The Shame of Love in the Libro de buen amor

This article proposes that in the Libro de buen amor —especially in its central narrative, the much-discussed Doña Endrina and Don Melón episode—shame is not only coincidental but intrinsic to love, and critical for its consummation. My analysis focuses on the characters' emotional enactments to demonstrate that shame in this sequence operates according to two complementing emotional scripts. On the one hand, shame is an obstacle to love. On the other hand, shame is part of love, as evidenced by the characters' preoccupation with publicity, staggered speech, blushing, and averted eyes. By highlighting the centrality of shame in the poem's depiction of the amatory process, I show how medieval conceptions of love were intertwined with and mediated through emotions like shame.