Medieval and Pre-Renaissance Spanish Lyric Poetry and Ballads

Lyric Poetry: Forms and Evolution

Lyric poetry presents two main forms:

• Traditional Lyric

  These texts are almost always anonymous, with their first manifestations appearing in the 11th century. They are short songs, often filled with jarchas, characterized by simplicity and expressiveness. They emphasized a collective dimension, focusing on rural areas and common topics.

  Traditional Lyric: Key Aspects

  • Topics

    Serves as an expression of feelings or situations rooted in collective existence. Examples include love songs, albadas, wedding songs, harvest songs, and work songs (e.g., March and May songs).

  • Geographical Scope

    Includes jarchas, Galician-Portuguese lyric, and traditional Castilian lyric.

  • Metrics and Style

    Characterized by simple metrics, short verses, rhyme, assonance, and extreme brevity.

• Courtly Lyric

  Associated with known authors and a cultivated style, its apogee was in the 15th century. These are extended compositions that express individual interests or points of view, set within a courtly environment, with courtly love as a central theme.

Ballads: Between Lyric and Narrative

Ballads are situated between lyric and popular narrative poetry.

• Origins of Ballads

  At the end of the medieval period, interest in epics declined. This led to a collection of primitive, anonymous romances and orally transmitted old ballads. The 'new romance' emerged between the 16th and 17th centuries.

• Ballad Topics

  Emerging varieties include:

  • Lyrical: Expressing personal feelings.
  • Novelistic: Incorporating fantasy elements and diverging from historical reality.
  • Border/Morisco: Depicting coexistence between Christians and Moors.

• Ballad Style

  Characterized by simplicity and spontaneity. Some features include:

  • Fragmentation: The text focuses on essential elements and often has an open ending.
  • Oral Transmission: Abundance of parallels, repetitions, and formulaic expressions.
  • Dialogue: Frequent use of dialogue and direct style to engage the listener.
  • Time Shifts: Numerous verbal calls for attention and shifts in temporal perspective.
  • Variants: Different versions of the same romance, reflecting oral tradition.

Courtly Lyric: Refined Expressions

Courtly lyric was written by educated authors.

• Courtly Love

  An essential element, originating in France in the 12th century. It involves the exaltation of human love, often as a service to a lady. These works were frequently written in a Romance language similar to Catalan. Themes often include impossible love or adultery.

The Pre-Renaissance Era (15th Century)

The 15th century anticipated the Renaissance era, marked by several key developments:

• Growth of cities and Italian influence (e.g., Dante).
• A more courtly nobility.
• Recovery of Greco-Roman literary tradition.
• Exaltation of fame.
• Growing appreciation for the writer.
• Feelings of crisis and insecurity.
• The cult of fortune as the owner of human destiny.

Jorge Manrique: A Pre-Renaissance Master

• Life and Personality

  Born in Palencia (1440) into a noble family, Jorge Manrique died in 1479 while defending Queen Isabella. He was a quintessential courtly gentleman.

• Themes in Manrique's Work

  • Pain arising from his father's death.
  • Abstract concepts of life and death, prevalent throughout the Middle Ages.
  • A style that blends religious and popular elements.

• Structure of the Coplas

  His most famous work, Coplas por la muerte de su padre, consists of 40 stanzas of pie quebrado (broken foot) and is divided into:

  1. Part I: General Considerations on life, death, and fortune.
  2. Part II: Illustrations with concrete examples of famous figures.
  3. Part III: The figure of the late Don Rodrigo Manrique, his father.

• Manrique's Style

  The austere, simple, and straightforward language is what has made the Coplas a classical masterpiece. It emphasizes the use of allegories, similes, and metaphors.