Old Ballads, Jorge Manrique, and La Celestina: Spanish Literature

Old Ballads and Their Significance

The Old Ballads represent a collection of ballads sung at the end of the Middle Ages. Popular interest in these ballads, which highlight the most important poets of the 16th and 17th centuries, continued. Cultic poets continued the tradition of written romances, and new romances emerged. Oral ballads, also known as modern romances, have been recognized from the late 19th century until today.

The origin of these romances can be traced to the late Middle Ages, stemming from the decomposition of *Songs of Gesta*. Most romances share common features, such as:

• Repetitions
• Didactic simplicity
• Enumerations
• Objective and impersonal narrator
• Lack of didacticism
• Abundance of Q&As

Romances are classified into several categories:

• Castilian epic theme
• Border and Moorish
• Full epic
• Romantic
• Lyric

Jorge Manrique and His Masterpiece

Jorge Manrique wrote *Coplas a la muerte de su padre* (Verses on the Death of His Father), establishing him as one of the most important figures in Spanish literature. This elegy, born from the experience of his father's death, leads the poet to meditate on life and death.

The poem consists of forty stanzas. The first 24 stanzas address typical medieval themes, reflecting concerns about death prevalent during the late Middle Ages, a time when people lived closely with death due to wars, epidemics, and social crises. The last 16 verses extol his father, express hope in eternal life, and highlight the fame of those whose memory remains in the world after their passing. The poem is composed in *coplas de pie quebrado*, and its style is simple.

La Celestina: A Masterpiece of Dialogue

La Celestina was published anonymously in 1499 as *Comedia de Calisto y Melibea*, consisting of 16 acts. The following year, it was reissued under the author's name, Fernando de Rojas, in 1502, with a new title: *Tragicomedia de Calisto y Melibea*. This version included five new acts, deletions, and modifications, along with a foreword justifying the changes. The matchmaker, Celestina, is recognized as the central figure.

Fernando de Rojas was born in La Puebla de Montalbán around 1475 into a family of converted Jews. He studied in Salamanca, where he began writing. He died in 1541.

La Celestina is a work written largely in dialogue. It is considered a play because there is no narrator, and the characters speak directly to each other. Some consider it a novel in dialogue. The style of the work reflects the language of both scholars and the general populace, with characters speaking in one style or another depending on their status. These two languages correspond to the two social groups depicted in the work: the upper class of Calisto, Melibea, and her parents, and the lower class of Celestina, the servants, and prostitutes. The main themes are love, death, greed, selfishness, ambition, and class struggle.