See Badia 1993a: 278. «Per a Corella l'amor passió i l'amor humà en general és indiscriminadament un mal, exactament al contrari del que sostenia una determinada ètica trobadoresca i cortesa, la que informa una novel·la com la Flamenca i la que arriba fins a escriptors locals com ara Jordi de Sant Jordi» (Badia 1993a: 280, n. 20). Corella excludes therefore «les pretensions dels poetes de la fina amor que, com a "insensats alquimistes", confonen el plom vil de l'amor humana, amb l'or puríssim de l'amor vertadera, és a dir divina» (Badia 1993a: 277).

«La Tragèdia de Caldesa, en realitat, gira entorn d'un nucli líric: els 28 estramps que diu el jo protagonista, seguits dels 14 que diu Caldesa. La prosa exclamativo-narrativo-descriptiva que els precedeix no és altra cosa que una preparació, una justificació, una contextualització a la manera de les razos dels antics cançoners». These lines reveal «la seva militància d'amant desenganyat». The razos «són a la base de la Vita nuova, i per tant, de la novel·lització i de la sentimentalització de l'experiència lírica dels trobadors» (Badia 1993b: 88).

We should remember that this genre, linked with sentimental fiction, includes works like Dante's Vita nuova, Guillaume de Machaut's Voir-dit, Froissart's Prison amoureuse or, as a parody, Juan Ruiz's Libro de buen amor. These are the features of erotic pseudo-autobiography, according to Gybbon-Monnypenny as quoted by Deyermond (1986: 85): «1. Each is written in the spirit of Courtly Love, and from the viewpoint of the Courtly lover. 2. In each the protagonist is definitely identified with the author by name, and in four out of the six, by the mention of people and incidents as historically verifiable. 3. The author presents himself in a heroic and sympathetic light, if not always as a triumphant lover (in Courtly Love the lover's conduct is more important than his success or failure). 4. Each author quotes a number of his own lyric poems, interpolated at intervals in the narrative» (Gybbon-Monnypenny 1957: 70-71). Corella's work follows all rules, including rule 2. Starting with its most complete title (Tragèdia raonant un cas afortunat que ab una dama li esdevenc, where li seems to be clearly presumed to be the author himself) Corella chose to keep an ambiguity which caused such expert scholars as Rubió i Balaguer (1984: 406-07) and Riquer (1964, III: 294) to misjudge the Tragèdia as a true confession.

As to the Catalan tradition, it would be an interesting task to study correspondences between Metge's Lo somni (1398-99), Corella's Tragèdia and Roig's Espill (c. 1460). All three works are written as ambiguous pseudo-autobiographies; all three protagonists are presented as fools of love tricked by women, and all three are disappointed, either by words (Tiresias's in Lo somni) or by bitter self-experiences (Espill, Tragèdia), which confers greater strength to the lesson they teach. Disillusionment, «l'actitud davant de l'amor que proposa Corella, s'assembla molt a la que Metge es resisteix a adoptar a Lo somni» (Badia 1993a: 279 n. 13). As to Roig, he would have started, or was soon going to start, his Espill: was he influenced by his stylistic opposite? In another Corellan work, Lo juí de Paris, its author proposes, as a remedy for the disenchantment suffered at the hands of women, to keep away from them; this is the same monastic message as that of the misogynous Espill (Badia 1988: 166). Furthermore all three works took place during the medieval Catalan literary debate on women, with Roig against them, Metge keeping a diplomatic fifty-fifty position and Corella producing an original profeminist work, the Triunfo de les dones. So Corella in his works does not particularly blame women, but the frailty of human love as a whole. On the literary women's debate in these authors, see Cantavella 1992a, 1992b, 1994. On the Triunfo see Martínez forthcoming a and b.

These are distinctive elements shared with the Castilian sentimental romance according to the features Professor Deyermond identified (1986: 28-29). Furthermore «el desenlace de todas estas obras es desdichado, ya que se da en ellas o bien una frustración desesperante o la consumación del amor que desemboca en la catástrofe» (Deyermond 1976: 294). See also on this genre Carmelo Samonà's words: «donde hay amor el escándalo es inminente» (apud Deyermond 1980: 379). Deyermond is now finishing a book (presented in 1995) from a broader, European outlook. However Corella's Tragèdia is atypical with regard to the Castilian pattern (which for example could allow the plot to narrate chivalric episodes), but they are all related, not least due to their common sources.

«El detall final de l'escriptura amb sang i concretament la formulació "la present ab ma pròpia sang pinte" fan pensar en rastres de ficció epistolar» (Badia 1993b: 85). Turró (1987: 40-49) considers the Tragèdia in the framework of other Catalan sentimental prose from the Jardinet d'orats.

For this reason, Rubió i Balaguer considered this plot as «boccaccesca, si les tintes no resultessin tan fosques» (1984: 407). Riquer thought it should reflect a real fact as it was such a feeble plot (1964, III: 294). As to Fuster, he frankly calls Corella «el cornut més insigne de la literatura catalana» (1968: 309).

The former excerpt is from MS La (c. 1500; Brook 1993: 80, q. 24). The latter is from incunabulum FII (c. 1479, Klein 1911: 126, q. 4). The demandes d'amour appear collected in repertories usually in miscellaneous books from the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, filling in space between longer works. The only surviving Catalan collection of demandes (Pagès 1927-28), of which I am preparing a new edition, dates from c. 1400. As it seems, the demandes were a kind of society game which every cultivated person should know, giving the right solution for every gallant situation. They were also connected with love judgements (like those included in De Amore, or like the quistioni d'amore game in Boccaccio's Filocolo), also with the subject-matter of many Occitan and French jeux partis and with the fifteenth-century European literary debates. For the Hispanic field debates, see Cummins (1965) and more recently Chas (1995: forthcoming). Many of these subjects appear in lists of demandes d'amour.

I wish to thank Professor Lola Badia and Dr. Josep Pujol for their useful suggestions. This work has been produced within the scheme of research GV 3110/95 sponsored by the autonomous Valencian Government.