Spanish Literary Forms: Novel, Ballads, Coplas
The Novel: Emergence of a Genre
Prosecuting the facts critically, delving into causes, and addressing the psychological level of character finally animates the story with dialogues and epistles. A new literary genre, the novel, emerges in the 14th century, linked to the degeneration of the epic and the decline of feudal society due to the rise of the bourgeoisie.
Early Forms: Adventure and Chivalry
The first manifestations include:
- The Adventure Story: This involves the feeling of love and action found in chivalric legends.
- The Classic Chivalric Novel: Speak of the heroic element, fantasy, magic, and legendary elements of British history.
Traditional Ballads: Narrative Poetry
Ballads are short epic-lyric compositions arising from the fragmentation of ancient epics.
Evolution and Transmission
Ballads were transmitted orally. Authors collected them in Songbooks and included them in Romanceros. Renowned poets like Cervantes, Góngora, Quevedo, and Lope de Vega composed new or artistic ballads. These are cultivated compositions and can be divided by topic:
Ballad Topics
Historical-National:
They come from old Castilian epics, glorifying their heroes.Romantic and Lyrical:
Created by popular imagination.Border and Moorish:
Tell of military episodes taking place on the border between Moorish and Christian kingdoms.Carolingian:
Focus on the figure of Charlemagne and related characters and events.Breton Legend:
Inspired by King Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table.
Metrics
Ballads tended to be 16 syllables, divided into two hemistichs of 8 syllables. Each hemistich is recited as independent. A composition consisting of an indefinite series of eight-syllable verses that rhyme in assonance in the even lines, with odd lines being unrhymed.
Style and Peculiarities
Ballads present unmistakable stylistic peculiarities:
Tendency to the Fragmentary:
The ballad is limited to the essentials, often starting in medias res without background.Tendency to Repeat:
A dramatic process in folk poetry, sometimes repeating phonemes or identical words.Temporal Liberty:
Verbal usages include the imperfect subjunctive with preterite value (e.g., “He answered the Moor”). Dialogues often use the future or conditional instead of the present, and the imperfect indicative instead of the preterite.
Jorge Manrique’s Coplas
The verses of Jorge Manrique’s poem are didactic and moral, in which the author, after the death of Master Don Rodrigo Manrique, evokes and celebrates his figure.
Metrics (Manriqueña Couplet)
Uses the strophe called ‘copla manriqueña’, a variety of 12 lines grouped into two sextets (‘sextillas de pie quebrado’). The verses are eight syllables, except the 3rd and 6th (which are four syllables). The rhyme is consonant and distributed: abcabc / defdef.
Structure
The work is divided into three parts:
- The first is a doctrinal statement providing general philosophical considerations on the transience of human life and the inconsistency of worldly goods.
- The second adduces examples of prominent figures from the past.
- The third contains the eulogy of the deceased and his encounter with death.
Topics
These are commonplaces (‘topoi’) expressing universally accepted truths in the Middle Ages. Jorge Manrique, drawing from his own human experience, recreates these themes, resulting in a work that moves us by its authenticity and emotion:
The World:
Viewed as a place of transit where man has the opportunity, through good works, to achieve salvation. This involves the renunciation of worldly goods (‘contemptus mundi’).Fortune:
Depicted as a blind, random force that triggers human tragedies. It is shown as a wheel arbitrarily distributing happiness and unhappiness.