Frank A. Domínguez eHumanista: Volume 7, 2006 1 Monkey Business in Carajicomedia: The Parody of Fray Ambrosio Montesino as “Fray Bugeo” Frank A. Domínguez University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill Carajicomedia, 1 an anonymous parodic poem of 92 stanzas 2 published in 1519, tells the story of Diego Fajardo, an old man who has lost his sexual potency and searches for its restoration. The poem is attributed to a fictional author called Fray Bugeo Montesino, but it is filtered through the hands of an anonymous glosser who claims to have “corrected” Carajicomedia. However, both putative authors are probably the creation of the same person. 3 This paper reveals why that person attributes the poem to someone named Fray “Bugeo” Montesino. Carajicomedia begins with a letter to a “muy magnifico ſeñor” describing the circumstances under which the glosser found the poem: “Como vn dia entre otros muchos oradores me hallaſe en la copioſa libreria del colegio del ſeñor ſant eſtrauagante / donde al preſente reſido leyendo vnos ſermones del deuoto padre fray Bugeo monteſino. Halle la preſente obra que eſte Reuerendo padre copilo para ſu recreacion deſpues que corregio el Cartuxano” (Varo 98). 4 Based on the information in this letter, scholars have rightly concluded that Fray Ambrosio Montesino (1444?- 1512 / 13) is the person parodized as Fray Bugeo. Besides sharing a common last name, Fray Ambrosio wrote several works that the poem attributes to Fray Bugeo. In 1502 / 1503, he published a translation of Landulphus of Saxony’s Vita Christi titled Vita cristi cartuxano romanaçado por fray Ambrosio, which was known as “el Cartuxano.” He also wrote some sermons that were later included in a 1525 edition of another of his translations, Epistolas y evangelios por todo el año (1512; Álvarez 1 Carajicomedia is the last composition in the Cancionero de obras de burlas prouocantes a risa (1519), an anthology of satiric verse by various authors that reprints most of the poems of the last section of the Cancionero general (1511) of Hernando del Castillo. It was printed for the first and only time in this edition, which survives in a unique exemplar kept in the British Library (C.20.b.22). 2 A continuation attributed to Fray Juan de Hempudia (Stanzas 93-117) follows Carajicomedia proper, but contains no glosses and is probably by a different author. I treat Hempudia in a forthcoming article entitled “La parodia del traductor y de la traducción en Carajicomedia: Fray Ambrosio Montesino y Fray Juan de Hempudia.” 3 The anonymous glosser is supposedly responsible for the poem’s dedication, the prose commentaries that “identify” the people about whom Fray Bugeo writes, and some “emendations” of Carajicomedia’s language. The immediate target of the parody appears to be Hernán Núñez’s edition of Laberinto de Fortuna of Juan de Mena (1499), which the author of Carajicomedia probably used. But, whereas Mena’s poem was glossed by Núñez, the glosses of Carajicomedia mock the practice of writing glosses to one’s own work in order to confer “auctoritas” on the text (Weiss 117-29), as is the case also with Satira de infelice e infelice vida of Dom Pedro of Portugal (Agnew). 4 Although the transcription of the text is from my forthcoming edition of Carajicomedia, the original can be consulted in facsimilar form in Varo. All quotes from Carajicomedia quote the text of my edition but are referenced to Varo’s facsimile.