Medieval Poetry: Clergy, Authors, and Key Works

Mester de Clerecía

Traditionally, medieval poetry of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries was divided into two blocks:

• Mester de Clerecía: Works by educated poets, cultivated sources, regular verse, and a university poetic school.
• Mester de Juglaría: Works by popular authors, intuitive inspiration, irregular verse, and anonymous authors.

The cuaderna vía was used to express during the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. Its features are:

• Unoriginal themes, religious or mythical, but sometimes with a lyrical purpose.
• Moral and didactic purpose.
• Metric: Cuaderna vía is used (four Alexandrine verses in consonant rhyme: 14A, 14A, 14A, 14A).
• Oral transmission or reading aloud.
• Cultivated and careful language.

Authors

• 13th Century: Gonzalo de Berceo, Miracles of Our Lady.
• 14th Century: Juan Ruiz, Archpriest of Hita, The Book of Good Love.

Miracles of Our Lady

These are stories of miracles that show how the Virgin protects and forgives her devotees, even for serious faults. It has two parts:

• Introduction of Allegory: The author presents himself in an idealized natural setting.
• 25 Miracles performed by the Virgin.

Structure of the 25 Miracles

• Presentation of the difficulties of a devout character.
• Apparition of the Virgin and the miracle.
• Final reflection (moral).

Features of the 25 Miracles

• Everyday elements appear to attract the listener's attention.
• Humorous tone.
• Minstrel elements to call attention.
• At the end of the miracle, a moral appears: the advantages of being devoted to the Virgin.

The Book of Good Love

An extensive and varied composition of 1700 verses whose theme is a fictional autobiography of the author, represented by Mr. Melón de la Huerta. It's a reflection on the evils of earthly love versus the goodness of divine love (good love). The book is divided into several parts:

• Love stories: the Archpriest has affairs with many women.
• Platonic: A mournful lament for the death of Trotaconventos.
• Prayers and songs of praise to the Virgin.
• Epic episode: The battle between Don Carnal and Doña Cuaresma.
• Serrana: The Archpriest's meetings with women from the mountains.
• Examples of a didactic tone: It is important to use parody and ambiguity.

Sentence Modalities

The way or attitude the speaker takes to present the statement: Crying, interrogative, hesitant, wishful, hortatory, and declarative.

Verbal Periphrasis

A construction necessarily composed of two verbs that may be linked by a preposition or a conjunction. The first is called the auxiliary verb (personal form) and the second is the main verb (non-personal form: infinitive, gerund, or participle). There are two types:

• Aspectual: Express the time in which the action unfolds.
• Modal: Express how the speaker understands the action (obligation, probability, and doubt).

Deixis, Distribution, Order, and Contrast

• Order: Establishing an order in the text (in the first place... finally...).
• Contrast: Expressing opposition to an idea (however, on the contrary...).
• Deixis: Reference to an element that has appeared previously in the text. Demonstration was performed with pronoun function or by relatives.
• Distribution: Alternatively submitting two or more ideas so that they happen in a logical way.

Hypernym

A linguistic procedure that consists of a relation of inclusion of a broader meaning in another of lesser extension.