Poetry
Spanish Ballads
Romancero viejo
Anonymous · 1500
Synopsis
A collection of short narrative poems, the romances, made of eight-syllable lines whose even lines carry the same assonance. Many detach from a chanson de geste its strongest episode; others recount the Reconquista, the wars and loves between Christians and Moors, or take up the legends of Charlemagne and Arthur. They often open in the midst of the action and stop abruptly, which leaves them a measure of mystery. The oldest one copied, in 1421, shows a lady who tries to seduce a shepherd.
Context
According to Menéndez Pidal's thesis, taken up from Milá and Menéndez Pelayo, the jongleurs detached from the chansons de geste the moments that pleased most, and the public retained only these; the first long lines, of sixteen syllables, thus became the double octosyllable. The romances were first copied by chance, in the notebooks of a law student or a notary, then collected in the court songbooks and printed, from the 1500s, on broadsheets sold by blind men. Lope, Góngora, Quevedo and later Lorca imitated them.
Who it is for
Poems of a few dozen lines, to be read separately or in series; a bilingual edition keeps their rhythm.
Prizes and reception
Regarded as one of the national genres of Spanish literature; Menéndez Pidal and his school collected and classified its versions for decades.