Abstract
Excerpt: Over the past two centuries, a persistent critical commonplace has clouded our view of Spanish balladry, or the romancero, as the Hispanic ballad tradition is known. Spain’s traditional ballads, this commonplace maintains, lack supernatural content. Scholars have frequently remarked upon what seems to them a paucity of miracles, supernatural marvels, and other departures from realistic, verisimilar representation in the ballads. Generalizations like this one can be helpful, of course, when dealing with a category of poetry so vast and varied as the romancero. While the basic verse form of the Spanish ballad has remained fairly constant through the ages (octosyllabic lines, with assonantal rhyme on alternate lines), the tradition comprises a diverse array of styles and content. From the romancero’s origins in the High Middle Ages to its remnants in the present day, Spanish ballads have served as expressive vehicles for military dispatches, reports of scandal among the aristocracy, retellings of biblical and Graeco-Roman lore, hagiography, laments, fables, prayers, and political propaganda — and this motley inventory takes into account only the Hispanic folk tradition, setting aside the various ends to which erudite poets have used the ballad form over time.