The Spanish Ballad: History, Origin, and Characteristics
The Spanish Ballad
The epic began to decline in the fourteenth century, and during the fifteenth century, epic poems were no longer written. Public taste shifted, and minstrels favored romances. These were poems with epic themes and narrative structures, although occasionally lyrical, that circulated through oral channels, separate from formal literature. In the late fifteenth century, learned poets became interested in these poems, which were incorporated into songbooks and became part of the poetic repertoire sung in court. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, several printed collections of ballads appeared, and the great poets of the Golden Age composed new ones, imitating the traditional style.
Old Ballad vs. New Romance
Old ballads refer to the set of ballads sung in the late Middle Ages that belonged to the oral tradition. In contrast, those created by known authors with artistic intentions are grouped under the designation of new romances. One might also speak of modern oral ballads, a vast collection of romances passed down from the late nineteenth century to today’s oral tradition, which allows us to reconstruct the mode of transmission of medieval romances.
Most romances exist in several versions. Each version differs from the others to a greater or lesser extent, with changes in the characters’ names, added or deleted episodes, etc. These changes may be due to the singers’ desire to rework the romance, adapt it to a new circumstance and time, or simply a failure of memory. The survival of romance over time is significant, but the dramatic changes of the modern world make romance an endangered phenomenon.
Structure and Origin
The romance is a poem of variable length composed of eight-syllable verses with rhyming pairs. The odd verses are left unrhymed. The rhyme is generally assonant. Due to its meter, the romance is related to the epic genre, from which it also derives the narrative material of many of its examples. For this reason, it was thought that romances were originally fragments broken off from larger epics.
Two theories try to explain the origin of the romances:
- The traditionalist theory posits that romances are fragments of epic poems that, due to their special beauty or interest, broke away from the original poems to be sung independently. The standard line of singing, sixteen syllables, would have been divided into two eight-syllable lines, which would lead to pairs of assonant rhymes:
Tears of his eyes, then said Mansur:
“Well I know these heads, for my sins, sir.”
Tears of your eyes
Mansur said then:
“Well I know these heads,
for my sins, sir.” - The individualist thesis argues that romances were created from the outset as a genre independent of epic poems. It seems that the older romances are lyrical and romantic, not epic. The genre would have arisen through the invention of a poet, whose creation achieved immediate success.
Characteristics of the Spanish Ballad
Epic-Lyric Nature
Despite the many features shared with epics, romances deviate from the epic in the importance they place on affective communication. They utilize expressive techniques found in traditional lyric poetry. The ballad, therefore, can be defined as an epic-lyric.
Variety of Themes
The variety of topics covered by ballads is extraordinary. Romances can be classified as:
- News ballads: These offer historical information closely related to the time of the romance’s composition. In the fifteenth century, romances were composed about the civil war between Pedro I the Cruel and Enrique de Trastámara, and later on the War of Granada. A group of romances, called border ballads or Moorish ballads, narrate events on the border with the Muslim kingdoms. In these romances, Muslims are often characterized as sensitive and chivalrous.
- Epic or heroic ballads: These collect episodes related to the deeds of heroes from Spanish and foreign epics (El Cid, Roland, Bernardo del Carpio, etc.).
- Novelesque ballads: These connect with the legendary themes of European dissemination. They often tell stories of love, and women play a fundamental role.
- Lyrical ballads: These focus on the expression of poetic sentiment.
Style and Language
In terms of style, the most salient features of the ballads are their conciseness and drama:
- Conciseness: As in traditional balladry, everything superfluous is removed to achieve the greatest concentration of expression. For this reason, several narrative ballads only present the climactic scene or episode of a longer story. This characteristic is known as fragmentariness.
- Drama: Emotional intensity is achieved through the use of common resources of traditional balladry, such as exclamatory phrases. Along with these, other resources appear to give more drama to the action:
- Dialogue
- Abundance of repetitions: “Abenamar, Abenamar”, “Fontefrida, Fontefrida.”
- Action updated by the adverb “now” or the historical present: “We are out of Castilla” “Amores is Rodrigo.”
- Expressions that appeal to sight and sound to bring the events before the listener’s eyes: “Then spoke the good king, / you shall hear what he said.”
As for language, romances share with lyrical poetry a simple syntax, while adopting the use of epic formulas and epithets. The presence of archaic language and the peculiar use of tenses are also noteworthy: “What castles are those? / Altos are and shining.”
tos are and shining.”