Castilian Language: Origins, Lyric Poetry, and Literary Movements
Birth of the Castilian Language
Vulgar Latin, present on the Iberian Peninsula since 218 BC, evolved and fragmented into dialects. Especially since the 8th century, due to the fragmentation of the Christian kingdoms after the Muslim invasion, Romance languages like Castilian, Catalan, and Mozarabic dialects emerged. The Castilian Romance exhibits a higher degree of evolution and dynamism. The first written records date from the 10th century and are the Glosses (brief explanations in Romance of Latin terms that monks annotated in the margins of books). Early Castilian shows many hesitations in phonetic spelling.
Early Castilian Lyric Poetry
It was initially believed that there was no popular lyric poetry in Castile because no written records of the first lyrical compositions in our language were preserved. However, Menéndez Pidal defended the existence of a primitive Castilian popular lyric, transmitted orally until the 15th century and displaying a native style.
Sources of Castilian Lyric Poetry
There are several theories regarding the origins of Castilian lyric poetry. The first compositions might have been influenced by two sources:
- The rich Galician-Portuguese lyric tradition: During the early Middle Ages, Galician was the language of many kings of Castile and Castilian poets. Typical compositions include ballads of friendship, love songs, and songs of mockery or maldezir. It was initially thought that Provençal poetry, along with Galician, was the origin of Castilian lyric poetry, but this theory lost momentum with the discovery of the jarchas.
- The rich Arabic lyric tradition: Some short songs in Arabic or Hebrew (called muwashshahas) were discovered with final lines in Mozarabic (called jarchas). Learned poets used these jarchas, written in the Castilian dialect of those living in Muslim territory, to conclude their poems. The theme of the jarchas is almost always love, expressed by a girl who turns to her mother or sisters, lamenting the absence or awaiting the return of her beloved. Therefore, the jarchas might have inspired the first poems of the later Castilian lyric tradition.
Mester de Juglaría
Mester de Juglaría refers to anonymous works whose goals are to entertain and inform simultaneously. Their motivation is the surrounding reality, they are disseminated orally, their themes are epic, their meter is irregular, and their literary devices are simple, such as repetition and lexical formulas.
Mester de Clerecía
Mester de Clerecía refers to works with known authors whose goal is to teach. Their sources are libraries, they are disseminated in writing, their themes are religious, their meter is Alexandrine verse, and their literary devices are more complex, including metaphor, symbol, allegory, and irony. Notable authors include Gonzalo de Berceo and Juan Ruiz.
Coplas por la Muerte de su Padre (Verses on the Death of his Father)
In Coplas por la Muerte de su Padre, Jorge Manrique exalts the figure of his late father, portraying him as a hero who calmly faces death. The poem’s themes are:
- Death: The central theme around which the poet’s reflections revolve.
- Fame: A way to survive beyond death.
Structure: The poem is divided into three parts. The first two correspond to mortal life, while the third can be further divided into two sections: fame (living on in the memories of posterity) and everlasting or eternal life. The metrical form consists of 40 stanzas of pie quebrado (broken foot). The form chosen by the author is two sextuplets with the rhyme scheme abc abc, also known as the copla manriqueña.