WRITING AUTHORITY IN LATE MEDIEVAL ... - Cornell University

other words, the Revolution created a space by which a subject could act as if he was a king and
yet not take over the role of the king. Enrique’s discourse allowed his populace to believe that
the symbol of authority was not necessarily grounded in its proper exercise.
The silence surrounding the Revolution’s role in Ayala’s portrait now becomes clear: the
Revolution had disconnected the symbol of authority from its praxis, and in turn, it had created a
space in which “authority” need not be voiced through traditional discourse. As a consequence, if
Ayala had “abtoridad,” Guzmán need not show it through accurate “relatos” ‘tales’ of the
Chancellor’s actions but by making the reader disconnect the image of Ayala from his real self.
Guzmán, taking up the Trastamaran discourse that defined the events of 1369, placed the
Chancellor’s most life changing experiences under erasure, because the reader’s idea of
“authority” relied on disassociating the representation of events from their objective reality.
6. True Feelings: Apathy and Experience
From this it is not entirely clear that the Revolution’s political discourse had such a direct
influence over fifteenth-century literary discourse and over Guzmán’s writing strategies. In fact,
Guzmán’s silence over the tumultuous change of power in 1369 could be nothing other than
simply self-interested survival. Given the precarious state of his political exile, it would not have
been wise for him to recall the last Revolution and deposition of a monarch. Further, although
the change in power certainly meant something for the nobility, clergy, and populace who lost
their lives and that of their king in it, it is not clear that such an emotion could be translated as a
writing strategy eighty years later. Politicians will be politicians—even if they are medieval
Christian politicians—and their failure or success in carrying out the “revolutionary” wishes of
the populace which put them in power should not be considered a reflection of their impact to
posterity.
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