Understanding Popular and Court Poetry of the 15th Century
Popular Poetry: Ballads
The romances, epic compositions, and arrangements defined in verses to be sung or recited use octosyllabic assonance rhyme pairs. These are different from ancient epics and are composed by individual authors.
The Ballad
A compilation from the fifteenth century, romances are anonymous and called old romances from the 16th century onward. They can be of biblical and classical origin, including stories from the Old and New Testaments, tragic events like the Trojan War, and the fire of Rome. They also include epics similar to the chanson de geste, such as national Arab invasions of the peninsula, exploits of El Cid, Carolingian events like the affair of Roncesvalles and the figure of Roland, Breton tales, and historical and news events informing people about facts and events between Christians and Arabs. Romantic and lyrical ballads have little historical basis and essentially recreate anecdotes and feelings.
Orally transferred, they use fixed formulas to enter the narrative, stating facts, introducing characters, inserting dialogue, indicating action, and temporarily placing events. Repetition is also used much, with phonic and lexical recurrences and parallels. They vary in tense to streamline the narrative and avoid monotony, using simple language and some archaisms, as well as resources to engage the listener through vocatives, apostrophes, and situational elements, highlighting the beginning of the poem with first-person pronouns.
Court Poetry
Found in palaces and courts, these poems were met in collective songbooks, with the Cancionero de Baena being a highlight. It consisted of two forms:
- Poetic-lyric songs: Rhymes of eight-syllable verses with regular consonance, focusing on the theme of love with Provencal language and rhetorical devices.
- Doctrinal poems: Narrative or allegorical verses with dodecasyllabic lines divided into two hemistichs, influenced by Greco-Roman culture and the Italian poet Dante.
Marqués de Santillana
He maintained one of the finest libraries of his time. His serranillas are notable, influenced by the Christmas genre, Hita, and some allegorical poems of Dante. He attempted to adapt Italian meters to Castilian poetry.
Juan de Mena
Latin secretary to John II and an expert on the classics. His major work, the allegorical poem Laberinto de Fortuna, consists of 300 stanzas of great art, aiming to elevate Castilian to the height of Latin. The structure is based on the three wheels of fortune—past, present, and future—trying to win the favor of John II for Álvaro de Luna.
Jorge Manrique
A courtly gentleman, an expert on arms and letters, he fought to defend his father’s possessions and support Isabella the Catholic. His brief work reflects the interests of his time: palatial environment, political strife, and concern for life and death. His best work, Verses on the Death of His Father, consists of 40 double broken couplets, an elegy for the death of Rodrigo Manrique. Each stanza contains two sextuplets with this metric: 8a 8b 4c 8a 8b 4c / 8d 8e 4f 8d 8e 4f, where he reflects on life and death, considering earthly life as a preparation for the real life of heaven, and taking into account the third life, of fame. The language and style are simple and far from superfluous ornamentation, often involving the reader and using traditional images and metaphors to authenticate the author’s poetic expression.
Theater of the 15th Century
La Celestina
Written by Fernando de Rojas, formerly titled Tragicomedy of Calisto and Melibea, Rojas was born in Puebla de Montalbán in 1476 and studied law in Salamanca. The theme is love, and society is divided into two worlds: the servants and the masters, both of whom love and enjoy sexual pleasure, causing the tragedy. A humanistic comedy, a novel in dialogue, and a dynamic urban space. The characters evolve throughout the play, and the purpose is to warn of the dangers of mad love and the loves of servants.