Medieval Lyric Poetry: Tradition & Courtly Love
1. Medieval Poetry
Before the 14th century, lyric poetry was primarily oral, passed down through generations with music, often expressing love from a female perspective. Formal written lyric poetry in Castilian doesn’t emerge until the 15th century. While Castilian lacked a tradition of courtly poetry, other Romance languages like Galician, Catalan, and Provençal did.
2. Traditional/Popular Lyric Poetry
Despite diverse origins, traditional lyric poetry shares common traits:
- Thematic and stylistic similarities across different eras and cultures.
- Oral transmission across generations, often through songs and dance.
- Anonymous and collective authorship, preserving core themes and structure.
2.1 Mozarabic Lyric / Jarchas
Dating back to the 10th century, jarchas are early examples of Iberian lyric poetry. These short, simple compositions in Mozarabic, a now-extinct Romance dialect, express a young woman’s longing for her habibi (loved one) or conversations with female relatives. Themes of love are central, presented in brief verses with irregular rhyme schemes.
2.2 Galician-Portuguese Lyric / Cantigas de Amigo
Cantigas de amigo explore love through various settings:
- Pilgrimage songs: Lovers meet during a religious journey.
- Barcarolles: Longing for the beloved is linked to the sea.
- Dance songs: Love is associated with dance.
These songs typically have an anonymous author and are written in Galician-Portuguese, reflecting rural and maritime environments.
2.3 Traditional Catalan Lyric
Originating in forms like the pastorela (knight and shepherdess encounter) and albada (songs for newlyweds or morning farewells), Catalan lyric poetry evolved into a refined, cultured form performed by troubadours in palaces. It embraced the ideology of courtly love, drawing parallels between feudal relationships and love dynamics.
2.4 Traditional Castilian Lyric / Carols and Other Forms
Alongside carols, diverse popular verses with irregular structures existed. The zejel features a head (introducing the theme), moving (developing the theme), and back (a repeating refrain). The parallelistic ballad repeats a refrain in each two-line stanza. Themes range from agricultural work to the quintessential lyric theme: love.
3. Educated Lyric Poetry
Unlike traditional lyric, educated lyric expresses the emotions of a male voice, inspired by courtly love: love as a source of joyful suffering for the poet-vassal. This form flourished in the 14th and 15th centuries.
3.1 Galician-Portuguese Lyric
- Cantigas de amor: Influenced by courtly poetry in both themes and complex poetic techniques.
- Mocking and curse songs: Satirize daily life, politics, and society with humor, sometimes using slang and jargon.
3.2 Castilian Lyric
Galician-Portuguese dominated as the language of cultured poetry. Castilian lyric poetry didn’t emerge until the 15th century, with poets like Alfonso Alvarez de Villasandino transitioning from writing in Portuguese to Castilian around 1400.
Types of Adjectives
- Specifying Adjective: Provides essential information about the noun, narrowing its meaning within a group. Example: I like simple things.
- Explanatory/Epithet Adjective: Adds subjective qualities to the noun, common in poetic texts. Example: The white snow.
- Relational Adjective: Connects the noun to another concept, often derived from nouns. Example: A wooden table.
Pronouns play three roles in sentences: linking, referring, and functioning within subordinate clauses.