Spanish Medieval Literature: Epic, Romance, and Lyric Poetry
Spanish Medieval Literature
The Cantar de mio Cid narrates the exploits of Rodrigo Diaz de Vivar, a real person born around 1043. An incomplete 14th-century copy remains. The poem consists of 3700 verses grouped into sets called runs. These irregular verses, mostly between 14 and 16 syllables, are divided by a strong hemistich. The rhyming verse is assonant.
Structure of the Cantar de mio Cid
- Song of Exile: El Cid is banished by King Alfonso VI of Castile. He leaves his wife and daughters in a monastery and goes towards Moorish lands, gaining favor with the king through various conquests.
- Song of the Marriage: El Cid conquers Valencia and is pardoned by the king. The king arranges the marriage of El Cid’s daughters to the Infants of Carrion. Despite his suspicions, El Cid accepts out of loyalty.
- Song of the Affront at Corpes: The main theme is the restoration of the protagonist’s honor. Exile represents a loss of public honor, which Rodrigo regains with the conquest of Valencia.
Milagros de Nuestra Señora
This is a collection of short stories by Gonzalo de Berceo (13th century), featuring characters devoted to the Virgin Mary who are saved from hell through supernatural intervention.
The Book of Good Love
Written in the 14th century by Juan Ruiz, this is a collection of affairs told in the first person. It includes autobiographical, romantic, and lyrical episodes in a long poem of almost two thousand verses.
Romance
Romances depart from epic poems, emphasizing communication. They are classified as:
- Lyrical Romances: Based on historical events, particularly Carolingian and Castilian stories.
- Epic Romances: Based on Breton stories.
- Epic Romances of France and Moors: Narrate border events between Castilian and Muslim kingdoms.
- Romantic and Everyday Lyrical Romances: Love, nature, and adventure stories invented by juglares.
Lyric Poetry
Jarchas
These are lyrical ballads from Al-Andalus, short stanzas of no more than 5 or 6 lines, composed in a mix of Arabic or Hebrew and Romance languages. They appear at the end of Arabic poems called moaxas.
Cantigas
Composed of several parallel stanzas chained by a structure with variations. Villancicos are short poems about art, consisting of two parts: a refrain (2-4 verses announcing the theme) and a gloss (several stanzas developing the refrain’s content).
Coplas by Jorge Manrique
These constitute an elegy combining various traditional elements in an original way, divided into three parts.
Golden Age, Renaissance, and Baroque
Renaissance (16th Century)
Renaissance thought is configured from two basic aspects: the flowering of humanism, which values man above all other realities, and the adoption of classical culture as a model.
Baroque
Baroque reflects a distrust of people, fear of social decline, and the disappointment of acquiring wealth. It explores themes of life and death.
New Poetic Forms
- Quartets and Sonnets: 2 quatrains and 2 triplets with variable rhyme.
- Petrarchan Song: Consists of several stanzas called stays, with 11 and 12 syllables in different combinations.
- Chained Tercet: Used in epistles and elegies (ABA BCB CDC).
- Real Octave: Descriptive epic verse (ABABABCC).
- Lira: 11 and 12 syllables, mimicking the Horatian ode (aBabB).
Literary Topics
- Locus Amoenus: A pleasant place.
- Carpe Diem: Seize the moment.
- Beatus Ille: Happy is he who…
- Ubi Sunt: Where are they?