It’s a Man’s World: Women and Movement in Juan Manuel’s Works

In medieval Iberian literature, movement and travel are linked to various forms of power, including social mobility and self-determination, but women’s access to travel is severely restricted. This is reflected in Juan Manuel’s works, but his literary depictions of women and movement vary across genres. The exemplary El conde Lucanor follows a strict gender paradigm in which mobile women are punished, while the historical Libro de las tres razones shows how women use travel and movement to obtain power. This article illustrates how Juan Manuel's experiments with historiography break with gender paradigms to generate new models of exemplary medieval women.