Medieval Literature: Lyric Poetry and Clergy
Personality and Character of El Cid
Almost all characters are grouped in factions. The character of El Cid projects the image of a great hero, unjustly fallen. Until the recovery of his lost honor and heritage, he, part of the lower nobility, acts like a man of great personality, nobler than most of the aristocracy. His fame is rooted in the exercise of his virtues and heroic behavior. The portrait of the protagonist of the song gives us the ideal image of a man driven by the springs of moderation, loyalty to the King, religion, strategic intelligence, courage, physical strength, solidarity with his people, and even humor. The triumphant warrior myth extends to family life, where El Cid is shown as a gentle and sensitive man, capable of expressing the highest love for his wife Ximena and his two daughters, as well as for honor and fighting.
Characteristics of Courtly Love
A feeling that must be cultivated, a childhood thirst for love, and pious devotion of the lover for his beloved, whom he considers superior and admirable, and whom he views from below, as a servant to his lord. This queen cannot qualify as a married woman, which makes the lover come to unrequited love. Despite being an almost always unrequited love, sometimes it is, and if so, it must be taken in secret, with the utmost discretion. It would still produce great happiness and bliss in the lover, who feels transformed by it. Provençal lyric poetry is written to be sung, accompanied by instruments and musical melodies. Like epic, it is directed to an audience that listens, but unlike it, this is a fine and rigorous art, so difficult that it requires extensive literary and musical training, typical of a high school.
His name is *canso*, or song, this love poetry, poets and troubadours composed to the courts. It expresses love. Epic and Provençal lyric poetry emerge as an anonymous art.
Galician-Portuguese Lyric
It has come to us in manuscript form and through *Cancioneiros*, which are collections of poems called *cantigas*. There are three types:
- The *cantiga de amor* (love song) expresses courtly love, put into the mouth of a man. An imitation of Provençal courtly lyric, it worships nature and has a complex strophic composition.
- *Cantigas de maldizer* (songs of cursing), essentially rooted in popular, witty satires, are used as darts to berate someone, giving the channel its own cunning and genius.
- *Cantigas de amigo* (friend songs): the most famous love poems, about absence, are put into the mouths of women. They have their roots in folk and traditional poetry, with which, despite their popular origin and less technical complexity, they also borrow some elements of characteristically Provençal poetry. The structure of the *cantigas de amigo* is parallel.
Literature and the Clergy
The *mester de clerecía* is the art or craft of the clergy. The literature of the clergy arises when the *mester de juglaría* (minstrelsy) is still in full swing. The clergy typically has characteristics of minstrelsy, and other objects in many ways, such as in metrics. The term “cleric” in the Middle Ages includes both the religious profession and the writer and intellectual in general.
Metrics
Unlike the poets of minstrelsy, the clergy of the *mester de clerecía* exhibit metric regularity. In their works, they mostly use the *cuaderna vía*, a four-line stanza composed of Alexandrian verses divided into two hemistiches and with the same consonant rhyme. However, poets of the clergy of the fourteenth century incorporated new meters and stanzas into their works to give them greater range and expressiveness.