Medieval Spanish Literature: Mester de Juglaría and Clerecía
Mester de Juglaría and Mester de Clerecía
- Mester de Juglaría (Minstrelsy): Irregular metric verses, long runs of polymers, monorhymes in assonance.
- Mester de Clerecía (Clergy): Regular meter, stanza in rhyme, four Alexandrine verses, monorhymes in consonance.
Content
- Mester de Juglaría: Related to the epic. Aims to inform.
- Mester de Clerecía: Historical, religious, aims to teach.
Gonzalo de Berceo
Born in the late 12th and died in the mid-13th century. He was the first author with a known name. He wrote religious works in via rib, including lives of saints and works exalting the Virgin Mary. His most outstanding work, Miracles of Our Lady, contains 25 stories inspired by collections of miracles written in Latin. His style is conversational and simple.
Other Books of Mester de Clerecía
The Book of Apollonius and The Poem of Fernán González.
Alfonso X the Wise (1252-1284)
- King who helped consolidate the Castilian language as the appropriate language for literature and history.
- Objectives of Alfonso X:
- Unify his kingdom linguistically.
- Disseminate culture among the more illiterate classes.
- Founder of Castilian prose.
- Devoted to war, fighting for the reconquest of territories occupied by Arabs.
- Founded the Toledo School of Translators, a foundation of great importance in translation and creating great masterpieces of literature of the period.
Oral Narrative: Juglares (Minstrels)
Street artists who performed before the public in squares and streets.
- Oral transmission of anonymous works accompanied by a musical instrument.
- Works: Poems, epics, legendary stories.
Epics
Long, oral, and anonymous poems recounting historical facts, often exaggerated, linked to the wars of the Reconquest. They served to entertain and inform people, as well as to stimulate soldiers going into battle.
Features of Epics
- Long polymetric verses.
- Rhyme: monorhyme and assonance.
- Long irregular runs.
- Verses divided into hemistichs.
- All these epics belong to a school called Mester de Juglaría.
Historic El Cid
El Cid, as is well known, was an important historical figure. Besides his work as a conqueror (or reconqueror) and his military rank, the interest aroused by his figure is partly justified for sociological and political reasons. He was largely considered representative of a new social class, the lower nobility of Castile. This class was formed by intelligent, energetic men full of desire to climb the social ladder and the scale of power. Some sided with King Sancho and held in low esteem both the nobility of León and the very high Castilian nobility, which was judged as anchored in earlier times and clinging to their old privileges. These circumstances are clearly reflected in the Cantar de Mio Cid.
Cid in Spanish Medieval Literature
El Cantar de Mio Cid is part of a set of literary works composed on the figure of Ruy Diaz, including a Latin Historia Roderici and other works in Romance languages framed in the epic genre. Of these, only two have survived: the aforementioned Cantar de Mio Cid and the Song of the Mocedades de Rodrigo.
Mester de Clerecía
Current of poetry consisting of cults, generally members of the church, emerged from the mid-thirteenth to the late fourteenth centuries.
- Gonzalo de Berceo and Juan Ruiz, Archpriest of Hita, belong to this trend.
- They wrote isometric verse and rhyme.
Differences Between Mester de Juglaría and Mester de Clerecía
Formal: