Early in my academic career, I naively believed that I was acquainted with most medieval and early modern works of Spanish literature. I was therefore surprised to come across one that I had not heard of, in the Cancionero de obras de burlas prouocātes a risa (Anthology of Mocking Songs that Incite Us to Laughter). This collection, which contained most of the bawdy poems of the Cancionero general, included the only known copy of Carajicomedia, which, I soon learned, had been shunned by scholars, because it was one of the most sexually explicit poems in the language. The title, however, aroused my curiosity, because I believed that “carajo” functioned primarily as an intensifying expletive in expressions as varied as “¡Vete al carajo!” (Go to hell!), “¡Estás hecho un carajo!” (You are a mess!), “¡No me importa un carajo!” (I don't care one whit!), “¡No entiendo un carajo!” (I don't understand a thing about it!), “¡No vale un carajo!” (It is not worth anything!). I wondered therefore how a word devoid of intrinsic meaning could be considered a profanity.

The problem—I quickly realized—was not with the word but with me. In most of Latin America, “carajo” had lost its meaning. Not so in Spain, where most people commonly knew that it means “prick,” even though its use was as malleable as in Latin America. No one who has read Carajicomedia in either hemisphere, however, can fail to realize that the title means “Prickcomedy” or “Cockcomedy,” and that it refers exclusively to that part of the male anatomy which, together with “coño” (cunt), are the most frequently-used Spanish swear words.

My initial puzzlement solved, it was followed by other, thornier questions. Carajicomedia, I discovered, was a little-known parody of Juan de Mena's very famous but now utterly unfashionable El Laberinto de Fortuna (1444, The Labyrinth of Fortune), a vision poem told by a character called Mena, which described a dream-voyage to Heaven. Intrigued, I wanted to know more about the parody and its source text. Specifically, what, about Mena's work, had triggered it? Was it a satire as well, and if so, of what type, by whom, and of whom? Because Carajicomedia was anonymous, these questions proved to be difficult to answer.