The "Mester de Clerecia"
Intellectuals and Ideologies in Thirteenth-century Castile

In the thirteenth century, profound changes in Spanish society drove the invention of fresh poetic forms by the new clerical class. The author challenges the didactic approach to the verse, in an attempt to historicize the category of the intellectual, as someone caught in the duality of the worlds of contingency and absolute values.

Julian Weiss is Professor of Medieval and Early Modern Spanish at King's College London.