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Florencia Pinar is one of the most arresting and imaginative poets to have been active in fifteenth-century Spain. Yet, rather than focus on questions of poetic ability, and in particular, her strident and provocative use of imagery, critics have all too commonly essentialized her status as a woman, engaging in a reductive and anachronistic process of interpretation in which she has effectively been reformulated as the mouthpiece of twentieth-century feminist protest. In this article, which offers an extended reading of “Ell amor ha tales mañas,” the focus of attention falls on Pinar’s achievements as a poet and her manipulation of tradition. Specific attention is afforded to her daring reappropriation of the gusano, a symbol most commonly explored in works focusing on death and judgement, and the parallel reference to cancer, which enables the composition to explore the poetics of abject embodiment. The article concludes by suggesting that rather than read Pinar in our image, we should instead laud her ability to tap into universal human fears concerning the horrors of bodily invasion and the inevitability of death.
