ABSTRACT
One of the more explicitly sexual moments in the fourteenth-century work Libro de buen amor (LBA), ostensibly written by Juan Ruiz, the Archpriest of Hita, exists in a short fabliau-esque parable known as the “Enxienplo de lo que conteçió a don Pitas Payas pintor de Bretaña.” This chapter performs a close reading of the story of Pitas Payas, thereby offering a nuanced reading of pornography given Michael Uebel’s explanation of the etymology of the term in the Dictionary of the Middle Ages, where the Greek pornographoi literally translates to “whore-painters.”
