El Cid: Loyalty, Honor, and Faith in the Epic Poem

Song of the Mio Cid

Model Values:

• Loyalty to the King: El Cid is faithful and loyal to the king. El Cid undertakes a war policy that leads him to conquer Valencia.
• Consideration and Honor: Rodrigo gets the royal pardon and his daughters marry into royal lineages, wedding the princes of Navarre and Aragon.
• Personal Effort and Faith in God: Based on personal effort, Rodrigo's virtue stems from Christian faith, loyalty to his king, justice towards his subjects, love for his family, and courage under fire.
• Measure: In all his actions, the Cid is wise and shows affection appropriately.

Authorship and Composition Date

The Song of the Cid is preserved in a manuscript that ends with a note stating that Per Abbat wrote it in May of the year XLV.

Structure of the Song of the Cid

The Song consists of 3730 verses grouped in monorhyme assonances. Not all have the same number of syllables, and they are divided into two hemistiches. The Song is divided into three parts or cantos:

1. The Song of Exile: The Cid is banished by Alfonso VI of Castile, leaves his family in the monastery of San Pedro de Cardeña, and begins his road to exile by conquering foreign lands. He sends gifts to the king in submission and servitude to obtain pardon.
2. Cantar of the Wedding: This canto tells of the conquest of Valencia. The Cid sends a new embassy and gifts to King Alfonso VI, arousing the greed of the Infantes of Carrión, who demand the hand of the Cid's daughters. The canto ends with the marriage of the Infantes to the Cid's daughters.
3. Cantar of the Reproach: The heirs of Carrión quickly demonstrate their cowardice and plot revenge. The Cid asks permission to take their wives to Carrión's lands, but they are abandoned in the oak woods of Corpes. The king summons the Cortes at Toledo. The song ends with the princes of Navarre and Aragon asking for the hands of Doña Elvira and Doña Sol, the Cid's daughters.

Style

Epic epithets, pleonasms, appeals to the public, use of Arabic terms, frequent suppression of the verb, and repetition are all stylistic elements.