Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 22.djvu/377

 ASHMAN.] SPAIN 353 century, the Spanish piece cannot have been composed much before 1150. The great national hero Rodrigo Diaz de Bivar (died 1099), better known in history by the Arabic surname of the Cm (q.v. was celebrated in the vulgar tongue less than a century after his death in two poems, neither of which, however, has come down to us in its entirety. The first cantar, usually entitled Poema del Cid since the first edition by Tomas Antonio Sanchez, relates in its first part the valiant deeds (la gesta) of the Cid subse- quent to his quarrel with King Alfonso VI. ; in the second the capture of Valencia, the reconciliation of the hero with the king, and the marriage of his daughters with the "infantes" of Carrion; 1 and then in the third the treason of the infantes, the vengeance of the Cid, and the second marriage of his daughters with the infantes of Navarre and Aragon. The narrative of the last years of the Cid, which closes this third part, is very much curtailed. Whilst in the Poema the Cid appears as the loyal vassal, faithful to his king and deploring the necessity of separ- ating from him, the Cid of the second poem, Cronica rimada del Cid, is almost a rebel and at least a refractory vassal who dares treat his sovereign as an equal. The por- tion of the Cronica which has been preserved deals in the main with the youth (mocedades) of Rodrigo ; it contains the primitive version of his quarrel with the Count Gomez de Gormaz, and the marriage of the slayer of the count with Ximena, his daughter, and also a series of fabulous episodes, such as the Cid's journey to France to fight with the twelve peers of Charlemagne, &c. If the Poema really belongs to the 12th century, some doubt attaches to the date of the Cronica ; it would seem that the form under which this latter text has reached us is more recent than that of the Poema, but, on the other hand, several tradi- tions collected by the author bear an incontestable stamp of antiquity. The versification of both poems is very barbarous, the metre very irregular. Normally this great epic measure ought to be divided into two hemistichs of seven or eight syllables each; but here the lines some- times fall short of this number and sometimes exceed it. Instead of rhyme, assonance steadily prevails throughout ; the strophes follow the model of the laisses of the French chansons de geste, that is, they have a single assonance and vary greatly in extent. The other heroes of Spanish history, such as the last Gothic king Roderick, Bernardo del Carpio, the infantes of Lara, have not given rise to long poems ; at least we are acquainted with none of which they are the subject. Still some may have existed; and in fact the frequent allusions in the chronicle of Alfonso the Wise (13th century) to the narratives of the juglares suggest that Castilian heroic poetry was richer than the scarcity of the monuments still extant would lead us to believe. Fernaii Gonzalez, first independent count of Castile (10th century), has alone been celebrated in a poem of the 13th century, composed in single-rhyme quatrains. With the heroic poetry which takes its themes from the national history and legends, there grew up in the 13th century a religious and didactic poetry, the most eminent representative of which is Gonzalo de Berceo (1198-1268). This poet, born at Berceo in the province of Logrono, composed several lives of Spanish saints (St Domingo de Silos, St Millan de la Cogulla, St Oria), and also devotional poems, such as the Miracles and the Praises of the Virgin, and some religious hymns. Berceo names his poems prosa, decir, dictado, indicating thereby that he intended them to be read and recited, not sung like the cantares. They are written in single-rhyme 1 Carrion de los Condes is a district in the province of Valencia. quatrains and in verses of twelve to fourteen syllables> according as the ending of each hemistich is masculine or feminine. In the same kind of versification were composed, also in the 13th century, two long poems, one on Alexander the Great, the other on Apollonius of Tyre, after Latin and French sources. The author of the first of these poems contrasts his system of versification, which he calls mester de clerecia, with the mester de joglaria, the one of the heroic poetry, intended to be sung, and declares that this single-rhyme quatrain (curso rimado por la quadema via) consists of counted syllables. The composer of Appolonio calls this same versification nueva maestria. The single-rhyme quatrain, introduced in imitation of the French poetry of the 12th century into Castilian literature, became from the time of Berceo and the Alexandra and Appolonio the regular form in Castilian narrative and didactic poetry, and prevailed down to the close of the 14th century. To the 13th century seem also to belong a Life of St Mary the Egyptian, translated from the French, perhaps through a Provengal version, and an Adoration of the Three Kings, in verses of eight or nine syllables rhyming in pairs (aa, bb, cc, &c.), as well as a fragment of a Debate between Soul and Body, in verses of six or seven syllables, evidently an imitation of one of those mediagval Latin poems entitled Rixa Animi et Corporis. Mention may here also be made of the cantigas ("songs") of Alfonso the Wise in honour of the Virgin, although, being in the Galician dialect, these properly belong to the history of Portuguese literature. The 14th century saw the birth of the most original Poetry mediaeval Spanish poet. Juan Ruiz (1300-1350), arch- ofl4th priest of Hita (near Guadalajara), has left us a poem of cen ur ^" rather irregular composition, in which, while reproducing apologues translated from the Latin or French fabulists, and extracts from Ovid's Art of Love, or from a poem entitled Pamphilus de Amore, or, lastly, from fabliaux and dits, such as the Bataille de Karesme et de Chantage, the author frequently gives way to his own inspiration. Ruiz celebrates love and woman ; his book is of buen amor, that is, he shows by his own experience and the example of the authors whom he follows how a man ought to set to work to be a successful lover. The character of the female go-between, named " Trota-Conventos," here plays an im- portant part ; it was suggested to Ruiz by the Pamphilus, but he has greatly strengthened the characteristics and thus prepared the way for the Celestina of the close of the 15th century. By way of precaution, the author repre- sents himself as one who has survived his illusions, and maintains that carnal love (loco amor] must in the long run give place to divine love ; but this stratum of devotion is a thin one and ought not to disguise the real character of the work. His form of versification is the single-rhyme quatrain in the narrative portions; as to the "songs" (cantigas) which sometimes interrupt the narrative, and of which the most successful are a " song of scholars " and a "song of the blind," their rhythm is different and much more varied. The Rimado de Palacio of the grand chan- cellor of Castile, Pedro Lopez de Ayala (1332-1407), does not exclusively refer to court life ; the author takes up all classes of laymen and churchmen, whose vices he depicts in jocular style. Amid the tirades of this long moral poem there occur occasionally some cantares or even decires in strophes of eight lines of twelve syllables. Akin to this Rimado de Palacio are the Proverbios Morales of the Jew Santob (Shemtob) of Carrion, dedicated to King Pedro the Cruel, who reigned from 1350 to 1369, as well as the General Dance of Death and a new version of the Debate between Soul and Body, both in eight-line strophes of arte mayor (verses of twelve syllables), and both imitations of XXII. - 45