Popular and Court Poetry: Ballads, Romances, and Key Authors
Popular Poetry: Ballads and Romances
The romances and epic compositions were often arranged in verses to be sung or recited. These verses were octosyllabic with assonance rhyme pairs. They differ from ancient epics and were composed by individual authors.
The Ballad
The recopilación dl d fifteenth-century romances, both anonymous and old, are called romances from S.XVI dl. They can be of biblical and classical origin, recounting stories from the Old and New Testaments, tragic events like the Trojan War, and the fire of Rome. They also include epics similar to the chanson de geste, such as nationalistic tales of the Arab invasion of the peninsula, exploits of El Cid, Carolingian stories like the affair of Roncesvalles and the figure of Roland, Breton tales, and historical and news-related events between Christians and Arabs. Romantic and lyrical ballads with little historical basis recreate anecdotes and feelings.
Orally transferred, they use fixed formulas to enter the narrative, stating facts, introducing characters, inserting dialogue, indicating action, and establishing the setting. Repetition is also common, with phonic and lexical recurrences. They vary in tense to streamline the narrative and avoid monotony, using simple language and some archaisms, as well as resources to engage the listener, such as vocatives, apostrophes, and situational elements like first-person pronouns highlighting the beginning of the poem.
Court Poetry
Court poetry, found in palaces and courts, was often compiled in collective songbooks, with the Cancionero de Baena being a highlight. It consisted of two forms:
- Poetic-lyric songs: Rhymes of eight-syllable verses with regular consonance, focusing on the theme of love with Provencal language and rhetorical devices.
- Doctrinal poems: Narrative or allegorical verses with dodecasyllabic lines divided into two hemistiches, influenced by Greco-Roman culture and the Italian poet Dante.
Marqués de Santillana
The Marqués de Santillana owned one of the finest libraries of his time. His serranillas, influenced by the Christmas, Hita, and some allegorical poems of Dante, stand out. He attempted to adapt Italian meters to Castilian poetry.
Juan de Mena
Juan de Mena, Latin secretary to John II and an expert on the classics, wrote the allegorical poem Laberinto de Fortuna. This major work consists of 300 stanzas of great art, elevating Castilian to the height of Latin. The structure is based on the three wheels of fortune—past, present, and future—trying to win the favor of John II to Álvaro de Luna.
Jorge Manrique
Jorge Manrique, a courtly gentleman and expert on arms and letters, fought to defend his father’s possessions and support Isabella the Catholic. His brief work reflects the interests of his time: palatial environment, political strife, and concern for life and death. His best work, Verses on the Death of His Father, consists of 40 double broken couplets, an elegy for the death of Rodrigo Manrique. Each stanza contains two sextuplets with this metric: 8a 8b 4c 8a 8b 4c / 8d 8e 4f 8d 8e 4f, where he reflects on life and death, considering earthly life as a preparation for the real life of heaven, and taking into account the third life, of fame. The language and style are simple and far from superfluous ornamentation, often involving the reader and using traditional images and metaphors to authenticate the author’s poetic expression.
Theater of the XV Century
La Celestina
Fernando de Rojas, author of La Celestina, formerly Tragicomedia de Calisto y Melibea, was born in Puebla de Montalbán in 1476 and studied law in Salamanca. The theme is love, and society is divided into two worlds: the servants and the masters, both of whom love and enjoy sexual pleasure, causing the tragedy. A humanistic comedy, a novel in dialogue, and a dynamic urban space. The characters evolve throughout the play, and the purpose is to warn of the dangers of mad love and the loves of servants.