Spanish Ballads: Origins, Evolution, and Poetic Forms
The Romance (Ballad) Tradition: An Introduction
A romance (ballad) is a composition typically consisting of an indeterminate number of eight-syllable verses, characterized by assonance rhyme in pairs, leaving the odd-numbered verses free. The term old ballads refers to the collection of ballads sung in the late Middle Ages. These old ballads played a dual role: they represent a genre of oral origin and popular appeal in the late Middle Ages, but they were also subject to the influence of written texts. They were compiled to be read by courtly and bourgeois audiences, even at the dawn of the Renaissance. This revaluation continued during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, allowing the most eminent poets of these eras to continue cultivating the romance. The corpus of romances written by esteemed poets constitutes the new ballads.
Beyond the old and new ballads, we can also speak of modern oral ballads. These are significant romances from the entire oral tradition, collected from the late 19th century until today, found in the Iberian Peninsula, the Canary Islands, Latin America, and Sephardic communities scattered throughout the world.
Origins of the Romance
The origin of romances in the late Middle Ages appears to stem from the decomposition of major epic poems. This origin, as fragmented epics, also explains the abundance of epic themes in the Old Ballads. However, some scholars believe that the romance originated as a genre separate from epic poems, the result of the invention of a poet who achieved immediate and widespread popularity. This perspective accounts for the existence of numerous romances with lyrical and romantic themes. Moreover, besides the often unclear distinction between lyrical and narrative ballads, many features connect the romance to traditional lyrical tunes. Therefore, romances should be considered part of this tradition, allowing the romance to be defined as a lyric-epic genre.
Formal and Structural Features of the Romance
The formal and structural features of the romance are heavily conditioned by its long history of oral transmission, which connects its origins to both popular song and epic poetry. Key characteristics include:
- The ductility of the romance, which allows and encourages its recreation: an active and creative transmission of texts, resulting in new versions tailored to the taste, thought, and culture of each receiver.
- The importance of recurring motifs, both formal and thematic, which facilitate reprocessing within the texts.
- The existence of a traditional style, a basic ingredient of the romance.
Common Formal Devices
The most common formal devices in romances include:
- Repetitions and enumerations
- Antitheses
- Alternation of tenses
- Use of epic formulas and epithets
- Archaic language
- Updating and use of adverbs or the historical present
- Direct appeals to the listener
- Common dialogues
- Syntactic simplicity
- Absence of complex similes and metaphors
Therefore, romances are characterized by their apparent clarity and simplicity. Characteristic features include beginnings in medias res and truncated endings. This implies that romances are open narrative structures, featuring a variety of themes and motifs, thereby facilitating continuous innovation in their oral transmission.
Thematic Categories and Poetic Characteristics
Thematic Categories of Old Romances
Thematically, old romances tend to fall into categories such as:
- Castilian epic themes
- Moorish and border ballads
- French epic themes
- Romantic and lyrical ballads
Key Poetic Characteristics
The romances possess two important characteristics:
- Essentiality: This involves removing everything superfluous to achieve the highest concentration of expression. In language, this is reflected in a scarcity of adjectives and a preference for action over descriptions.
- Drama: An intensity achieved through the use of dialogue that pits characters against the action, punctuation marks, abundant parallelism, and repetition, all of which intensify the narrative.