El Conde Lucanor

Don Juan Manuel

5 ideas

1. Don Illán tests the dean's gratitude

   A dean of Santiago asks the Toledo magician Don Illán to teach him necromancy and promises lifelong reward. Don Illán orders partridges for supper, then conjures an illusion in which the dean rises to bishop, cardinal and pope, and at each step denies Don Illán the promised favour, finally threatening him with prison. The spell breaks, the dean is back in the room with the partridges still uncooked, and he is sent away without either the teaching or the supper, having revealed that he repays benefactors with ingratitude once he no longer needs them.

2. Swindler weavers and the invisible cloth

   Three impostors tell a Moorish king they can weave cloth that is invisible to anyone not truly the son of his presumed father. Courtiers and the king himself pretend to see the cloth for fear of exposing their own illegitimacy, and the king rides out through the city naked. Only a Black groom, who has no inheritance or status to lose, says the king is naked, and the pretence collapses.

3. Every choice draws criticism, so ignore critics

   In the tale of the farmer, his son and their donkey, passers-by condemn every arrangement: both walking, the son riding, the father riding, both riding. The claim is that criticism is inevitable whatever you do, so a decision should be judged on its merits and your own reasoned view of your interest, not on public opinion that will attack any option.

4. Imagined gains versus things held

   Doña Truhana, carrying a jar of honey to market, imagines the eggs, chickens, sheep and wealth its sale will produce. She gestures in delight, drops the jar, and loses everything. The lens is to plan on what you actually hold and can secure, because absorption in a projected chain of future gains causes careless action in the present that destroys the base the chain depends on.

5. Counsel by analogous case, then maxim

   The Count acts on it, and the author condenses the lesson into a rhymed couplet. Advice is delivered as a parallel case the listener can check against his own reasoning, and the memorable maxim carries the lesson beyond that one occasion.

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