Page:History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella the Catholic Vol. II.djvu/235

211 CHAPTER XX. CASTILIAN LITERATURE. — ROMANCES OF CHIVALRY. — LYRI- CAL POETRY. — THE DRAMA. This Reign an Epoch in Polite Letters. — Romances of Chivalry. —, Ballads or Romances. — Moorish Minstrelsy. — " Cancionero General." — Its Literary Value. — Rise of the Spanish Drama. — Criticism on " Celestina." — Encina. — Naharro. — Low Condition of the Stage. — National Spirit of the Literature of this Epoch. Ornamental or polite literature, which, emanat- chapter ing from the taste and sensibility of a nation, '— readily exhibits its various fluctuations of fashion anepocfiia •^ nrtlito lot- and feeling, w^as stamped in Spain with the dis- tinguishing characteristics of this revolutionary age. The Provencal, which reached such high perfec- tion in Catalonia, and subsequently in Aragon, as noticed in an introductory chapter,^ expired with the union of this monarchy with Castile, and the dialect ceased to be applied to literary purposes altogether, after the Castilian became the language of the court in the united kingdoms. The poetry of Castile, which throughout the present reign con- tinued to breathe the same patriotic spirit, and to exhibit the same national peculiarities that had dis- 1 Eichhorn, Geschichte der Kul- pp. 129, 130. — See also the con- tur und Litteratur der Neueren elusion of the Introduction, Sec. 2, Europa, (Gottingen, 1796 - 1811,) of this History. polite let- ters.