Spanish Ballads, Jorge Manrique, and La Celestina: Literary Analysis

Spanish Ballads: Origins and Evolution

Ballads are brief epic-lyrical compositions, often accompanied by an instrument. Early romances date back to the fifteenth century. These compositions were anonymous and transmitted alongside the chanson de geste.

Metrical Structure of Ballads

They typically consist of a limited number of 8-syllable verses, rhyming in assonance in pairs. The odd-numbered lines are often unrhymed.

Categories of Spanish Ballads

• Historical Ballads:

  Addressing themes similar to epic poems. For example, the ballads of Bernardo del Carpio and The Seven Infantes of Lara.

• Border Ballads:

  Focusing on issues related to border warfare between Moors and Christians. Many depict forbidden love affairs between a Christian and a Moor.

• Lyric Ballads:

  These often have known authors and discuss themes from famous novels of the time, such as King Arthur, becoming part of popular imagination.

Stylistic Features of Ballads

Ballads typically feature an introduction, middle, and end, similar to novels. However, the public often preferred to develop its own outcome, leading to the emergence of 'truncated' or 'fragmented' ballads that lack a definitive ending. They frequently employ constant repetitions such as anaphora, parallelism, and alliteration. Narrative dialogue is also common, alongside numerous adjectives mixed with enumerations.

Jorge Manrique: A 15th-Century Poet

Born in Paredes de Nava in 1490, Jorge Manrique belonged to a noble family. His father, Don Rodrigo Manrique, Master of the Order of Santiago, was often compared to El Cid. Upon his father's death, Jorge wrote a profound eulogy, his most renowned work, Coplas por la muerte de su padre (Verses on the Death of His Father). This work consists of 40 stanzas and is divided into a doctrinal statement on the transience of life, followed by a eulogy of the deceased. Each of the stanzas, known as coplas de pie quebrado (broken-foot stanzas) or Manriquean stanzas, consistently follows the structure of 12 lines grouped as 8a, 8b, 8c - 8d, 8e, 4f.

Key Themes in La Celestina

• Untouchable love and passion.
• Greed among servants, leading to madness and loss.
• Blind fortune as random and arbitrary.
• The use of magic spells by Celestina.
• The unstoppable nature of time and death.