Medieval Spanish Literature: An Overview

Posted on Oct 1, 2024 in Latin

Medieval Spanish Literature

Historical Context

Medieval Spanish literature spans from the fall of the Roman Empire (5th century) to the beginning of the Renaissance (15th century). Early Romance texts emerged in the 9th century. The Middle Ages are divided into two periods: the Dark Ages (5th-mid-12th century) and the High Middle Ages (mid-12th-15th century).

High Middle Ages: Society and Culture

  • Territorial fragmentation and feudalism
  • Rural society centered around castles (defense) and monasteries (culture and religion)
  • Reconquista (9th-15th centuries) and Moorish influence
  • Cultural influences from the Camino de Santiago (“Provence”, “troubadours”, “courtly love”) and Al-Andalus (Eastern love lyric)

Late Middle Ages: Society and Culture

  • Decline in invasions (barbarians and Muslims)
  • Rise of cities (palaces, cathedrals, universities)
  • Development of bourgeois customs and mentality (tradesmen and craftsmen): materialism, enjoyment of life, individualism

Literary Themes

High Middle Ages

  • Religious themes: sin, heaven, hell
  • Warrior themes: exaltation of medieval heroism, loyalty to the king (epic poems)
  • Love themes: songs of love and friendship, troubadours, courtly love

Late Middle Ages

  • Continuation of warrior and chivalry themes, but with more fantastical elements (romances, novels of chivalry)
  • Religious themes, but with a focus on the Virgin Mary and forgiveness
  • Continuation of love lyrics in songbooks
  • Emergence of urban themes: carpe diem, materialism, pleasures of the world, fear of death

Characteristics of High Middle Ages Literature

  • Didactic approach
  • Anonymous and collective character: multiple versions adapted to different locations and times (minstrels)
  • Oral transmission: emphasis on captivating the audience

Characteristics of Late Middle Ages Literature

  • Enrichment of the Romance language due to its use by cultured authors
  • Abandonment of anonymity
  • Wider dissemination through writing and printing
  • Emergence of prose

Popular Lyric Poetry

Origins and Forms

  • Mozarabic (jarchas in Andalusia): love poems with an intimate tone, often featuring a young lover confiding in a friend
  • Galician-Portuguese (Cantigas de amigo)
  • Castilian (villancico)
  • Catalan (influenced by cultured poetry)

Structure and Themes

  • Use of refrains and parallelism
  • Themes of love (joy or grief of a woman due to the absence of her beloved), mismatched love, dawn songs (albas), harvest songs, May songs, mountain songs (serranillas)

Style and Metrics

  • Short poems, exclamations, interrogations, repetitions, diminutives
  • Minor art verses, rhyme, assonance
  • Stanzas: zéjel (Arabic verse form) and villancico

Old Ballads (15th Century)

  • Derived from fragments of epics
  • Themes: historical (recent history, propaganda, border conflicts with the Moors), Carolingian themes, lyrical (sentimental and love themes)
  • Style and metrics: repetition, parallelism, dialogue, suspenseful endings, octosyllabic verse with assonance and paired rhymes
  • Oral tradition, narrative poetry, plain language, use of repetition, antithesis, parallelism, enumerations

Cultured Lyric Poetry (15th Century)

Troubadour/Provençal Influence

  • Catalan (love songs)
  • Galician-Portuguese (love songs)

Marqués de Santillana

  • Politician, warrior, and learned man with a vast library
  • First poet of the 15th century
  • Known for his serranillas, sayings, songs, and art poetry
  • Provençal influence: serranillas (short verses, light rhythm, depicting encounters between knights and peasant women), introduced sonnets to Castilian
  • Italian influence: “Hell of Lovers” (Renaissance influence, references to Greco-Roman antiquity, use of sonnets)
  • Moral-didactic poetry: proverbs inspired by classical sentences, educational purpose, high and solemn tone, Latinate language, interest in the classical world

Juan de Mena

  • Versatile and original versifier, influenced by Italian fashion
  • Known for “Labyrinth of Fortune” (epic poem with 297 stanzas, explores the influence of fate on human life, allegory imitating Dante’s “Divine Comedy”)

Dance of Death

  • Emerged in 14th-15th century Europe, likely inspired by plague epidemics
  • Early examples painted on church walls, with a moralistic character
  • Represents the universality of death, regardless of social status (rich, poor, commoner, king, pope)