71
- Identity: the
building blocks of
2. Literature
and philosophy
3. Art and
architecture
4. Performing
arts
5. Cinema
and fashion
6. Media and
communications
7. Food and drink 8. Living culture:
the details of
The lovey-dovey stuff: lyric poetry
The epic Spanish verse of the minstrels and clerics
was joined by a third poetic genre in the 14thcentury.
Lyric poetry was shorter and usually took love rather
than heroics as its theme. It found greatest expression
in the Petrarchan sonnet, and the sonnet found its
most eminent wordsmith in the shape of Íñigo López
de Mendoza. A monk with the ear of Queen Isabel
and a penchant for flirting with the ladies of court,
Mendoza spent much of his time plugging religion.
His contemporary, Jorge Manrique, another ally to
Isabel, was more concerned with love, but is best
known forLas Coplas por la muerte de su padre(1476),
beautifully melancholic, understated ponderings on the
death of his father. Manrique’s work remains in print.
Alfonso nurtures
Spanish prose
Few banged the drum for
Castilian literature more
energetically than King
Alfonso X. He embraced
Toledo as the historic
centre of Moorish
excellence, translating
Arabic, Latin and Greek
texts into Castilian
before commissioning
new work, like the
groundbreakingEstoria
de España(1280s), in his
kingdom’s own script.
While Castilian became
the primary language of
prose even in Alfonso’s
kingdom, Galician-
Portuguese (the two
tongues had yet to
separate) was used as
a kind of international
language for writing
poetry. Indeed, the king
himself wrote his own
verse in Galician-
Portuguese; his work
appears inLas cantigas
de Santa María,a
collection of over 300
religious songs. Within
a century, Castilian was
getting to grips with
prose. Alfonso’s nephew,
Don Juan Manuel, wrote
one of the earliest such
works:El Conde Lucanor
(1335), spraying Aesop’s
fables with a Spanish
tint.
The second masterpiece of
Spanish literature:
La Celestina
WithLa Celestina(1499)
(common title forLa
tragicomedia Calisto y
Melibea) Spanish literature
reached new heights.
Fernando de Rojas’ love
story (of which he claimed
to have only written parts)
is an unusual work hovering
between drama and
prose, with the language
delivered in dialogue
although probably never
intended for the stage.
The Celestina of the title
is a slippery procuress,
employed as a go-between
by two lovers who
eventually meet a grim
fate. In the God-fearing
mood of its time (don’t
forget, theReyes Católicos
were on the throne) the
story thumps home the
moral dangers of trying to
circumvent the natural
order of things. Whatever
its tone,La Celestina’s
psychological depth was
evidence that Spanish
literature had moved
from the Middle Ages
toward Renaissance
sophistication. That said,
little would outshine it for
the next hundred years,
and it was duly reprinted
at least 60 times in the
16 thcentury.
