In the Doorway of All Worlds

The thirteenth-century poet Gonzalo de Berceo is the first named author of Old Spanish letters and the most prolific contributor to the emergence of the body of learned vernacular verse known as the mester de clerecía. In the Doorway of All Worlds focuses on the four hagiographies Berceo produced as a unified body of poetic expression and world-building. Robin M. Bower traces the poet’s intricate juxtaposition of contraries to shed light on a poetic world that will innovate a deceptively simple