Ballads, Spanish; Legends -- Spain; Spanish literature -- History and criticism
The title Romancero General was applied to many collections of
Spanish songs and narrative romances in verse published during
the seventeenth century and later. Of these only the older require
illustration here. The first in point of date was the collection of
Miguel de Madrigal, published in 1604, although another work containing
upward of a thousand romances and songs was produced in the same year,
and bears the same title. Another collection of primary importance
is that of Pedro de Flores (1614). This is obviously a bookseller's
compilation, but is none the worse for that, save that it pretends to
embrace the entire sum of Spanish romanceros, whereas it contains not
one of those appearing in the Cancionero General. All of these works
contain numerous amatory poems of the kind so liberally exemplified
in the Cancionero General, but with these we have little concern,
and our attention may be better employed in examining the romanceros
proper which it contains. These for the most part would seem to belong
to the fifteenth century, and relate to the civil wars of Granada,
the last Moorish principality in Spain, and the heroic and gallant
adventures of Moorish knights. It is, indeed, in this work that we
first perceive the trend toward a literary fashion in things Moorish
to which we have referred in a previous chapter, but, as has been
indicated, this is very far from saying that these poems owe their
origin to Moorish models. But there are not wanting Castilian themes
and stories, such as those relating to Roderic, Bernaldo de Carpio,
Fernán González, the Infantes of Lara, and the Cid. Most of these
were written by men of humble station, the true poets of the people,
the late representatives of those juglares who had sung or recited
the cantares de gesta. [51]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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