Spanish Lyric Poetry: Forms, History, and Key Authors

The Lyric Genre: Definition and Characteristics

The **lyric genre** constitutes all works in which the author expresses their most intimate thoughts and feelings in an objective and personal manner.

Key Features of Lyric Poetry

• Wide Scope: The lyric genre covers a wide and varied range of topics, forms, and literary attitudes.
• Intensive Language Use: Employs intensive poetic language, characterized by a high number of stylistic figures.
• Expressive Function: Strong presence of the expressive function, manifesting the author's feelings and emotions.
• Concentration and Brevity: Little presence of narrative elements; often no plot. Poetry focuses on the fragmentary, using concrete images.
• Rhythm and Musicality: Achieved through the repetition of sounds, the distribution of pauses and accents, and intentional sound/syntactic sequences.
• Attitudes: Can be ironic, satirical, reflective, philosophical, or whatever the author intends.

Major Poetic Forms

• Elegy (Elegía): A composition in which the author expresses pain over the death of a loved one or an unpleasant circumstance.
• Eclogue (Égloga): The poet expresses feelings of love through the voices of shepherds in an idealized natural landscape.
• Sonnet (Soneto): A form consisting of two quatrains (presenting a theme or idea) followed by two tercets of an argumentative nature that close the poem conclusively.

Versification in Castilian Literature

The most frequent verses in Castilian literature are:

• Minor Art (Arte Menor): Verses of 8 syllables or fewer.
• Major Art (Arte Mayor): Verses of 9 syllables or more.

Rhyme Types and Syllable Counting

• Consonant Rhyme (Rima Consonante): All sounds (vowels and consonants) are repeated after the last stressed vowel.
• Assonant Rhyme (Rima Asonante): Only the vowels are repeated after the last stressed vowel.
• Syllable Count Adjustments:
  • If the last word is *llana* (paroxytone/flat), the count remains the same.
  • If the last word is *aguda* (oxytone/acute), add +1 syllable.
  • If the last word is *esdrújula* (proparoxytone), subtract -1 syllable.

Medieval Literary Context

Early Forms: Jarchas

The **Jarchas** are short stanzas written in Mozarabic Romance that appeared at the end of an Arabic *muwassaha*. The Jarcha was often the central element of the composition.

Performers and Poets

• Minstrel (Juglar): A person who, during the Middle Ages, traveled from village to village reciting poems, singing, or dancing in exchange for money.
• Troubadour (Trovador): A medieval poet who wrote and sang *trovas* (poems) primarily in the Provençal language.

Mester de Juglaría (Minstrel's Craft)

This refers to the professional craft of the minstrels, dedicated to public recitation and performance. Key characteristics include:

• Seeking public attention to gain interest.
• Constant repetition to facilitate memorization and comprehension by the audience.
• Use of simple and coordinated sentences for easier recall.
• Requesting money at the end of the function.

Mester de Clerecía (Clergy's Craft)

This refers to the school of learned writers who chose Romance as their literary language. Characteristics include:

• Use of the *cuaderna vía* (a new verse form).
• Themes are typically religious, historical, or national.
• The language of these compositions is characterized by careful and selective use.

The Poem of the Cid (Cantar del Mio Cid)

This epic poem, preserved from the 14th century, contains 3,730 verses and is anonymous.

Structure and Theme

• Structure: Composed of three songs (*cantares*) that make up the original poem, recited on different days.
• Plot: The plot unfolds credibly, though there are clearly fictional episodes.
• Theme: The central theme is **honor**, specifically the loss of honor due to banishment and the protagonist's efforts to recover it.

Style and Legacy

The style is characterized by *versos bimembres* (two-part verses), anaphora, and exclamations. The work was lost for several centuries before its rediscovery.

Traditional Lyric Poetry (Lírica Tradicional)

Key characteristics and themes:

• Love Songs: The woman complains to a confidante about the absence of her beloved (*amado*).
• Dirges (Endechas): Funeral songs dedicated to the death of a person.
• May Songs (Mayas): Songs dedicated to the month of May, celebrating blooming and spring love.
• Dawn Songs (Albas): The moment of sunrise when lovers bid farewell to avoid detection.
• Work and Celebration Songs: Used to accompany daily tasks or festivities.

Formal Features

Frequent use of parallels, anaphora, and a strong expressive function.

Cultured Lyric and the Courtly Tradition

Courtly Love (Amor Cortés)

Cultured courtly lyric poetry is inspired by the code of courtly love. Key tenets of this code include:

• The lover is devoted to a lady.
• The lady is of a superior class (often unattainable).
• The lady is not truly available to the lover.
• The greatest suffering for the lover is not seeing his mistress.
• Love often culminates in death (metaphorical or literal).

Collections and Key Works

• Songbooks (Cancioneros): Collections of poems by various authors. The most important include the *Cancionero de Baena*, the *Cancionero de Stúñiga*, and the *Cancionero General*.
• Jorge Manrique: Wrote the famous *Coplas por la muerte de su padre* (Stanzas on the Death of His Father) in the 15th century.

The Romancero (Ballad Collection)

The *Romancero* is a large collection of compositions called **romances** (ballads). These are epic, lyric, or epic-lyrical poems characterized by:

• An undetermined number of octosyllabic lines.
• Assonant rhyme in the even-numbered lines.
• Traditional themes.

Groups of Romances

1. Old Romances (*Romancero Viejo*): Anonymous, typically octosyllabic, often featuring a refrain (*estribillo*) and assonant rhyme.
2. New Romances (*Romancero Nuevo*): Learned authors imitating the style of the old romances.

Stylistic Characteristics of the Romance

• Single metric mold.
• Tendency toward condensation (shorter songs).
• Frequent presence of archaisms.
• Peculiar use of verbs, repetition, and antithesis.

Lyric Poetry of the Golden Age (Siglo de Oro)

Renaissance and Baroque Trends

• Renaissance Lyric: Focused on the aesthetic ideal, harmony, and classical imitation.
• Baroque Lyric: Characterized by pessimism (*pesimismo*), concern over the passage of time, and complexity.

Major Baroque Styles

• Conceptism (Conceptismo - Quevedo): Focused on the depth of thought, wit, and complex ideas, often using antithesis and wordplay. Quevedo's *Parnaso Español* collects political, philosophical, romantic, and burlesque poems, often concerned with death.
• Culteranism (Culteranismo - Góngora): Focused on form, using complex syntax, obscure vocabulary (*cultismos*), and elaborate metaphors. Góngora's works include minor poems (ballads, sonnets, *letrillas*) and major poems like the *Fábula de Polifemo y Galatea* and the *Soledades* (Solitudes).

Key Authors of the Golden Age

Garcilaso de la Vega (Renaissance)

His works focus on amorous themes, often divided into:

• ***Poemas in vita:*** Written during the life of Isabel, his beloved, dealing with love, jealousy, and hope.
• ***Poemas in morte:*** Written after Isabel's death, expressing the pain of impossible love.

His style seeks perfection, musicality, elegance, and softness.

Lope de Vega (Baroque)

His lyric works include *Rimas*, *Rimas Sacras* (Sacred Rhymes), and *Rimas Humanas y Divinas del Licenciado Tomé de Burguillos*. His style balances classicism and form, reflecting all the events of his life, both loving and religious.

Romantic and Post-Romantic Lyric (19th Century)

In the 19th century, versification recovered complexity, introducing stanzas with verses of 3, 12, 16, and 18 syllables, and utilizing multiple stanza combinations.

First Half of the Century (High Romanticism)

Notable works include the ballads (*romances*) of José Rivas, Duke of Rivas, and the songs and poems of José de Espronceda.

Second Half of the Century (Post-Romanticism)

This period saw the rise of more intimate and personal poetry. Key representatives include:

• Rosalía de Castro
• Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer (often considered the leading Post-Romantic poet).