his land from the earliest times down to the period of his own accession.
Moralizing works and collections of sententious sayings drawn from Arabic sources or written in imitation of them became rife both in Alfonso's time and in the ensuing period. One of the Arabic moral anthologies thus introduced into Spanish was the very popular Bocados de oro, which lived on in the poetical aphorisms of Sem Tob and Santillana.
Sancho (V. (1234-95), the successor of Alfonso X., inherited his father's love for letters, and by his direction there were prepared translations from Latin, French, and Provencal. The interest ing translation, the (Iran eongvista de Ultramar, dealing with the Crusades, preserves the sub stance of French literary monuments now lost. This and other translations show a broadening interest in foreign literature, further exemplified in an early fourteenth-century version of the prose Tristan. To the first half of the same cen tury may be ascribed the first independent exam ple of Spanish prose fiction, the Caballero Cifar, and possibly also the Amadis, for the chivalrous romance seems already to be beginning its long period of popular favor.
Literature was not especially favored by San cho's immediate successor, but a monarch of in tellectual force appeared again in Alfonso XL The most important of the works which were pre pared under his direction was a series of chron icles that should close the gap between his ow•n time and the period with which the Crdniea gene ral of Alfonso X. ended, a work which formed the basis of the Porno de Alfonso Xl. Don Juan Manuel (1282-3345), a nephew of Alfonso X., played a more direct part in the development of letters at this time, being, like his uncle, one of the greatest prose writers in early Span ish literature. The most interesting and impor tant of his many treatises is the famous frame work of tales called the Conde Lueanor o• Libro do Patron io, in which Count Lucanor, seeking ad vice from his tutor, Patronio, is answered by the latter with moralizing tales conveying the neces sary counsel. The contents of the fifty-one tales comprise historical or pseudo-historical elements relating to Spain, matters of personal experience, Arabic traditions, besides elements drawn from Pffirdrus. the Calila et Dimna, the Barlaan' story, and above all the general European stock of stories; and all are told in an original and unpretentious style.
With the middle of the fourteenth century, an artificial form of the lyric continuing the tradition of the Troubadour poetry of Galicia, and called Court poetry—because it was mainly cultivated by versifiers attached to the royal Court—began to take the place of importance formerly occupied by epic, religious, and didactic verse. There was a transition period of some duration, however, so that the greatest development of the Provencal ized lyric did not come until the reign of John II. (1407-54), and then there flourished by its side a humanistic literature bear ing the impress of the Renaissance move ment and an allegorical poetry that derived from the works of Dante and other Italian poets. As time went on, the Provencal Galician Court poetry passed out of vogue and the lyric measures of Italy became predominant everywhere through out Spain. Spanish prose, already given consider able flexibility by Alfonso the Wise and Juan Ma nuel, becomes in the second half of t-he fourteenth century the medium of translation from the class ics of antiquity, and, even more than the verse of this time, teems with Latinisms. Much more attractive than the verse already mentioned is the epic ballad, which was much cultivated dur ing the period preceding the Golden Age (1550 1700) of Spanish literature; here and there may be found examples of a charming popular lyric.