Lyric Poetry in Medieval Spain: From Provençal Influences to the Cancioneros
Lyric Poetry in Medieval Spain
Knowledgeable Lirica Catalana
Originating in 12th-century Provence, troubadour poetry arrived in Catalonia in the 13th century. This lyric poetry, collected in nearly 100 songbooks, was the work of known authors and expressed in a cultivated and homogenous language. Troubadours sang their compositions, which were also performed by juglares (traveling entertainers).
The troubadours created a fine and difficult art form subject to rigid laws. Versification was based on syllable count, and rhyme schemes were strictly consonant.
Sorts of Provencal poetry
The troubadours cultivated two main genres: the canso and the sirventes:
- Canso: A composition by a man in love with a woman, always reflecting feudal ideology.
- Sirventes: (To criticize someone) This composition was used as an expression of anger, personal attack, literary or moral polemic, and repression.
The Conception of Courtly Love
Courtly love was the art of courtesy, and love was understood as service to the lady, who was considered superior. The lover undergoes four stages:
- Feñedor (Not yet daring to express his feelings)
- Precador (He expresses his feelings)
- Connoisseur (His love is requited)
- Drude (He becomes her lover)
Lirica Culta Galician-Portuguese
This genre is divided into three main categories: the Cancionero Latinoamericano, ballads of love (cantigas de amor), and songs of ridicule (cantigas de escarnio e maldizer).
Cantigas de Amor
Influenced by troubadour poetry brought by pilgrims to Santiago de Compostela, these songs are heirs to the Provençal canso, both in their lexicon and themes. In these love songs, the joy of loving becomes weary sadness and torment, and love and death are equated. Natural elements are not present; the setting is urban, often palatial. They present a wide and artificial metric and a complex strophic division.
Galician-Portuguese lyric poetry also includes songbooks of jokes and religious songs.
Songbook of Ridicule
This category includes two types of mocking songs: satires of a personal character and songs of cursing, which are direct attacks on groups or individuals.
Cancionero Latinoamericano
This songbook consists of the Cantigas de Santa Maria, works by King Alfonso X the Wise. The verses vary between 2 and 24 syllables, emphasizing the Alexandrine verse.
Lirica Learned Arabic and Hebrew
In the 10th and 11th centuries, two kinds of strophic poems appeared in Al-Andalus: the muwassaha and the zajal. The fundamental theme of both compositions is love, often homosexual. The setting is typically urban, with references to the flora and fauna characteristic of Al-Andalus.
The Muwassaha
Originally written in classical Arabic, the muwassaha soon incorporated classical Hebrew. The last stanza ended with verses called jarchas.
The Zajal
The zajal was written in an Arabic dialect and lacked the jarcha.
Lirica Primitive Popular
This category includes jarchas, cantigas de amigo, and villancicos.
Jarcha
The jarchas are verses that concluded the muwassaha. Composed in vernacular Arabic or Hebrew, most jarchas are from Al-Andalus. They consist of four lines, typically six or eight syllables long, with predominantly consonant rhyme. The theme is almost always love: a young lover expresses her suffering to her mother, sisters, or friends in an urban setting. They are characterized by their simplicity and minimal use of expressive resources. A characteristic feature is the mention of the beloved through the noun habib.
Cantigas de Amigo
In these Galician-Portuguese songs, the speaker is a woman in love who expresses her feelings to her mother, sister, or friends. Nature takes on extreme importance, unlike in the cantigas de amor. The cantigas de amigo present a popular language and a concrete glossary. Their monorhyme stanza, followed by a monorhyme chorus, uses parallelism as its main stylistic resource.
Villancicos
In Castile, these poems were composed with opening lines called villancicos. The most common theme is love, aligning them with the jarchas and cantigas de amigo: a girl in love laments her situation. The setting is rural, with water often playing a significant role. Villancicos often lack adjectives and feature a predominance of verbs of motion, diminutives, hortatory and optative sentences, repetitions, and parallels.
Cancionero Poetry
This type of poetry emerged in the early 15th century. The name cancionero refers to the songbooks in which these compositions were collected. There are two main types:
Cantigas
These short poems were intended to be sung and usually followed a fixed form. They had an amorous theme, consisting of a cabeza (expressing the motive of the composition) and a vuelta (a change or turn in the poem).
Decires
These were longer compositions (lyric or narrative) composed of an indeterminate number of stanzas and intended for reading. From the mid-century onwards, they were called coplas.
Amorous Poetry
The main theme of cancionero lyric is love, and its lexicon and ideology are rooted in courtly love. Metaphors express the subjugation of the gentleman to the lady, and love is also related to war and religion. Descriptions of the lady are often limited to her eyes and heart. In many cases, there is an undercurrent of eroticism.
Moral and Religious Poetry
Cancionero poetry also addressed issues related to the instability of the 15th century. Some poems criticized the abuses of groups or individuals, others condemned the world in general, and a third group advocated a stoic attitude (of strength and self-control). Religious poetry criticized corruption and laxity of manners, including themes of joy, sorrow, and praise of the Virgin Mary. In the last quarter of the century, the figure of Christ became more prominent.
Great Poets of the 15th Century
The first half of the 15th century saw the rise of two major figures: the Marques de Santillana and Juan de Mena. In the second half, Jorge Manrique emerged as a prominent figure.
Marques de Santillana (Íñigo López de Mendoza)
His work includes moral poetry (Proverbs, Dialogue Between Bias and Fortune), political and allegorical narratives, and serranillas. The serranillas, which depict encounters between a knight and a shepherdess, stand out for their contrasting characters from different social strata.
Juan de Mena
Author of love poems characterized by their intellectual tone and artful style, his most outstanding work is”Labyrinth of Fortune” dedicated to King Juan II. This long poem uses dodecasyllabic verse and complex syntax and vocabulary.
Jorge Manrique
The greatest representative of Castilian lyric poetry in the 15th century. As a cancionero poet, he cultivated love poetry and burlesque, but his masterpiece is the elegiac poem”Verses on the Death of His Father”
Verses on the Death of His Father
This poem consists of 40 stanzas of coplas manriqueñas, a type of stanza named after the poet. Each copla manriqueña has 12 lines following the rhyme scheme 8a 8b 4c 8a 8b 4c 8d 8e 4f 8d 8e 4f. The work can be divided into two parts: the first, encompassing the first 24 stanzas, is of a general nature; the second (the remaining 16 stanzas) exalts the figure of the author’s father, Don Rodrigo Manrique.
Manriqueño Style
The style employed by Jorge Manrique in his Coplas, characterized by its naturalness, is deeply innovative. He replaced the high style of earlier poetry with a humble style, giving prominence to sententious pronouncements. He employed metaphors and images related to death and the ubi sunt? theme (a medieval trope lamenting the passing of worldly things and great figures of the past). Rhetorical questions are also common.
Topics in the Coplas: Death
Death is presented as a vengeful and ruthless character, possessing an equalizing power against which resistance is futile. Manrique does not describe death with macabre features but presents it as a minister of God.
Fame and Eternal Life
Fame, acquired through deeds in this life, contributes to the blessed enjoyment one will have in the afterlife. Thanks to the good works done in his earthly life and the fame gained by them, Don Rodrigo overcomes death and achieves eternal life.