Legends & Romances of Spain. Lewis Spence

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СКАЧАТЬ Cahier and Martin’s Nouveaux Mélanges d’Archéologie, d’Histoire, et de Littérature sur le Moyen Age (1877).

3 This jargon owed much more to the lingua rustica than to Gothic, which has left its mark more deeply upon the pronunciation and syntax of Spanish than on its vocabulary.

4 Catalan differed slightly in a dialectic sense from Provençal. It was divided into plá Catalá and Lemosé, the common speech and the literary tongue.

5 “On the whole,” says Professor Saintsbury, “the ease, accomplishment, and, within certain strict limits, variety of the form, are more remarkable than any intensity or volume of passion or of thought” (Flourishing of Romance and Rise of Allegory, pp. 368–369). He further remarks that the Provençal rule “is a rule of ‘minor poetry,’ accomplished, scholarly, agreeable, but rarely rising out of minority.”

6 D. 1214.

7 It was entitled El Arte de Trobar, and is badly abridged in Mayan’s Orígenes de la Lengua Española (Madrid, 1737).

8 On Provençal influence upon Castilian literature see Manuel Milá y Fontanal, Trovadores en España (Barcelona, 1887); and E. Baret, Espagne et Provence (1857), on a lesser scale.

9 Still they found many Spanish-speaking people in that area; and it was the Romance speech of these which finally prevailed in Spain.

10 Madrid, 1839.

11 In the Cancionero de Romances (Antwerp, 1555).

12 See the article on Alfonso XI in N. Antonio, Bibliotheca Hispana Vetus.

13 English translation by James York.

14 Reigned 1407–54.

15 Gaston Paris, La Littérature Française au Moyen Age (Paris, 1888), and Léon Gautier, Les Épopées Française (Paris, 1878–92), are the leading authorities upon the chansons de gestes. Accounts of these in English can be found in Ludlow’s Popular Epics of the Middle Ages (1865) and in my Dictionary of Medieval Romance (1913).

16 See W. Wentworth Webster, in the Boletin of the Academia de Historia for 1883.

17 See Manuel Milá y Fontanal, Poesía heróico-popular Castellana (Barcelona, 1874).

18 The term, first employed by Count William of Poitiers, the earliest troubadour, at first implied any work written in the vernacular Romance languages. Later in Spain it was used as an equivalent for cantar, and finally indicated a lyrico-narrative poem in octosyllabic assonants.

19 In German it was known from 1583, and in English from 1619. Southey’s translation (London, 1803) is (happily) an abridgment, and has been reprinted in the “Library of Old Authors” (1872). I provide full bibliographical details when dealing with the romance more fully.

20 Omniana, t. ii, p. 219 (London, 1812).

21 Don Quixote, Part I, chap. vi.

22 English translation by Southey, 4 vols. (London, 1807).

23 In the chapter entitled “Moorish Romances of Spain” the reader will find specimens of the romantic fictions of that people, from which he can judge for himself of their affinity or otherwise with the Spanish romances.

24 See Dozy, History of the Moors in Spain, Eng. trans., and Recherches sur l’Histoire politique et littéraire de l’Espagne (1881); F. J. Simonet, Introduction to his Glosario de Voces iberias y latinas usadas entre los Muzárabes (1888); Renan, Averroës et Averroïsme (1866). Gayangos’ Mohammedan Dynasties in Spain (London, 1843) is somewhat obsolete, as is Conde’s Dominación de los Arabes.

25 “The Raid,” an old Spanish poem.

Chapter II: The “Cantares de Gesta” and the “Poema del Cid”

       Table of Contents

      When meat and drink is great plentye

      Then lords and ladyes still will be,

      And sit and solace lythe.

      Then it is time for mee to speake

      Of kern knights and kempes great,

      Such carping for to kythe.

      “Guy and Colbrand,” a romance

      The French origin of the cantares de gesta has already been alluded to. Their very name, indeed, bespeaks a Gallic source. But in justice to the national genius of Spain we trust that it has been made abundantly clear that the cantares speedily cast off the northern mode and robed themselves in Castilian garb. Some lands possess an individuality so powerful, a capacity for absorption and transmutation so exceptional, that all things, both physical and spiritual, which invade their borders become transfigured and speedily metamorphosed to suit their new environment. Of this magic of transformation Spain, with Egypt and America, seems to hold the especial secret. But transfigure the chansons of France as she might, the mould whence they came is apparent to those who are cognisant of their type and machinery. Nor could the character of their composers and professors be substantially altered, so that we must not be surprised to find in Spain the trouvères and jongleurs of France as trovadores and juglares. The trovador was the poet, the author, the juglar merely the singer or declaimer, although no very hard-and-fast line was drawn betwixt them. Some juglares of more than ordinary distinction were also the authors of the cantares they sang, while an unsuccessful trovador might be forced to chant the verses of others. Instrumentalists or accompanists were known as juglares de péñola in contradistinction to the reciters or singers, juglares de boca.

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