Notes, summaries, assignments, exams, and problems for Latin

Spanish Courtly Song Tradition (Cancioneros)

The theme songs, or courtly lyrics, represent diverse compositions by poets associated with the royal court, compiled in comprehensive anthologies known as cancioneros. These works mark a shift where Castilian Spanish replaced Galician-Portuguese as the dominant language for lyric poetry. The most significant collections include:

• Cancionero de Baena
• Cancionero de Estúñiga
• Cancionero de Palacio

Common Themes in Cancionero Poetry

• Courtly Love: Describes the suffering endured by a knight or poet due to separation from his beloved, who is typically a married lady of higher social standing.
• Satire: Includes social commentary (e.g., the allegorical Dance of Death) and political criticism, often targeting members

The Ballad

Its origins date back to the Middle Ages, and it remains relevant today. This is a wide range of compositions called romance epics, with an unspecified number of eight-syllable verses with rhyme and assonance in pairs. Present forms and traditional themes are compiled by the people and passed on orally from father to son.

Origin and Transmission

There are several theories:

• The traditionalist theory states that they come from the songs of minstrels, repeated gestas. The favorite parts, isolated by the public from singing, and the verse romance come from the division of the epic verse into two parts.
• The individualistic theory argues that the ballads were composed by anonymous authors, just like any other poetry. In favor of this thesis

Lazarillo de Tormes: Author, Publication, and Context

The original title of this seminal work is "The Life of Lazarillo de Tormes and of His Fortunes and Adversities."

This book first appeared in 1554, published simultaneously in three different editions. Notably, none of these editions revealed the author's name. The anonymous nature of the work is often attributed to its harsh social criticism, particularly against the clergy.

Some scholars have suggested that its author might have been a reformer influenced by Erasmus. The exact date of the book's writing also remains unknown.

Despite its initial success, Lazarillo de Tormes was banned in 1559 and was not reissued completely until the nineteenth century.

Structure of the Work

The book is written... Continue reading "Lazarillo de Tormes: Analysis, Plot, and Literary Impact" »

Ovid's Poetic Evolution and Context

Ovid was a generation after Virgil, meaning the social situation was significantly different; the Augustan Pax (or Pax Romana) was a reality. Ovid's career demonstrates a clear poetic evolution, typically divided into three major blocks:

1. Block 1: Love Elegy and Didactic Poetry

   This block focuses on love elegy, retrieving the language, situations, and history of Latin elegy and playing with them creatively. Ovid often plays with conventions, forcing changes and new approaches, making the work less naturalistic than earlier elegists.

   • Amores: Love elegy, focusing on the ode to love.
   • Heroides: Letters from heroines to their lovers, combining epistolography with the theme of love, thereby creating a new genre.
   • Ars Amatoria:

Jorge Manrique's Couplets: An Analysis

Metrics:

The *copla manriqueña*, or Manriquean stanza, uses a twelve-verse structure, divided into two sextuplets. These lines are *pie quebrado*, meaning broken-foot. The verses are octosyllabic, except for the third and sixth, which are tetrasyllabic. The rhyme scheme is *abcabc / defdef*.

Structure:

The poem is divided into three parts:

1. Exposition: A debate on human life and the destructive power of fortune, death, and time.
2. Examples: Citations of past personalities who were victims of the aforementioned agents.
3. Eulogy: A tribute to the deceased and his encounter with death.

Themes:

The poem expresses universally accepted truths in the Middle Ages:

• World: The world is a place of transit. Through good deeds,

Key Spanish Lyric Poets

Juan Ramón Jiménez: A Poetic Evolution

Juan Ramón Jiménez remains one of our greatest poets. His impressive career exemplifies the evolution of Spanish lyric poetry from Modernism almost to the present day.

Modernist Stage (Pre-1908)

• From his modernist stage, we can find authentic poems of sensuality, innocence, and beauty.
• This corresponds to his sensitive stage, which ends in 1916. However, we can categorize only the first part of this stage, until 1908, as truly modernist.
• Notable works from this trend include Arias Tristes and Jardines Lejanos.

Second Stage (1908-1915)

• From 1908, Jiménez began to use rich adjectives and many vivid images to achieve brighter and more sensory effects.
• His metric features an extensive rhythm,

Prose Works

While less known, Vicente Aleixandre also has a prose production, as exciting as it is brief. Key works include A Life of the Poet (1950), Some Characters of the New Spanish Poetry (1955), and most notably, Encounters (1958), a collection of reminiscences of Spanish writers, which expanded to fifty-two portraits. A comprehensive collection, Complete Prose, including his correspondence, was published in 2002.

The Generation of '27

The Generation of '27 was a diverse group, often categorized in pairs or trios. Neopopularist poets like Rafael Alberti and Federico García Lorca drew inspiration from Gil Vicente, ballads, and traditional lyric. Gerardo Diego, after his creative phase, explored the poetry of Lope de Vega.

Poetic Works

Aleixandre'... Continue reading "The Poetic Journey of Vicente Aleixandre" »

Spanish Poetry: Late 1970s Trends and Style

On the multiplicity of the final years of the 70s, continuing trends among critics highlight:

• The avant-garde and surrealism trends;
• The trend towards neo-modernism;
• Culturalism;
• Classicism;
• Another trend is the baroque, exemplified by Antonio Carvajal.

With these new trends in poetry, there is a shift towards a poetry that gives entry to privacy and maintains the theme of emotion. Urban and everyday life themes are maintained, becoming a source of autobiographical content. The tone of the poems uses colloquial language, is loaded with a lexicon of modern life, and allows for an ironic distancing from reality. Free verse is still used, as is a return to classical metrical forms.

The Eighties and Nineties:

Poetry, whether committed or social, should address the problems experienced by fellow citizens. It should make them aware of the meaning of life and the circumstances of the time in which they live. In American literature, a long list of writers are attentive to the social and political problems of their people. Poets abandon the pastoral mirage of primitive peoples living in harmony with nature and show us men and women exploited by an impeccable capitalist system.

During the Civil War, many poets positioned themselves for the republic, but their fate differed afterward. Post-war Spain was conditioned by the military victory of a group led by the army, the Catholic Church, and the privileged strata. This victory meant a regression for Spanish... Continue reading "Social and Committed Poetry: Trends and Evolution" »