Spanish Cancionero Poetry of the Fifteenth Century

Fifteenth-Century Cancionero Poetry

Cancionero poetry was one of the main entertainments of the nobility in the fifteenth century, practiced by learned poets and rooted in troubadour poetry. It is called cancionero because these poems were collected in songbooks (cancioneros).

The songbooks contain two types of compositions:

• Cantigas: Designed for singing, brief, and full of love.
• Sayings (Decires): Designed for reading, more extensive, and dealing with issues of death.

The main topics of these poems are love, morality, and religion:

• Love: Follows the model of troubadour poetry, where the gentleman experiences love as an overwhelming force. A metaphorical lexicon of bondage, war, and religion is used to express the gentleman's sentiment toward the lady. Currents of eroticism can also be found in these works.
• Metrics: The metrics used include octosyllables, dodecasyllables, and tetrasyllables (tetrasílabos).

Great Poets of the Fifteenth Century

Marqués de Santillana

A typical poet of the era, known for his songs and serranillas, he was also the introducer of the Italian sonnet into Castilian poetry.

Juan de Mena

A poet of songs written in a highly artificial, complicated style with an intellectual tone.

Jorge Manrique

He was the nephew of the writer Gómez Manrique and a member of a family heavily involved in politics and the military. As a poet, he wrote cancionero love poetry and burlesque, but his masterpiece is the elegiac poem written upon the death of his father (Coplas a la muerte de su padre).

The coplas consist of 40 stanzas called coplas manriqueñas (or pie quebrado). They are formed by 12 lines that follow the metric scheme: 8a-8b-4c-8a-8b-4c-8d-8e-4f-8d-8e-4f. The poem is divided into two parts:

1. General: Includes the first 24 stanzas.
2. Particular: Exalts the figure of the author's father.

The style employed is characterized by its naturalness and innovation. It features a humble style in which sententious remarks (sentencias) become highly relevant. The focus is on the use of metaphors and images, and rhetorical questions (preguntas retóricas) are also common. The use of a simple style is intended so that it reaches all audiences.

The theme of death is presented as a character—vengeful and ruthless, possessing an equalizing power against which it is impossible to offer resistance. In these verses, death is not depicted as macabre, but rather as an envoy or minister of God. Although the subject of fame is found in other writers, the sense used here is the one popular in Italy. Thanks to the good deeds performed in his earthly life and the fame gained, the father triumphs over death and achieves eternal life.