Medieval Spanish Literature: Lyric, Epic, Prose and Theatre

Medieval Literature

Medieval literature in the Iberian Peninsula begins with the appearance of the jarchas (lyric verses written in Mozarabic, mid-11th century) and lasts through the 12th, 13th and 14th centuries. It flourished in a society dominated by religious and chivalric ideals, and structured into three estates: the nobility, the clergy and the peasants. Cities hosted a collective of artisans and merchants who laboured and coexisted with ethnic-religious communities: Jewish, Christian and Muslim. Political organization was fragile. In the 13th century, with the help of the Burgesses and the lesser nobility, the monarchy tried to strengthen its authority by adopting centralizing measures that provoked clashes with the nobles. Culture spread through three channels: the monasteries, the pilgrimage route to Santiago de Compostela, and translators.

Literary genres Three genres gained relevance in the Middle Ages: poetry, prose and the theatre. The oldest creations were the lyrics, the jarchas of Mozarabic poets. The positive lyric, in Galician-Portuguese, flourished in the 13th and 14th centuries and had two types of compositions: popular and cultured. The Cantar de mio Cid, an epic poem, belongs to the same period as the great literary personalities such as Gonzalo de Berceo and the Archpriest of Hita. On the other hand, Alfonso X the Wise produced prose of great literary range in Castilian. The novel reached its height in the 14th century with Don Juan Manuel (the Count), the same period in which a new genre appeared: the novel. Of medieval theatre very little has survived, only a few religious plays from the 12th century.

Medieval Poetry

Medieval poetry grew largely along two lines: a) popular, traditional and anonymous poetry, a collective and traditional work, the result of a continuous process of collective re-creation, orally transmitted and at times very remote from its original generation; b) cultured, individual poetry, not collective, whose works normally have a known author and are not anonymous, which made it easier to fix in writing from approximately the 13th century onwards, and is a written and non-oral poetry. In this way we can distinguish four poetic nuclei: popular-traditional lyric poetry, popular-traditional narrative poetry, and possibly cultured lyric and narrative poetry.

Popular-traditional lyric

The jarchas, cantigas de amigo and villancicos constitute, together with the Galician-Portuguese cantigas and the Castilian villancicos, modalities of lyric poetry common to the whole Iberian Peninsula. Their common features are short verses, refrains and the theme of love.

Antiquity: Oral literature is very difficult to date, since its composition is unknown. Some of the productions we know are very ancient, and if today we preserve definite testimonies of them, it is because cultured writers of the Renaissance, captivated by their beauty, inserted them into their own works.

Theme: These compositions express love, the feminine voice, the absence of the beloved, and confidants such as the mother, sister, friends and nature. Among the greatest thematic richness of the villancicos, we highlight those of love in which the lovers sing of their meeting or farewell, of the Maytime and the arrival of spring. The guardians of the young women sang the villancicos in the Castilian style, with work songs and scenes of agricultural labours such as the harvest. The villancicos of travel sang of the adventures of travellers crossing the mountains and meeting a rough, sturdy woman, a foreigner who showed them the way or gave them some gift.

Metre: The jarchas and villancicos are characterized by metrical irregularity and imprecision, having 2, 3 or 4 beats per verse and variable rhyme. The cantigas of the troubadours influenced the lyric schools formed in Galicia, and are characterized by metrical regularity and precision. Their regularity tends towards isosyllabism and consonant rhyme.

Structure: The cantigas are constituted by a series of stanzas with a fixed structure. The xarya consists of a short refrain with repetition and variation of verses. The xarya is linked to the next stanza by an interlocking scheme, which repeats the second verse of the first stanza at the end of the third, and the second of the fourth. The original form of the jarchas and villancicos is brief (2 to 4 verses), to which several cultured writers added stanzas called glosas. In the jarchas, the glosa is a muwassaha, a cultured Arabic poetic composition of metrical form, which takes the tradition of Arabic poetry and poets who were cultured and who took the lyric and romance of the peninsula. The jarchas appear at the end of the stanzas of the muwassaha, and are its structural nucleus. b) The glosa of the villancicos presents the end of the composition, usually three lines or more. Its structure is zéjel, xarya and mixed, and they combine with the 2.

Positive Narrative and Minstrelsy

The main characters of this narrative are the clerics and the minstrels, both addressing the same audience in the Romance language, though with different purposes. The clerics, who knew Latin and ecclesiastical learning, aimed to reach the people as well as the educated, with a moralizing and didactic purpose; their work was bound by the rigours of metre and the first systematic expression. The minstrel, on the other hand, was an errant individual who lived in castles and villages and who, in exchange for payment, reported events of interest to a news-hungry public, entertaining it with a repertoire of skills and acrobatics. His art combined careless and spontaneous elements.

Minstrelsy: The Epic

The medieval epic is not connected to the Greco-Latin world. The epic was revived in the classical era in epic poems, and its character was of gold. The medieval epic, popular, baroque, cultured and renaissance, found its expression in the Cantares de gesta: In the medieval epic, in its lower stage, fragmentary and romanceros emerged. The Cantar de Roncesvalles, preferentially, has its origin in the songs which the barbarians used to sing before battle to inspire courage, and which evoked their Visigothic ancestors. These songs, preserved in the peninsula's customs, kept the word to sing, recite and relate the deeds and events of the heroes, read rather than sung or recited, and spread through the jugglers (juglares). These have the character of informing and of news, and their characteristics are notable: the ISM, the epic formulas, the assonance, the phrases recited in the style of the time, the heroes presented as individuals, but in all identifiable with the collectivity. They express its concerns, aspirations and desires for self-affirmation against other communities. Its national character is due to these traits, and the epic awakened the national consciousness of the peoples.

Metre: Their verses range from 10 to 20 syllables, divided into two hemistichs of 6 to 8 syllables, grouped into long laisses of variable extension, monorhyme and irregular assonance.

Language and style: The epic shares features with the oral literature of all times: the transmission orally, the use of formulas, the use of expressive resources, and an oral style.

Form and evolution by era:

• Origins: Primitive origins from the beginnings to 1140.
• Flourishing: From 1140 to 1236, the epic reached fullness, with extensive and perfect works under the influence of the French epic.
• Prose versions: From 1236 to 1350, the epic's works were transformed into prose and became indispensable sources of information for medieval historians, who used them in their chronicles.
• Decadence: From 1350 to 1480, a double process took place: some great epic poems became novels, while others fragmented into romances.

The Poem of the Cid

The clerical poets (mester de clerecía) were a group of writers from the 13th and 14th centuries who systematically used the monorhyme or quatrain in the stanza known as cuaderna vía. They were clerics, not only those who had been ordained, but also men with cultured tastes and education in ecclesiastical Latin. Their moral purpose was explicit, and by popularizing their work they preserved the cultural heritage of Western Europe. Their treatment of the theme varied from the 13th to the 14th century.

Metre: It is characterized by metrical regularity: a) poems are organized in stanzas of four lines, the cuaderna vía; b) the verse is regular, of 14 syllables, divided into two hemistichs of 7 syllables each; c) the use of consonant rhyme throughout the stanza.

Style: The cultured character of the work is combined with a style that follows a determined order and alternates between: a) popular language (proverbs, colloquial expressions, comparisons...); b) an elevated language (cultured and syntactic lexicon) that attempts to bring the work closer to the great literary creations of the Latin tongue.

1st period: 13th century. Gonzalo de Berceo

Feudal-seigniorial society in the 13th century prevailed in religious and chivalric ideals, and spread classical, novelistic, epic and religious works. Precisely the national and religious character of Gonzalo de Berceo's works makes him the first named poet in our literature. His work falls into three classes: a) hagiographic works, on the lives of saints such as Santo Domingo de Silos; b) Mariological works, on the Virgin Mary: the miracles of Our Lady, the most extensive work, consists of an introduction and 25 miracles narrated by the Virgin. The original author is unknown, but these Marian texts were inspired by Latin writings circulating in Europe; c) liturgical works, on religious ceremonies and the mass.

2nd period: 14th century

In the emerging society of the Burgesses in the 14th century, religious concerns gave way to the chivalric ideals of the previous period. The didactic and moralizing sense permeates the clerical works, with a satirical, humorous and at times bitter and pessimistic tone. The principal work is the Libro de buen amor, by the Archpriest of Hita, written in the first half of the 14th century. It is not only an artistic work, but also a rich mosaic in which various cultural and literary currents of medieval Spain converge.

The Book of Good Love

Theme: Love is the central theme, understood in two dimensions: human love and divine love. The tension between both gives rise to an ambiguity that is deliberate in the work and subject to criticism.

Plot and structure: The plot consists of a succession of feigned adventures, romantic and autobiographical, of which the poet himself is the protagonist. The central narrative is interspersed with two episodes: the Battle between Don Carnal and Doña Cuaresma, and a paraphrase of the Pamphilus, a 12th-century comedy in which an old procuress intervenes to bring together the young Panfilo and the maiden Galata. It also contains a series of tales and fables of diverse origin, with a didactic intent, multiple moral digressions and burlesque passages, and several compositions of religious lyric character.

Metre: Juan Ruiz, a poet and cleric, moves within the literary movement of the mester de clerecía, but replaces the cuaderna vía with the Alexandrine metre of 16 syllables. In his compositions, lyrical verses recur, and the variety of stanzas and metrical forms stands out.

Purpose: The intention of the work, repeatedly subject to critical analysis, is ambiguous: the same title, Libro de buen amor, may refer to human love, understood as an refined art of seduction in which passion and sensuality intervene, or to divine love, devoid of spirituality. The author himself expounds his intention in the prologue, and it is widely debated by specialists.

Medieval Prose

Prose appeared in the Middle Ages mainly in the form of romances, translations from Latin, and collections of stories. The most representative are Calila and Dimna, a book of deceptions, and the Disciplina clericalis.

Alfonsine prose: Alfonso X the Wise, the authentic creator of Castilian prose, did not yet have a prose tradition in the vernacular that gave it a place in literature. His work gave the Castilian language a status comparable to Latin. The Alfonsine system fixed spelling and syntax, made structures more flexible, enriched the lexicon, and incorporated many new words. The author was not inspired by a single purpose, but aimed at a broad range of knowledge, including history (the General Chronicle), law (the Siete Partidas) and scientific works (the Alfonsine Tables).

Literary prose in the 14th century: In the 14th century, vigorous personalities appeared, such as the chronicler Pero López de Ayala, and the birth of literary prose is witnessed in Don Juan Manuel. Don Juan Manuel (1282-1348) is the author of the Conde Lucanor, a didactic work that constitutes the summit of literary prose in the 14th century. It is a collection of 50 stories of classical and Eastern origin, with which the Count instructs his servant Patronio. His moral teachings take a practical attitude towards life, where cunning and experience play a decisive role. In this book, the personal voice of the author is reflected in a style marked by clarity and precision.

The novel in the 14th century: Also in the 14th century, the novel emerged as a double phenomenon: the degeneration of the epic and the decadence of feudal society, which entered its final phase after the 13th-century crisis, and the advance of the burgess class. The manifestations of the novel were: a) the novel of adventures, such as the great overseas conquests, which combined amorous sentiment with action taken from classical and medieval legends; b) the chivalric novel, such as El Caballero Zifar, whose configuration combines two ingredients: the heroic episode and the didactic.

Medieval Theatre

Medieval theatre is not related to classical antiquity. It emerged in the Middle Ages, tied to religious celebrations, and developed out of the dramatization of ceremonies inside churches. The theatre of the 12th century is very poor from the dramatic point of view, dominated by dialogue and monologue. After a long hiatus, the theatre reappears in the second half of the 15th century, with texts of legislative character from that era providing evidence of its existence during the hiatus. For two long centuries there were dramatic representations of a religious and profane character, consisting of pantomime, parody and burlesque, alongside religious ceremonies (the last of these).