Medieval Lyric Poetry in the Iberian Peninsula
Medieval Lyric
Until the fourteenth century, opera was eminently popular. It was transmitted orally, usually accompanied by music. The main themes addressed were love songs, usually from a female perspective. Cultured lyric samples are very rare in medieval Castilian, and poetry and songwriting were not collected until the fifteenth century. However, Galician, Catalan, and other Romance languages, as well as dialects of Provence, have a rich tradition of court poetry.
Traditional or Popular Lyric
The traditional or popular lyric has several common characteristics despite its different origins:
- Thematic and stylistic similarities between works from different eras and cultures.
- Transmission from generation to generation orally, usually in the form of songs and dances.
- Anonymous and collective authorship.
1. Mozarabic Lyric / Jarchas
The jarchas are one of the first examples of lyric poetry in the Iberian Peninsula. The oldest date from the tenth century, and some have been dated to the twelfth century. They are short and simple compositions with lyrics written in Mozarabic script (written with Hebrew or Arabic characters). Mozarabic was a Romance dialect (derived from Latin) with a strong Arabic influence, spoken by Christians living in the Muslim territory of the peninsula. It disappeared with the progress of the Reconquista, which hinders the interpretation of the jarchas.
Normally, jarchas are put into the mouth of a young woman who addresses either her habibi (loved one) or her closest female circle (mother, sisters, and friends). The main theme is love, and the songs of friends stand out. They are developed in the urban environment and show greater sensuality and daring by the protagonists.
Regarding form, they are compositions of two to seven lines with irregular, short, and occasionally rhyming assonant verses.
2. Galician-Portuguese Lyric / Cantiga de Amigo
According to their dominant theme, the cantigas de amigo are grouped into songs of pilgrimage (the encounter between the lovers takes place during a pilgrimage to a religious shrine), barcarolles (the beloved’s evocation relates to the sea), and dance songs (dance is associated with love).
3. Catalan Traditional Lyric
From its humble origins, present in forms such as the pastorela (meeting between a knight and a shepherdess) or the albada (songs in honor of the newlyweds or the farewell to the beloved the next morning), it becomes a refined and cultured type of poetry, created and sung by troubadours in the palace to entertain the great lords. This type of poetry spread the ideology of courtly love, a poetic game that establishes a parallel between the feudal lord-vassal relationship and the lover-lady relationship.
4. Castilian Traditional Lyric / Carols and Other Forms
Along with the carol, we find a variety of popular verses characterized by irregularity and parallelism. The carol is based on the repetition of the same refrain in each stanza of two monorhyming lines. There is a wide variety of topics, ranging from fieldwork (plowing, mowing, harvesting, grazing) to the subject par excellence of traditional lyric: love.
Within the theme of love, several recurring motifs appear in Castilian poetry: the description of the beloved emphasizing her eyes or hair, the love encounter during a pilgrimage, at dawn, or at a spring or river, the pains of love and its consequences, and protest songs with the theme of forced marriage or the rejection of becoming a nun.
Cultured Lyric
Cultured lyric expresses the emotions and feelings of a male voice and was inspired by courtly love: love is a force that causes suffering, a suffering that the poet-vassal welcomes with joy. Its period of splendor was the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, especially the latter.
1. Galician-Portuguese Lyric
- Cantigas de amor: They are characterized by the influence of courtly poetry, both in the themes and in the refined and complex poetic techniques used by the poets.
- Mocking and curse songs: They deal with topics of daily life, politics, and society from a satirical and comical standpoint. Their style is casual, humorous, and sometimes borders on rudeness. The language is simple and sometimes uses jargon and slang.
2. Castilian Lyric
Notes: Galician-Portuguese was considered the cultural language of poetry par excellence, so cultured lyric poetry was not practiced in Castilian until the fifteenth century. Alfonso Alvarez de Villasandino began writing in Portuguese, but by the year 1400, he was writing his lyrical compositions in Castilian.