Spanish Poetry to 1400
Spanish poetry before 1400 reflects a rich and diverse cultural landscape shaped by various linguistic, religious, and political influences. This era began with the introduction of the kharjas, love-oriented refrains written in Arabic and Hebrew scripts, which have been recognized as significant early examples of Spanish verse. The twelfth century saw the emergence of the Galician-Portuguese cantigas and Castilian villancicos, both of which continued the tradition of lyrical expression. The thirteenth century was notable for the development of epic poetry, with works like the "Cantar de mío Cid" illustrating the hero's noble virtues and struggles during the Reconquest.
By the fourteenth century, poetry diversified further, highlighted by Juan Ruiz's "Libro de buen amor," which combined various styles and themes, including reflections on love and spirituality. The emergence of the romanceros, or popular ballads, marked a shift towards more accessible forms of poetry that resonated with broader audiences. Throughout this period, the interplay of different cultural influences — including Christian, Jewish, and Muslim elements — enriched the Spanish poetic tradition, contributing to its complexity and vitality. This era laid the groundwork for Spain's literary heritage, showcasing a mosaic of voices and perspectives that continues to inspire writers today.
Spanish Poetry to 1400
Introduction
The development of Spanish poetry through the fourteenth century is a facet of what Ramón Menéndez Pidal, the preeminent Spanish medievalist, called frutos tardios (late fruits). Extant manuscripts from this period are few in number, and their condition is generally poor, but their literary quality is very high. Although this essay will focus on poetry written in Spanish, it is important to note that, during this rich period in the cultural history of Spain, significant poetry was written in other languages as well—notably the Arabic-Hebraic jarchas, the Galician cantigas de amigo, and Catalan lyric verse. Just as many consider modern Spain a quilt of five distinct national patterns (Galacian, Basque, Catalan, Andalusian, and Castilian), so medieval Spain was a mosaic of regional political entities—Asturian, Galician, Leonese, Castilian, Navarrese, Aragonese, and Catalonian, to name a few—as well as racial and religious patterns: Christian, Jewish, and Muslim.
Eighth through tenth centuries
The Moorish invasion of 711 and the virtual conquest of the Iberian Peninsula by the year 718 left the Hispano-Visigothic kingdom in disarray. Many of the conquered Visigoths were absorbed into Islamic culture (they became known as mozarabes), while others retreated into the protective mountain ranges of the northern Cantabrian coastline. From the latter came the Reconquest, a seven-century-long effort to recapture the Peninsula. Isolated pockets of resistance to Moorish domination grew into kingdoms with competing priorities and interests involving territory, preeminence of power, and collection of taxes as well as the cultural variables, such as language and literature, that made each of them distinct. Intriguingly, Galicia, Castile, León, Navarre, Aragon, and Catalonia all developed separate linguistic traditions, but only Galicia, Castile, and Catalonia produced literatures that have survived. While much medieval knowledge was hoarded and hidden to benefit a specific interest, language and literature were much more democratic; every bard, juglar or jongleur, needed to keep his material fresh, and the subsequent give-and-take of poetic style and vocabulary crossed from one language to another and from one culture to another. Medieval Spanish poetry is the product of these many influences.
The development of the Spanish language followed a path distinct from that of other languages of the Iberian Peninsula. With a tendency toward simplification of sounds and forms, Castilian standardized its grammar and vocabulary very early, making possible, for example, the reading of eleventh and twelfth century documents by an untrained twentieth century eye. (By comparison, the fourteenth century English of Geoffrey Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales [1387-1400] is resistant to the untrained modern reader.) The early formation of Spanish clearly had an effect on Spanish literature, as did the pioneer environment of its origin. Artificial attempts have been made to differentiate Castilian from Spanish. In the purest of senses, Castilian can be distinguished as a dialect with its marked peculiarities, but it exerted its dominion over an entire peninsula and subsequently, the New World, thereby becoming the language of Spain.
Eleventh century: Beginnings
The extraordinary and controversial beginning of Spanish verse must be assigned to the kharjas. Written in Arabic and Hebrew script—hence the controversy concerning their “Spanishness”—these refrains served as transitional passages between longer classical Arab stanzas known as muwassahas. When one transliterates kharjas into Roman characters and adds the missing vowels, the resulting text is clearly an archaic form of Spanish. Thus, according to Alan Deyermond, the refrain
tnt’ m’ry tnt’ m’ry hbyb tnt’
becomes
Tant’ amare, tant’ amare habib, tant’
My love is so great, my love is so great
In a 1948 article that constituted the first systematic study of the kharjas, S. M. Stern demonstrated that a Spanish vocabulary lies hidden in the Arabic and Hebrew script of these refrains. Stern’s discovery revolutionized critical understanding of the origins of Spanish verse—and, indeed, of European lyric verse. Dámaso Alonso, the distinguished Spanish poet and critic, refers to these verses as the “early spring” of the European lyric, for they predate by a century the earliest poems written in Provence.
The content of the kharjas is almost invariably love-oriented. Like the example quoted above, many of these refrains express the pain of separation, the sense of hurt as a result of a lover’s absence or infidelity; others employ “love” as a metaphor for the relationship between a poet and his patron. Since these verses were written as transitional passages between longer texts and rarely can stand on their own as expressions of a complete sentiment, their acceptance as the earliest form of the European lyric has been questioned. On the other hand, their beauty and compactness of expression reflect the existence of a tradition of popular song or cultured verse, or both, in the Spanish eleventh century.
Twelfth century: Textual desert
Study of Spanish poetry in the twelfth century is hampered by a scarcity of texts. Despite the lack of texts, however, it is clear that lyric traditions were well established by the twelfth century. This is confirmed not only by the kharjas but also by two other verse forms which appeared in this century: the Galician-Portuguese cantigas and the Castilian villancicos. The cantigas, which have survived in three cancioneros (songbooks), of the fifteenth century, fall into three categories: a woman’s lament for her lover (cantigas de amigo); a man’s lament (cantigas de amor); and invective verse (cantigas d’escarnho). The similarity of content (lament for a lover) and speaker (a woman) between the cantigas de amigo and the kharjas suggests a connection, though none has been established.
Villancicos, multiverse refrains, repeated before and after every stanza, were not written down until the fifteenth century but are generally considered to date from the twelfth century. Their similarity to the kharjas is striking: They share a similar structure (refrain), content (lament for a lover), and speaker (a woman).
Thirteenth century: Poets and monks
Thirteenth century Spanish poetry is notable for the genesis of native epic verse; unfortunately, scholars of the thirteenth century Spanish epic have barely five thousand lines of text with which to work, in comparison to the million lines of verse available to French medieval scholars. Adducing plot summaries in later chronicles, some critics postulate the existence of lost epics, while others suggest that many poems of epic nature were never written down because of their oral means of transmission. In any case, Spanish scholarship has been left with four national epic poems: Cantar de mío Cid (early thirteenth century; Chronicle of the Cid, 1846; better known as Poem of the Cid), Las mocedades de Rodrigo (fourteenth century), and Cantar de Roncesvalles (thirteenth century; Song of Roland), composed in traditional epic meter (assonant lines of fourteen to sixteen syllables), and Poema de Fernán Gonzalez (c. 1260), composed in cuaderna vía, a syllabic meter distinguished by its rigidity of form.
The single most important epic composition of the thirteenth century was Poem of the Cid. Like the other epics of its period, Poem of the Cid is the subject of ongoing critical debate concerning the nature of its composition. The so-called traditionalist critics argue that the Spanish epic originated in popular culture, in the songs of traveling entertainers or juglares. The most popular of these traditional songs, so the theory goes, were set down in manuscript and preserved for future generations. In contrast, the so-called individualist critics believe that the great epics of medieval Spain were the work of individual poets, shaped by individual genius. Finally, the oralist critics argue that the epics of this period were transmitted exclusively by oral performance and were not committed to writing until a later date.
A manuscript of Poem of the Cid does exist, yet a gap in the transcription of the date, “MCC VII,” has convinced the traditionalists that the date of composition was actually 1307. The individualists see the gap as typical of scribal transcription and build an argument for a date of 1207. Traditionalists argue that Per Abad, the name appearing at the end of the manuscript, refers to a copyist, while the individualists suggest that he was the actual author of the epic. In The Making of the “Poema de mío Cid” (1983), a book C. C. Smith calls “bold,” Smith affirms that his work
… is the first in which the following proposition is argued: that the Poema de mío Cid, composed in or shortly before 1207, was the first epic to be composed in Castilian; that it was in consequence an innovatory and experimental work, in ways apparent in the surviving text; and that it did not depend on any precedents or existing tradition of epic verse in Castilian or other Peninsular language or dialect.
Smith goes on to assert that Per Abad was the actual author of the poem, not merely the copyist. Regardless of the exact method of composition of Poem of the Cid, however, it seems reasonable to assume that juglares sang verse narratives of this type, commemorating historical events and following a general, though loose, metric pattern.
Composed in traditional Spanish epic meter, Poem of the Cid is the story of a nobleman who is banished from the kingdom of Castile, survives the rigors of exile by defeating Moorish forces and fending off Christian encroachments on his territories, and finally achieves renown by conquering the Caliphate of Valencia. The work is divided into three cantares, or “tales,” which highlight the rise and fall of the Cid’s fortunes.
A powerful noble, the Cid is banished when King Alfonso VI of Castile heeds the insidious rumors of the Cid’s enemies. Feudal relationships in the poem are not clear, and the reader is left with the impression that the two hundred men who join the Cid in exile do so of their own free will. The Cid leaves his wife, Jimena, and his two daughters, Sol and Blanca, in the monastery of San Pedro de Cardeña for safekeeping.
The second division of the poem, the Cantar de Bodas, relates the Cid’s triumph in his struggle to survive. Fighting Moor and Christian alike, he multiplies his fortune and his prestige. With the conquest of Valencia and the betrothal of his daughters to the sons of the Count de Carrión, a match specifically arranged by the King of Castile, it appears that the Cid’s achievements are complete.
In a masterful juxtaposition of villainy and nobility, however, the third division of the poem, the Cantar de Corpes, plays havoc with the Cid’s world prior to a resolution in the final verses. The engagement of the Cid’s daughters to future counts is an extraordinary achievement, given his status as a middle-line noble, yet the Cantar de Corpes reveals the cowardice, egotism, and greed of the de Carrión brothers. The brothers, known as the Infantes, decide that their wives are not worthy of them; but they do not want to lose their dowries. Convincing the Cid that it is time to return to Carrión, the Infantes, once well away from Valencia, take their wives into a secluded glade, beat and strip them, and leave them to die. Fortunately, a retainer, disobeying the Infantes’ orders to stay away from the area, rescues them.
The conclusion of the poem celebrates the triumph of civilizing order over brutality justified by birth. Instead of pursuing and punishing the Infantes, the Cid appeals to Alfonso VI, who by this time has come to consider the Cid an equal, to summon a convocation of nobles to judge his accusations against the Infantes. In the trial, the arrogant brothers are stripped of honor: First, the Cid demands that his swords be returned by the Infantes, then the dowry of his daughters; finally, the Cid accuses the brothers of menos-valer, or “less worthiness.” The Infantes, enraged at this affront, call for a duel and subsequently lose to the Cid’s champions. As the crowning glory to the Cid’s success and the triumph of judicial process, emissaries from Navarre and Aragon appear, requesting the hands of the Cid’s daughters for their kings.
Poem of the Cid is a monument to the individual whose dedication to right values is ultimately rewarded and whose salient qualities are protection of his family, generosity to all, religious devotion, and loyalty to the established order. The Cid’s concern for his family is presented early in the poem as he leaves them in the care of the monks at San Pedro de Cardeña, promising to reward them richly. Parting causes such anguish in him that the poet observes that “parten unos d’otros como la uña de la carne” (they part like a fingernail pulling away from the skin).
The oldest manuscript of the poem signed by the enigmatic Per Abad is missing the first folio and two others within the work. The meter, as has been noted, is traditional to Spanish epics: mono-rhymic assonanced lines divided into half by a caesura and normally totaling fourteen syllables, though the irregularity of the meter, as shown in the third line of the following passage, is a puzzle to critics.
Dezidle al Campeador, que en buen hora nasco,
Say to the Campeador he who was born in good hour
The verse of Poem of the Cid is characterized by the oral qualities of the mester de juglaría (minstrel’s meter, the meter of the juglares). It is instructive to compare this form with the mester de clerecía (clergy’s meter), an almost exclusively thirteenth century verse form. While the mester de juglaría allows, along with its oral formulas, considerable freedom, resulting in verse with a tentative, experimental flavor, the mester de clerecía is highly formalized. The term mester de clerecía is often used interchangeably with the name of the meter in which verse so designated was generally written, cuaderna vía. A rigidly structured syllabic verse form, cuaderna vía is composed of four-line stanzas; each line must be fourteen syllables long, with a caesura exactly in the middle and a full rhyme of aaaa. The demanding rigidity of the form is evident in the following example, as presented by Germán Bleiberg (1915-1990), from the Libro de Alexandre (c. 1240; book of Alexander):
Mester traigo fermoso, non es de juglaría
A beautiful skill I bring, it is not of the singers:
Another example of the mester de clerecía is a work in the hagiographic tradition, the Vida de Santa María Egipcíaca (thirteenth century; life of Saint Maria the Egyptian), but curiously enough, it is not composed in cuaderna vía. The poem is a rendition of the legend of an Egyptian prostitute who, after a lifetime of dissipation, converts to Christianity when two angels deny her entrance to the temple at Jerusalem. While artistically the poem does not represent a significant advance, the clear expression of the craft of the mester de clerecía makes worthwhile reading. The author was able to adapt a Latin source to Spanish in a learned yet popular style; numerous learned words are integrated into the text without disturbing the poet’s rapport with his audience.
The first major poet to use cuaderna vía as a distinguishing characteristic of his work was Gonzalo de Berceo (c. 1190-after 1250), a secular priest. Born around the end of the twelfth century, his name probably reflects his birthplace, the village of Berceo in the province of La Rioja. Information about his death is equally sketchy, and internal evidence in his poetry suggests that he died after 1250.
Gonzalo de Berceo’s work can be categorized into three groups: hagiographic poems commemorating the Spanish saints Millán, Domingo, and Oria; devotional poems dedicated to the Virgin Mary; and doctrinal works related to apocalyptic material and the symbolism of the Mass; in addition, threehymns are attributed to him. His best-known works, however, are his poems about the Virgin Mary, particularly the Milagros de Nuestra Señora (c. 1252; the miracles of Our Lady).
The relationship between man and the Virgin Mary in the Milagros de Nuestra Señora could be described as maternal vassalage. The theme of the work is not obscure; those who show devotion and loyalty to the Virgin Mary will be rewarded, saved from peril or death, and even have their souls rescued from Hell. The poem relates twenty-five miracles performed by the Virgin Mary, adapted from a Latin manuscript collection. The opening lines describe an allegorical locus amoenus. After calling on his “amigos e vasallos de Dios” (“friends and vassals of God”) to listen, he writes:
Yo maestro Gonçalvo de Verçeo nomnado
I, master Gonzalo of Berceo by name
The story of the second miracle presents a good example of Berceo’s art. Presented in a simple, straightforward progression of events, the narrative deals with a monk who demonstrated his devotion to the Virgin Mary by kneeling in front of her statue and reciting an “Ave Maria” every time he passed. A demon, “a vicar of Beelzebub,” corrupted him with lust at night, and the monk began to wander, though every time he passed the statue of the Virgin, he would kneel and pray. One night, after an escapade, he fell into a river and drowned.
At this point, the story becomes a metaphysical dispute between devils and angels for the wayward monk’s soul. The Virgin Mary intervenes, citing his devotion to her statue, but she is challenged by the chief devil, who reminds her that dogma decrees that whatever state of grace exists at death determines a man’s life after death. The Virgin refuses to argue and calls upon Jesus to resolve the problem; the solution is the revival of the monk, who dies much later after a long life of devotion to the Virgin.
Stylistically, Berceo’s verse is measured, consistent, and reminiscent of several traits of the mester de juglaría: direct address, enjambment, and popular vocabulary. Indeed, the poem’s diction is remarkably non-Latinate, even though the topic is religious; for example, Berceo uses the word beneito, a vulgarized form of benedictino, for the term “Benedictine.”
Berceo’s authorship has also been claimed for the Libro de Alexandre, a poem of 2,675 lines composed in cuaderna vía around 1240. The importance of the Libro de Alexandre cannot be dismissed; it is the longest epic poem of the thirteenth century, in addition to being the only survivor of Spanish verse epics about antiquity. Its artistic merit is substantial as well. In his 1934 edition, Raymond S. Willis notes that
… the poem is not an artless assemblage, but a well contrived and coherent whole. The poetic gift and charm of its author, even though distorted by our present corrupt manuscripts, can be discerned as considerable. And, finally, this epic is a symposium of much of the erudition of the period and a mirror of contemporary life, thought, and language.
The Libro de Alexandre is a pageant of figures of antiquity across an epic stage. The poem begins with the birth and childhood of Alexander, with Aristotle playing a major role as adviser, councillor, and teacher. When his father, Philip, dies, Alexander’s succession is challenged in Athens and Thebes, and, immediately after his coronation, he is forced to put down rebellions in those cities.
The core of the story is the conflict between Alexander and another great figure of antiquity, his rival Darius of Persia. Alexander’s success in Macedonia and Greece moves him to challenge the persistent Persian threat, and he crosses the Hellespont to invade Asia Minor. The ensuing battles cast Alexander more and more in the role of a demigod. He creates the Twelve Peers, cuts the Gordian Knot, defeats Darius twice, captures Persepolis, and presides at Darius’s funeral. The steady encroachment of the pathos of power on Alexander’s character is developed in this central part of the epic, preparing the reader or listener for the conclusion.
Alexander cannot stop his conquests. Even though the pressure to return home is ever-growing, he alternately harangues and leads his men to defeat the Hyrcanians and the Scythians and to conquer the subcontinent of India. The element of fantasy also grows in the narrative: Alexander is visited by the Amazons; there is a detailed description of the wonders of the Orient (such as the flight of a griffon); and Alexander descends into the sea in a submarine-like vessel. Only metaphysical forces, Nature and Satan, can play a causative role in Alexander’s death. The world has surrendered to him, but at the moment of his greatest achievement, he is poisoned by a trusted lieutenant, Jobas.
The interweaving of the fantastic, the allegorical, and the moral threads in the frame of the Alexander lore that had accumulated over the previous thousand years makes the Libro de Alexandre a notable monument in medieval Spanish verse for the modern scholar; indeed, its merits were recognized in its own day, for it is now accepted that the author of the Poema de Fernán González closely imitated the Libro de Alexandre.
The Poema de Fernán González (poem of Fernán González), written around 1260, is the second great epic of the thirteenth century. Though its topic is local—the deeds of a Castilian nobleman—and thus characteristic of the mester de juglaría, the poem is clearly a product of the mester de clerecía tradition. The meter is cuaderna vía, and the details of the story reveal a dependence on Latin historical sources, the poems of Berceo, and the Libro de Alexandre, all of which leads modern scholars to believe that a cleric was the author. Another clue to authorship, reinforcing the attribution to a churchman, is a mythical-biblical pattern that J. P. Keller, in his article, “The Structure of the Poema de Fernán González,” classifies as “rise, treachery, and fall,” though ultimately the hero achieves a state of prominence. Fernán González is present as a divinely chosen figure in the mold of biblical heroes.
The poem consists of three parts. The first sets the overall dimensions of the three significant episodes in Spanish history until that time: the Visigothic Empire, the Arab invasion, and the beginning of the Reconquest. The second and third parts reflect the rise of Castile: The small, frontier region gains prominence with the victories over the Moors won by its heroic leader, Fernán González, who subsequently is seated in the cortes (parliament) of the kingdom of León. Ambushed and imprisoned by Leonese jealous of his success, he escapes to lead the Castilians to independence from León and supremacy over the kingdom of Navarre.
In contrast to the pragmatic religious devotion of the Cid, Fernán González is carefully characterized as a God-chosen leader who reciprocates with Christlike behavior. He prays continuously, has dreams in which spirits visit, and hears voices of saints during battle that tell him how to direct his troops, and he encourages his men with the promise that those who die on the battlefield will rejoice with him in paradise.
The anonymous Libro de Apolonio (book of Apolonio, c. 1240) and the Castigos y ejemplos de Catón (the punishments and examples of Catón, c. 1280) are two other significant verse compositions. The first descends from the tradition of late classical Greek romance, full of plot mechanisms turning on storms, pirates, separations, misfortunes, and, finally, a happy ending in which virtue and trust in God are rewarded. The second is notable for its popularity in the sixteenth century but is distinct from other poems of the cuaderna vía style. It has no story line and is more similar to wisdom literature than to the hagiography and classical and historical epics typical of the mester de clerecía.
Fourteenth century: Diversification
In his classic study, European Literature and the Latin Middle Ages (1953), Ernst Curtius describes the impact of the Libro de buen amor (c. 1330; The Book of Good Love, 1933), the most poetically and artistically diverse composition of the Spanish Middle Ages:
Then about 1330 Juan Ruiz (1283?-1350?) makes a bold innovation with his Libro de buen amor. He imports Ovid’s eroticism and its medieval derivatives. To a free rendition of the Ars amandi…he added a recasting of the extremely popular medieval comedy Pamphilus de amore, which in turn goes back to an elegy of Ovid’s (Amores I, 8).…There are critics who rank the Libro de buen amor, the Celestina, and Don Quijote together as the three peaks of Spanish literature.
Curtius’s description, though, is only the half of it. As a peak, The Book of Good Love has yet to be scaled. Its structural diversity, thematic multiplicity, and rich characterization make it one of the most intriguing works of European literature.
The author, like the work itself, is a mystery. Little is known about Juan Ruiz, the archpriest of Hita, a small town north of Madrid. This lack of biographical data has given rise to the notion that perhaps “Juan Ruiz” was not the actual author but rather a persona through which the author represented himself.
In the poem, there are tidbits of biographical information about Juan Ruiz, such as a plea for mercy in response to an unjust incarceration and constant reminders that he has not been a very successful lover. Critics have sought to extrapolate information about the author from his work. They have concluded, for example, that he was almost certainly a priest, since he reveals great familiarity with ecclesiastical terminology; indeed, it is likely that he was an archpriest—that is, a priest with administrative responsibility over several dioceses. His education, however, was not confined to scripture and religious literature: He paraphrased the Pamphilus de amore (twelfth century), a medieval Latin love farce, and composed his verse in a variety of meters.
The Book of Good Love is a tour de force. Opening with an invocation to God or the Virgin Mary, the poet pleads for help in his present trouble, which seems to be an imprisonment. A sermon, based on the scripture “I will give understanding” (Psalms 31:8), states the purpose of the work, ostensibly to instruct the audience in the forms of “bad” (that is, sexual) love in order that they might avoid it and practice “good” love—that is, the love of God. This is followed by a series of loores (praises) extolling the virtue and power of the Virgin Mary. Scattered throughout are fables, illustrating a moral through tales of animals characterized as humans, and fabliaux, often of a ribald nature. The poet then begins his autobiography and follows it with a cazurro verse, a coarse, often humorous love story—though in this case, Juan Ruiz flirts with sacrilege as he compares forlorn lovers with the Crucifixion of Christ. A panegyric arguing that love changes men completely leads into a vision, an allegorical narrative of the poet’s three-time failure at seduction.
After his failures, a debate ensues between the poet and Don Amor (Sir Love) concerning the joys and dangers of love; this is followed by invective verse condemning love. A scriptural parody, based on sexual allusions in the canonical hours, is concluded by an Ovidian ars amandi.
The source of the longest verse narrative in The Book of Good Love is the Pamphilus de amore, a popular twelfth century Latin comedy. Notable is the poet’s introduction of the character Trotaconventos, an old go-between destined to become a type in Spanish literature. Her intervention into his love life does not provide satisfactory results, and the poet, in a counsel, warns women about the wickedness of love and suggests that men not use negative epithets for their go-betweens. He finishes the section with an enumeration of the various comments gentlemen have been known to make.
The cantigas de serrana are bawdy verses telling how mountain women jump unsuspecting travelers, such as the poet; these verses are followed by a collection of devotional poems concerning the Passion of Christ. Another baffling shift in tone follows, as the poet introduces a satirical mock-epic contest between Don Carnal (Lord Flesh) and Doña Cuaresma (Lady Lent), terminating in the triumphal procession of Don Carnal’s forces.
A “book of hours” with allegorized seasons of the year prepares the reader for an extended reappearance of Trotaconventos, the procuress, who attempts (unsuccessfully) to woo a nun for the poet. Her rhetorical portrait of the nun provides an intriguing insight into the concept of beauty in the Spanish Middle Ages. When Trotaconventos dies, the poet delivers an impassioned lament and subsequently writes her epitaph.
Juan Ruiz’s irreverence resurfaces in a mock sermon on the virtues of little women, and the poem concludes with a summation in which the poet suggests how his work should be understood. A postscript follows with a collection of cantares de ciegos (beggars’ songs), a complaint, and goliardic verses attacking the Church.
The metric patterns in The Book of Good Love reveal a conscious manipulation of verse length to combat monotony and to enhance the content. While most of the narrative sections of the poem are in cuaderna vía, the poet often shifts between lines of fourteen and sixteen syllables. The rhyme is virtually perfect. The lyric sections of the poem present a dazzling array of verse forms, ranging from the zéjel (a Moorish composition with stanzas and a refrain) to the pie quebrado, in which four-syllable lines and eight-syllable lines are used in a single stanza.
The diversification of Spanish verse in the fourteenth century continued with the appearance of lyric poetry. Setting aside the disputed nature of the kharjas, Rafael Lapesa, the noted Spanish critic and linguist, suggests that lyric verse of a learned nature did not appear until 1300, with the composition of the Razón de amor. This earliest extant lyric poem survives in a confusing manuscript in which the first part narrates the visitation of a young man in a locus amoenus by a young woman who has prepared a glass of wine and another of water for them. Their lyric conversation is reminiscent of the cantigas de amor and cantigas de amigo, in which the lovers complain about love. Suddenly, the young woman leaves, and a white dove appears, spilling the vessel of water into the wine. The rest of the poem, called the “Denuestos del agua y del vino,” is of the debate genre: The personified wine and water argue their respective strengths and defects; for water, wine is too sentimental; for wine, the water is too coldly rational. In A Literary History of Spain: The Middle Ages (1971), Alan Deyermond accurately sums up the Razón de amor as “the best and most puzzling” of poems. The dramatic change midway through the poem has generated considerable critical debate, some scholars arguing that the work is in fact a single poem while others contend that it comprises two distinct poems rudely joined.
It is appropriate that a survey of Spanish verse through the fourteenth century should end on the note with which it began: the dichotomy between popular and learned verse. The early contrast between the mester de juglaría and the mester de clerecía repeats itself at the end of the Middle Ages. There are, on the one hand, the predecessors of the popular romanceros (collections devoted exclusively to romances or ballads), and, on the other, the philosophical verse of Rabbi Sem Tob and the early Spanish Humanism reflected in Pero López de Ayala.
The diversity of medieval Spanish literature is exemplified by the Proverbios morales (fourteenth century) of Rabbi Sem Tov (or Santob), born in Carrión de los Condes around 1290. The distinguished Spanish historian Claudio Sánchez Albornoz referred to Sem Tob as the first Spanish intellectual. The Proverbios morales entries are almost exclusively composed in Alexandrine verse and—oddly, for a medieval composition—contain virtually no exempla relating the content to everyday life. The poet is a philosopher, observing life through the prism of classical and Hebraic thought, never losing sight of the reality of being a Jew in an ever-hostile environment. His poetry is a celebration of learning and knowledge, tempered with the reservations of a skeptic.
Spanish Humanism begins with Pedro López de Ayala, courtier, knight, and man of letters. As an adult, he lived through the cataclysms of fourteenth century Spain: the plague, the Trastámaran usurpation of the Castilian throne, international wars, and the Great Schism of the Roman Catholic Church. As a man of letters, he translated or was connected with the translations into Spanish of works by Livy, Boethius, Gregory the Great, and Giovanni Boccaccio. His great poetic work, the Rimado de palaçio (fourteenth century), stands alongside his chronicle of the reign of Peter I of Castile as a significant contribution to Spanish literature.
The Rimado de palacio, an extensive poem of 8,200 lines composed over several years, provides a serious counterpoint to the frivolity of Juan Ruiz’s The Book of Good Love. The poem is divided into three sections. The first is a scathing satire of the secular and ecclesiastical society of the day. The second part is composed of lyric loores and prayers to the virgins of Monserrat, Guadalupe, and Rocamador and to other religious icons, invoking their favors. It is believed that this portion was written during an imprisonment, while the third and final part was set down in the last years of Ayala’s life. This last section is a compendium of religious and ethical reflections based on the Book of Job and Saint Gregory’s Moralia (c. 6 c.e.).
In contrast to the learned verse of Ayala and Sem Tob, the late fourteenth century saw the first appearance of the romanceros, or romances. It is generally accepted that the composition of these popular ballads began as the longer epic poems (their probable source) were forgotten or lost their relevance. The romances are written in the same sixteen-syllable assonant line that characterizes Spanish epic verse and are generally categorized as historical (based on a recent event), literary (derived from a previous chronicle or epic), or adventurous (a miscellaneous grouping of diverse themes such as love, revenge, mystery, or simply adventure).
The quilt of Spanish culture is at once a social, political, religious, and literary phenomenon. The interplay between learned and popular, Galician and Castilian, Moor, Jew, and Christian created a poetic tradition as multifaceted as any found in Western Europe, a tradition enriched and deepened by its diversity.
Bibliography
Florit, Eugenio. Introduction to Spanish Poetry. Mineola, N.Y.: Dover, 1991. Offers works ranging from the twelfth century Poema de mío Cid to twentieth century poets. Full Spanish texts with expert literal English translations on facing pages. Also contains a wealth of biographical information and critical commentary. Illustrated.
Gies, David T., ed. The Cambridge History of Spanish Literature. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2009. A comprehensive English-language work, prepared by Gies in collaboration with forty-six other eminent scholars. Includes chronology and index.
Merwin, W. S., ed. and trans. Spanish Ballads. Port Townsend, Wash.: Copper Canyon Press, 2008. A reissue of the volume first published in 1961, early in the career of the translator, who became one of America’s most admired poets. Includes ballads from the late Middle Ages to the twentieth century, arranged by type and in chronological order.
Schippers, Arie. Spanish Hebrew Literature and the Arab Literary Tradition: Arabic Themes in Hebrew Andalusian Poetry. New York: Brill Academic, 1993. An introduction to the Arabic poetry of eleventh century Muslim Spain and to the major Hebrew poets of the same period. Demonstrates how Arabic themes appear in Hebrew Anadalusian poetry.
Simpson, Lesley B., trans. The Poem of the Cid. 2d ed. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2007. A classic translation of the great Spanish epic.
Smith, Colin C. The Making of the “Poema de mío Cid.” New York: Cambridge University Press, 1983. The well-known scholar and editor of the Collins English-Spanish dictionaries traces the development of the Spanish epic. Bibliography, index.
‗‗‗‗‗‗‗, ed. Spanish Ballads. 2d ed. London: Bristol Classical Press, 1996. Originally published in 1964, this collection is accompanied by a useful introduction and notes by Smith.
Walters, Gareth. The Cambridge Introduction to Spanish Poetry. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003. Bilingual edition. A survey of Iberian and Latin American writing from the Middle Ages to the present. Conveniently arranged by genres and themes. Bibliography and index.