Medieval Spanish Literature: Romances, Clerics, and Miracles
The Romance: An Epic Poem
The epic poem of the century often took the form of a romance. In dates such as 14 and 15, a romance is a variable-length poem written in eight-syllable lines with rhyming verses. Assonance and unexpected pairings are common.
Themes
- Historical: Political events in the history of the Christian kingdoms of the Peninsula. These can focus on a character or the funding of a major news broadcast. Events at the border, such as the recapture and reporting of Moorish war developments, capture the view of the Moors conquered with great drama and sensitivity.
- Epithets and Literature: Epic compositions derived from Spanish or Carolingian epic poems, often dealing with love and death.
Romanceros
Romances began to be collected according to topic in printed collections called ballads. There are two types:
- Old Ballads: Consisting of traditional texts and therefore anonymous.
- Artistic Ballads: Novels written by known authors with artistic intention.
Style
- Preference for action over description.
- Dialogical structure often leads to conversational romance.
- Begins in medias res, starting without preparing the reader.
- Use of archaic morphological, syntactic, and lexical substitutions of verb forms to evoke the past.
- Use of repetitions and lyricism.
- Employment of questions and exclamations.
Mester de Clerecía
A group of clerics who write in a learned style.
Gonzalo de Berceo
His works are not meant to be original but focus on religious matters.
Works
- Lives of Saints (e.g., Life of Santo Domingo de Silos)
- Academic Works (e.g., Sacrifice of the Mass, The Last Judgement)
- Marian Works (e.g., Miracles of Our Lady)
Style
Simple language, submission to written sources, a tendency to romanticize, use of minstrel resources, and employment of Rioja dialects.
Miracles of Our Lady
In the introduction, the protagonist is the narrator, who identifies himself as Berceo. He is presented as a pilgrim entering a garden described as a locus amoenus. This place is associated with the Virgin, a symbol of paradise. In the 25 miracles, the Virgin appears characterized in human terms but also as authoritarian, strong, and severe, rewarding and punishing in each story.
Hita and the Libro de Buen Amor
The work does not have a specific learning objective and is ambiguous, addressing issues of love of God but also of carnal love.
Structure
- Begins with a prologue warning about the dangers of love.
- Enxiemplos: Tales and fables used as educational tools, anti-clerical satire against the vices of the clergy.
- Didactic digressions concerning civil and canon law.
- Adaptation of Ovid’s lessons in love.
- Recreation of love.
- Lyrical poetry: A collection including secular and pious songs, allegorical tales that celebrate the arrival of spring.
Style
- Predominance of juxtaposed sentences and frequent use of interjections.
- Repetition of spoken language (diminutives and augmentatives).
- Use of connotative values.
- Employment of rhetorical devices such as metaphor, parallels, antithesis, anaphora, and word games.