Cantar de Mio Cid: Language, Style, and Poetic Devices

Cantar de Mio Cid: Language and Style

The Cantar de Mio Cid features:

• Frequent calls and invocations to the audience.
• Frequent exclamations (evaluative).
• Suppression of introductory verbs.
• Use of formulas specific to orality.
• Presence of characteristic epic formulas.
• Abundance of epic epithets to characterize the characters.
• Alternating narrative and dialogue.
• Freedom in the use of verbal forms.

It is divided into three main sections:

1. Song of the Exile
2. Song of the Weddings
3. Song of the Reproach of Corpes

One of its main characteristics is its historical accuracy. The work is also the oldest representation of the Magi, comprising one hundred forty-seven multimeter verses.

Cantigas Types

Types of Cantigas include:

• From friend
• Love
• Of ridicule and cursing

Jarchas and Traditional Lyrical Poetry

Jarchas belonged to moaxajas and represent the first written texts in Romance languages. Traditional Lyrical Poetry is the set of anonymous ditties that were sung in Castile during the Middle Ages.

Resources: Poetic Devices

Phonetic Devices

• Alliteration: Repetition of one or more sounds.
• Onomatopoeia: Imitation of sounds.
• Paronomasia: Phonic game achieved by the proximity of words with similar sounds (e.g., "Sit down and before bed").
• Syntactic Hyperbaton: Alteration of the logical order of words.
• Enumeration: Succession of elements.
• Polysyndeton: Repetition of more binding elements than necessary.
• Asyndeton: Suppression or omission of binding elements.
• Anaphora: Repetition of one or more words at the beginning of several verses.
• Parallelism: Repetition of the same structure in two or more verses.
• Anadiplosis: Repetition of the last element of a verse or phrase.
• Epanadiplosis: Repetition of a word at the beginning and end of a verse.
• Ellipsis: Suppression of one or more words.

Semantic Devices

• Antithesis: Opposition of ideas.
• Paradox: Coincidence of contradictory ideas.
• Epithet: Unnecessary explanatory adjective.
• Simile or Comparison: Relation establishing similarity between two items using a comparative link.
• Metaphor: Identification between a real and a figurative element.
• Metonymy: Substitution of a real element for another figurative one.
• Periphrasis: Expression of an idea through a detour.
• Irony: Saying what is contrary to what one intends to communicate.
• Synesthesia: Attribution of qualities of one sense to things perceived by another sense.
• Pun: Use of double meanings of words; variety of word games.
• Personification: Attribution of human qualities to inanimate objects.
• Hyperbole: Exaggeration of an idea.