Jorge Manrique’s Coplas: Medieval Society and Literary Themes
Literature in 15th-Century Castile
The crisis of medieval society is significantly enhanced in the 15th century, a period considered a transition between the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. This crisis is reflected in political activity, the economy, cultural events, forms of thought, and literature. 15th-century society is conflictual. In Castile, the nobility had reached a hegemonic position. In contrast, the living conditions of peasants became increasingly dismal. In addition, relations between members of the three ethnic-religious communities progressively deteriorated.
The political crisis deepened in the 15th century, and Castile experienced a climate of anarchy, which is reflected in its literature. At the end of the century, the Catholic Monarchs subdued the nobility, concentrated power in their hands, and established the authoritarian monarchy.
Regarding culture, the discovery of classical antiquity through the Italian humanists (Dante, Petrarch, and Boccaccio) is of transcendental importance. The literary courts of John II, Alfonso V the Magnanimous, and the Catholic Monarchs played an important role.
Jorge Manrique’s *Coplas por la muerte de su padre*
Metric
Manrique uses the *copla manriqueña*, a strophic variety of twelve verses grouped into two sextuplets of broken feet. The verses are eight syllables, except for the 3rd and 6th (four syllables). The rhyme is consonant and is distributed: abcabc / defdef.
Structure
The *Coplas* are divided into three parts:
- The first part provides a doctrinal statement with general reflections on the transience of human life and the inconsistency of the goods of this world, subject to the destructive and unforgiving power of fortune, time, and death.
- The second part provides examples of prominent figures of the past, all victims of these three agents.
- The third part contains the praise of the deceased and his encounter with death.
Themes
The *Coplas* present commonplaces or platitudes that express truths universally accepted in the Middle Ages. From his own human experience, Manrique very personally recreates these themes, and the result is a work that moves us with its authenticity and emotion:
The world is a place of transit in which man has the opportunity to achieve the salvation of his soul. If his stay in the world is transitory, he should not cling to it, and this detachment has to be shown through the renunciation of worldly goods, which are misleading, fleeting, and unstable. This is the theme of the *contemptus mundi*, or contempt of the world.
Fortune is blind chance that unleashes human tragedies. She is depicted as a hasty and volatile wheel that spreads happiness and unhappiness: it is a pagan representation.
Time is fleeting. It is impossible to retain it, and the future will become an elusive, successive present. Since the world is sustained over time, and time is ephemeral, it is useless for man to place his hopes on the fragile foundations of the earth.
Death: Manrique sets out a tradition that had repeatedly stressed death’s equalizing power, its unpredictable emergence, its inescapable nature, its macabre image, and so on. But Manrique manages to overcome this conception, making it regain its frightening transcendent meaning. If death is a reality, man must accept it with serenity, as a natural fact.
Ubi sunt?: This is the question about the whereabouts of powerful figures in the recent past, but the response is silence.
Fame: For Manrique, fame is the consequence of a life of honor, the only defense against the attacks of fortune, time, and death; it is a comfort and the means to eternal salvation.