Reflections About Merlín's Ignorance in the Baladro from Burgos

Abstract

The Baladro from Burgos (1498) is a Castilian translation of the Merlin section of the Old French Post Vulgate Arthurian cycle. This section, formed by a prose rendering of the poem Merlin by Robert de Boron and a sequel usually known as Suite du Merlin, tells the whole story of the famous wizard, from his conception by the devil in a virtuous maiden until his death at the hand of a treacherous teenager called Niviana. Even though that demonic condition, God gives Merlin the gift of prophecy, which allows him to know past, present, and future events. Since such «omniscience» might be an obstacle to his fatal ending, the text deriving from the Suite improvises a new ignorance whose limits the protagonist himself describes: «yo sé grand parte de las cosas que atañen a mi vida e a mi muerte; mas de las cosas que tañen para me guardar, soy tan tollido por encantamento, que no sé darme consejo». This article will examine the characteristics of Merlin’s ignorance in the Baladrofrom Burgos by focusing both on the episodes that declare it un ambiguously, and those in which it is an implicit condition for the coherence of the plot.