Name: Teresa (Cortabota)

Description:

A prostitute named Teresa—described in the rubric of ID1624, PN1-499, as a "woman from León who was wicked and a whore"—is the protagonist of a poetic exchange with Martín el Ciego, in which Fray Diego de Valencia also participates. In the first text, Fray Diego alludes to her profession using two terms of lexical interest: *mundaria*—a word derived from *mundo* (Corominas/Pascual 1980–91, s.v. *mundo*) used to designate a public prostitute—and *focaria*, a Latinism undocumented in other sources, the translation of which the poet himself provides ("or 'great whore' in Latin," v. 17). In the text concluding the exchange (ID1626, PN1-500)—which is corrupted, as the text by Martín el Ciego to which it responds has been lost—the prostitute speaks through Fray Diego de Valencia: she does not deny practicing the profession but vehemently rejects the term *puta de costumería* used by her attacker. For Dutton and González Cuenca (1993: 342) and López Quero (2011), the expression alludes to a brothel prostitute; Proia (2017: 178), however, proposes the meaning "natural" or "by habit," suggesting that her grievance might stem from confusion with *mancebía* (licensed brothel) prostitutes or from the accusation of practicing the trade as an innate trait.

In the exchange, she is referred to by the nickname Cortabota, and Fray Diego calls her *andariega y mentiral* ("roamer and liar"), suggesting that she did not ply her trade within the confines of a *mancebía* or brothel. Her response also contains a reference to the distinctive clothing that legal statutes mandated for such women ("for I wear the emblem of this livery," v. 20; cf. the *Ordenamiento de Toledo* of 1442, Sáez 1945: 613) and does not categorically deny the accusation of being a bearded woman—a trait associated with lust at the time (Sanz Hermida 1994: 19). This is one of those instances where the female voice speaks in direct discourse within the *Cancionero*, albeit through the mediation of a male poet.

  Bibliographie:

• Caíño Carballo, Ana (2026), «Mugeres de rueca e fuso: la representación de la mujer como minoría social y cortesana en los versos del Cancionero de Baena», Revista de poética medieval, 40: 201-224.

Quoted in:

Cancionero de Baena (Dutton PN1); Dutton, Brian y Joaquín González Cuenca, eds., Cancionero de Juan Alfonso de Baena, Madrid, Visor, 1993. In BDTEA (Biblioteca Digital de Textos del Español Antiguo. Textos Poéticos Españoles).

• ID1624, PN1-499, «Teresa, pues tienes fama» (BDTEA).
• ID1626, PN1-500, «Cata, Martín Çiego, en toda manera» (BDTEA)

Quoted by:

• Fray Diego de Valencia (ID1624; ID1626, he yields the floor).
• Martín the Blind (in a lost text, inferable from the response).

   

(Ana Caíño Carballo. CITATION)

   

Rewritings:

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