
Última actualización: 06/09/2010
In the thirteenth century, profound changes in Spanish society drove the invention of fresh poetic forms by the new clerical class. The term mester de clerecía (clerical ministry or service) applies to a group of narrative poems (epics, hagiography, romances) composed by university-trained clerics for the edification and entertainment of the predominantly illiterate laity. These clerics, like Gonzalo de Berceo, understood themselves as cultural intermediaries, transmitting wisdom and values from the past; at the same time, they were deeply involved in some of the most contentious and far-reaching changes in lay piety, and in economic and social structures. The author challenges the predominantly didactic approach to the verse, in an attempt to historicize the category of the intellectual, as someone caught in the duality of the worlds of contingency and absolute values.
The book will have a broad appeal to medievalists, in part because of the topics covered (feudalism, gender, nationhood, and religion), in part because many poems are either adaptations from French and Latin or have counterparts in other literatures (e.g., the romances or Alexander and Apollonius, the miracles of the Virgin Mary).
A Companion to Latin American Literature and Culture examines the cultural and historical contexts behind the work of major Latin American writers such as Jorge [...]
ver másThis book provides the first in-depth examination of a representative range of contemporary Colombian cultural engagements with the conflicts known simply as La Violencia that [...]
ver másA Companion to Lope de Vega brings together work by leading international scholars on the life and writing of Lope de Vega Carpio, the 'fénix [...]
ver másEste estudio analiza la representacion de Isabel la Catolica en obras escogidas de tres notables dramaturgos del Siglo de Oro espanol (Lope de Vega, Tirso [...]
ver másSpain's artistic Golden Age produced Cervantes's great novel, "Don Quijote", the sublime poetry of Quevedo and Gongora, and nurtured the prodigious talent of Velazquez, and [...]
ver másIn the thirteenth century, profound changes in Spanish society drove the invention of fresh poetic forms by the new clerical class. The term mester de [...]
ver másWhat is generally referred to as modern drama was an international development or movement centred in Europe and North America, a movement directed against many [...]
ver másWomen across early modern Europe suffered repressive and restrictive patriarchal measures that denied them education and a voice. Nowhere was this more apparent than in [...]
ver más