Medieval Lyric Poetry: Catalan, Galician-Portuguese, and Arabic-Hebrew Traditions

Catalan Lyric Poetry: Emerging in Provence in the 12th century, troubadour poetry moved to Catalonia in the following century. This poetry is reflected in nearly 100 songbooks. Troubadour poetry, with its lyrical character, was created by known authors and expressed in a homogeneous language. It was cultivated by troubadours whose songs were performed by minstrels. These performers were required to be very loyal to the texts. The poetry featured consonant rhyme, and the most common stanza length was 8 verses with the same rhymes.

Forms of Provencal Poetry:

• Canso: A composition of loving themes, always from a male perspective to a female, reflecting feudal ideology.
• Sirventes: A composition used as a form of expression for anger or personal attack.

The Conception of Courtly Love: Love was the art of courtesy and was understood as a service to the lady, who was considered a superior being.

Galician-Portuguese Lyric Poetry: This love poetry flourished in the western peninsula during the 13th and 14th centuries. The influence of troubadour poetry is evident, arriving through various routes, including the pilgrimage paths of Santiago. Inherited from Provence, the poetic theme is a man's devotion to a lady. The quantities of love, the joy of loving, transform into torment. Besides this sad and loving side, it also includes a songbook of ridicule (composed of mocking and cursing songs) and religious songs, such as the Cantigas de Santa Maria, a work by King Alfonso X the Wise, praising the Virgin.

Arabic and Hebrew Lyric Poetry: In the 10th and 11th centuries in Al-Andalus, two types of stanzaic poems emerged: the zejel and the muwassaha. The fundamental theme is love, often homosexual. The muwassaha type was written in classical Arabic, with the last stanza ending in a verse written in the colloquial Arabic dialect called a jarcha. The zejel was written in the Arabic dialect and lacked a jarcha.

Original Lyrical Folk Traditions:

• Jarcha: These closed the lines of moaxajas, composed in Arabic, Hebrew, or vulgar Andalusi Romance. Most consist of 4 verses, primarily hexasyllabic and octosyllabic, with almost always full consonant rhyme. The theme is love: a young speaker recounts their suffering to their mother, sisters, or friends in an urban environment characterized by simplicity. A characteristic feature is the mention of the beloved through the term 'habib' (friend).
• Cantigas de Amigo: In Galician-Portuguese, the speaker is a young woman expressing her feelings to her mother or sister about the pain of the beloved's death or absence, or her anxiety. Nature becomes extremely important, identifying with the poet's feelings for her absent beloved. The usual verse form is monorhyme, followed by a refrain. Its main stylistic device is parallelism.
• Carols: In Castile, cultured poems were composed whose opening lines were called the 'carol' and the rest of the composition was a 'glosa'. The common theme is love; a girl in love laments her situation. In rural settings, water acquires importance. Common motifs include the young woman's hair and flowers. Carols often feature the absence of adjectives, a predominance of diminutive verbs indicating movement, and hortatory and optative sentences, with repetitions and parallels.

Great Poets: Notable figures include Iñigo López de Mendoza, Marquis of Santillana, and Juan de Mena in the first half of the 15th century, and Jorge Manrique in the second half. Santillana was educated at the court of Alfonso V of Aragon, focusing on poetry, politics, and allegorical narrative. His Serranillas are notable, chronicling the encounter between a knight and a shepherdess, and he also attempted to adapt the Italian sonnet into Castilian. Juan de Mena authored love ballads with an intellectual tone and artful style. His most distinguished work is the Laberinto de Fortuna, dedicated to King John II. This long poem uses dodecasyllabic lines, complicates syntax and vocabulary, and introduces names and lists of authors.