Part 32 (1/2)

London, 1896.

History of Spanish Literature, by Bouterwek. Bohn Library.

See further the exhaustive bibliography of chivalric literature in vol. iv of Ormsby's Don Quixote (1885), and the bibliography of Mr Fitzmaurice Kelly's Spanish Literature.

NOTES

[1] The moro latinado, or Spanish-speaking Moor, is a prominent figure in later Spanish story.

[2] Bishop Odoor's will (747) shows the break-up of Hispanic Latin, and Charles the Bald in an edict of 844 alludes to the usitato vocabulo of the Spaniards--their ”customary speech.” On the Gothic period see Pere Jules Tailham, in the fourth volume of Cahier and Martin's Nouveaux Melanges d'Archeologie, d'Histoire, et de Litterature 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 p.r.o.nunciation and syntax of Spanish than on its vocabulary.

[4] Catalan differed slightly in a dialectic sense from Provencal. It was divided into pla Catala and Lemose, 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 pa.s.sion or of thought” (Flouris.h.i.+ng of Romance and Rise of Allegory, pp. 368-369). He further remarks that the Provencal rule ”is a rule of 'minor poetry,'

accomplished, scholarly, agreeable, but rarely rising out of minority.”

[6] D. 1214.

[7] It was ent.i.tled El Arte de Trobar, and is badly abridged in Mayan's Origenes de la Lengua Espanola (Madrid, 1737).

[8] On Provencal influence upon Castilian literature see Manuel Mila y Fonta.n.a.l, Trovadores en Espana (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 Litterature Francaise au Moyen Age (Paris, 1888), and Leon Gautier, Les epopees Francaise (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 Mila y Fonta.n.a.l, Poesia heroico-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 a.s.sonants.

[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).