Medieval Literature: Poetry, Prose, and Drama
Literary Genres in the Middle Ages
The Middle Ages witnessed the flourishing of poetry, prose, and drama. Early lyrical expressions include the Mozarabic jarchas (11th century). Galician-Portuguese lyric poetry emerged in the 13th and 14th centuries, encompassing two main types: cantigas de amor (love songs) and cantigas de amigo (songs of friendship). The epic tradition is represented by the Poema de Mio Cid (12th century) and the mester de clerecía (Berceo, 13th century; Hita, 14th century). Castilian prose, initiated by Alfonso X the Wise, reached its peak in the 14th century with Don Juan Manuel.
Medieval Poetry
Two main types of poetry developed during the Middle Ages:
- Popular-Traditional Poetry: This anonymous and collective poetry evolved through oral transmission and continuous reworking.
- Learned Poetry: This individual form, with known authorship, allowed for easier dating and was written rather than oral.
Lyrical Folk-Traditional Poetry: Jarchas, Ballads, and Carols
The Mozarabic jarchas, Galician-Portuguese cantigas de amigo, and Castilian songs (15th century) share lyrical patterns common to the Iberian Peninsula. These short songs, often sung by a woman, express the female lament of love’s absence. The girl’s confidants are typically her mother, sisters, and friends, and in the cantigas de amigo, nature itself. Carols cover a wider range of themes: love, dawn, meetings and partings of lovers, and the arrival of spring.
Metric
Jarchas and carols exhibit metrical irregularity, consisting of 2, 3, or 4 verses with variable rhyme. Ballads, however, demonstrate metrical regularity and precision, tending towards isosyllabism and rhyme.
Structure
Cantigas de amigo feature stanzas with a parallelistic structure. Jarchas and carols originally had a simple structure (2 or 4 lines). Later writers added learned glosses. In jarchas, the gloss is a muwashshah, a cultured Arabic poetic composition in the zejel metric. The jarcha appears in the last stanza of the muwashshah and forms its core. In carols, the gloss appears at the end and can take three forms: zejel structure, parallelistic structure, or mixed structure.
Narrative Poetry: Mester de Juglaría and Mester de Clerecía
Both addressed the same illiterate audience, but for different reasons. The mester de clerecía, with its knowledge of Latin and ecclesiastical learning, aimed to educate the populace on religious matters with a didactic and moralizing purpose. The mester de juglaría, performed by minstrels traveling from village to village, entertained audiences with news, acrobatics, and various stories.
The Mester de Juglaría: The Epic
The medieval epic is distinct from the Greco-Roman tradition. It is popular in nature, unlike the cultured epics of the Renaissance and Baroque. Epics are the earliest manifestations of the medieval epic, serving to inform and report on current events. Gesta refers to the exploits of epic heroes with whom an entire community identifies, reflecting their concerns and demonstrating the national character of the genre.
Metric
Epics are not structured in stanzas. Verses of 10 to 20 syllables (divided into hemistichs) are grouped into long, irregular monorhyme runs (usually assonance).
Language and Style
Minstrels employed characteristic features of the epic, and due to its oral transmission, they used resources of spoken language (oral style). The Poema de Mio Cid (mid-12th or early 13th century) exalts the Castilian hero Rodrigo Díaz de Vivar.
The Mester de Clerecía
This style, employed by writers in the 13th and 14th centuries, systematically used rhyme. Clergy referred to educated individuals with ecclesiastical Latin knowledge.
Topics
Didactic and moral themes, often drawn from the cultural heritage of Western Europe, were common. The treatment of these subjects evolved from the 12th to the 14th century.
Metric
Regular fourteen-syllable verses (Alexandrine) split into two hemistichs of seven syllables each, with consonant rhyme.
Style
A blend of popular language (lexical families, sayings, nicknames) and elevated language (lexical cultisms) aimed to connect the literary work to great Latin creations.
The Archpriest of Hita
The Archpriest of Hita presented a realistic vision of life, imbued with the didactic and moralistic sense of the mester de clerecía, but also with satire, humor, and sometimes bitterness and pessimism.
Libro de Buen Amor (Book of Good Love)
- Theme: Love, both human and divine.
- Plot and Structure: A sequence of fictitious love affairs featuring the poet, interspersed with allegorical episodes, a paraphrase of Pamphilus, tales, fables, didactic and burlesque disquisitions, and lyrical compositions.
- Metric: Primarily using the Alexandrine verse form of the mester de clerecía, sometimes replaced by sixteen-syllable verses. Lyrical compositions employ shorter verses, leading to the zejel form.
- Purpose: The title is ambiguous, potentially referring to both human and divine love. A moralizing intention is expressed by the author and supported by many scholars.
Medieval Prose
The first examples of Romance prose appeared during the reign of Ferdinand III (first half of the 13th century). Collections of short stories like Kalila and Dimna and Sendebar are representative examples.
Medieval Theater
Medieval theater, unrelated to classical antiquity, originated from the dramatization of religious ceremonies within churches. Over time, the dramatic element gained prominence, leading to performances outside the church.