Pre-Renaissance Literature: Poetry, La Celestina, and Romancero
**The Pre-Renaissance: Learned Poetry**
It is styled concepts and tries on different themes: love, satire, morality. It is preserved in the song of the day.
**Jorge Manrique: *Verses on the Death of His Father***
Jorge Manrique was a good poet of the *cancioneros*.
Author: Jorge belonged to one of the great families of the Castilian nobility. He participated in battles with his father and died in combat at the age of 39. He composed couplets on the death of his father.
The poem is an elegy that expresses the pain of the poet.
Theme: Death, most often in the Middle Ages, was seen as liberating, as it would open the doors of eternal life. However, it was customary to present death as a terrifying figure.
Structure: 40 stanzas of 12 lines. The stanzas are of broken foot, made up of sextuplets. His rhyme scheme is 8a 8b 4c 8a 8b 4c 8d 8e 4f 8d 8e 4f.
The work is characterized into 3 parts:
- Reflection: Talks about the transience of life and the certainty of death.
- Evocation: Emotional and nostalgic of the past and gone.
- Individualization: Around the father figure, death, telling the knight comforts that await you, two ways of life: of fame and eternal life and true.
Style: The naturalness of the language contrasts with the seriousness of the issue.
Sense of the verses: Jorge reflects the sensitivity of the end of the Middle Ages and his father exemplified the virtues of chivalry and medieval Christianity.
**Literary Genres**
- Lyric: The writer expresses his subjectivity.
- Narrative: The narrator recounts events external to it. He creates a fictional world in which characters live and some events occur.
- Theater: Stage performance before an audience.
***La Celestina*** **by Fernando de Rojas**
Bewilderment and pessimism reflect a transition period.
***The Author and His Work***
He lived in various cities of Castile, found the first act of the play written, and finished it in 15 days of holiday. *La Celestina* offers a pessimistic view that was common in many writers at that time.
***La Celestina* Study**
The book appeared in that edition in 1499 and did not contain the name of the author. In 1502, an expanded edition was published where Fernando says he wrote to warn lovers of the dangers of love.
The Literary Genre: It is a work in dialogue, was written in Latin, and was a theater to be read, not to be represented. It combines features of the theater and the novel.
The Characters: They are realistic and evolve throughout the book. Calixto and Melibea are driven by love, while greed dominates the matchmaker and the servants.
The Theme: Luck, love, and death.
Intention: Moralizing, we report the death of characters as a punishment.
Style: It is varied. Each character speaks as he should. Calixto, Melibea, and their parents talk about how educated people do. Servants and prostitutes speak colloquially. Celestina speaks both types depending on the situation.
**Romancero**
Born under the influence of humanism, songs that are transmitted orally to the courts.
Old Romances: They are anonymous, which was transmitted orally. Some romances deal with the same issues that some lost epics.
New Romances: By perpetrators known to script, in imitation of past romances, include old and new.
**Characteristics of Romance**
The romance is a lyrical, narrative, and dramatic composition to be sung. Formed by octosyllabic verses that rhyme in assonance pairs, while the odd ones are loose. Its rhyme scheme is 8- 8a 8- 8a… Each verse of a hemistich of singing is an epic lyrical composition, has an expressive or emotive style. It has a patchy affair, going to the essentials without introductions and usually ends abruptly.
Style: Very definite and particular, often dominating the narrative about the description, including lyrical elements.
**Classification of Romances**
- Epic: Themes and characters in the songs of *gesta*.
- Historical or News: Stories dealing with newer events.
- Lyrical and Romantic: They are brief and deal with the emotional and love, death, and loneliness.