Medieval Spanish Literature: Ballads, Mester de Clerecía, and Key Authors

Ballads

Ballads are eight-syllable verses, with assonance in pairs and odd verses loose. Stylistic preferences include action over description, a structure of dialogue, a beginning in medias res, a truncated end, archaisms, replacement of verb forms, use of repetition, and use of questions.

Mester de Clerecía

The Mester de Clerecía uses cuaderna vía, four-line verses of 14 syllables, with caesura divided into hemistiches of seven syllables and consonant rhyme. These works were recited in Latin. Anonymous works include:

• Libro de Alexandre: The legend of Alexander the Great.
• Libro de Apolonio: An adventure story in the Byzantine manner, telling the story of King Apollonius.
• Poema de Fernán González: Tells the story of Fernán González (arranged in couplets).
• Vida de Santa María Egipcíaca: Legends derived from the life of Mary Magdalene.
• Disputa del alma y el cuerpo: Meditates on death.

Gonzalo de Berceo

Gonzalo de Berceo is the most important writer of the Mester de Clerecía of the 13th century and the first known Romance poet. His works include Lives of Saints, Marian works, and doctrinal works.

Milagros de Nuestra Señora is his most extensive and important work, and the oldest collection of miracles of the Virgin in Romance. It presents the Virgin as a mediator in the salvation of man. The work describes the fall of man through sin, but salvation through the Virgin and devotion. It is formed by 25 miracles in which man sins but is saved by believing in the Virgin.

Style: Berceo's style is simple and popular, showing submission to written sources, a tendency to romanticize, the use of minstrel resources, the use of Rioja dialects, the use of rhetorical devices, and cuaderna vía.

Hita

Hita's Book of Good Love has love as its theme, sometimes referring to God and other times to worldly love.

Structure: It begins with a prologue that explains the intent of the work and the hazards of love. It includes a collection of exempla, satires, didactic treatises, an adaptation of Ars Amandi, a recreation of Pamphilus de Amore, and allegorical poetry and lyrics.

Style: Mostly in cuaderna vía, except for lyrical poems in short lines. Predominant features include juxtaposed sentences, the use of interjections, repetitions of spoken language, nouns with connotative values, a rich lexicon including Arabic, technical, Catalan, and cultism terms, and the use of rhetorical devices.