Don Yllan and the Egyptian sorcerer: Vernacular commonality and literary diversity in medieval Castile

In this article the author compares the exemplo of Don Yllan and the Dean de Santiago -no. 11 in Don Juan Manuel's Conde Lucanor (ca. 1335)- with an earlier Hebrew analogue found in the Hebrew Mesal Haqadmoni(ca. 1285) of fellow Castilian author Isaac ibn Sahula. A thorough analysis of the rhetorical and narrative style of both versions reveals that the two tales shared a common source in Castilian oral tradition. The appearance of the tale in an earlier Hebrew text from Castile (the only other known version in any language) calls into question the originality of Don Juan Manuel's most famous exemplo, suggesting a productive interplay between a common oral tradition in Castilian and coexisting literary traditions in Hebrew and Castilian.