SPAIN
197
SPAIN
ing about him scholars, Christian, Arabic, and Hebrew,
of whom he made use in his vast labours. These he
engaged in the compilation of his historical, legal, and as-
tronomical works,
toiling with them
and taking especial
pains to refine the
literary forms. We
have already spo-
ken somewhat of
his " Cr6nica de Es-
pana" (more com-
monly known as
the "Cr6nica gen-
eral"), in which he
sought, using all
available earlier
historical treatises,
to make a record of
the history of his
• iwn land down to
111- lime. He thus
iii.iugurated a se-
!»,< of Spanish
r lii'onicles which
w t re continued un-
interruptedly for
several centuries
after him. Another
extensive historical
document is the
"Grande j- g'jiiLi'al lii,-<ioiia, which he seems to have
intended to be a summary of the world's history; it
remains unedited. In the ">Siete partidas", .so styled
becau.se of the seven sections into which it is divided,
he codified all laws previously promulgated in the land,
adding thereto philo.sophical disquisitions on the need
of those Iaw.s and on multifarious matters of human
interest. For ust rone imy he had a particular affection,
as t he ext ant Alphonsi ne Tables and ot her works demon-
strate. Apparently he imlited no ver.se in Castihan;
he ha* left us some "Cantigas de Sta. Maria", written
in Galician-Portuguese, in which at the time other
Castilians and Leonese also composed lyric verse.
His example was followed by his son and successor Sancho IV, who had put together the didactic "Cas- tigos de D. Sancho", as a primer of general instruc- tion for his own son. To Sancho's reign (1284-95) or later belongs the "Gran Conquista de Ultramar", which adds to matter derived from ^^'illiam of Tyre's narrative of a crusade fabulous and romanesque ele- ments of possible French and Provengal derivation. This work paved the way for narrative prose fiction in Spanish. In fact there came ere long the first original novel in Spanish, the " Caballero Cifar". Some pro.se Castilian versions of Oriental aphoristic and like di- dactic material were followed by the fruitful labours of Alfonso X's nephew, .luan Manuel (1282-1.348). In spite of much time spent ui)on the battle-field or in administrative pursuits, Juan Manuel found the leisure to write or dictate about a dozen different treatises, whose interest is chiefly didactic, e. g. the "Libro de la caza" (on falconrj-), the "Libro del caballejo y del escudero" (a catechism of chivalrous beha\"iour), etc. Some of these are not now discover- able. His masterpiece is the framework of tales, the "Conde Lucanor" (or "Libro de Patronio"). The stories told here by him are of various provenience, Oriental, and Occidental, and some reflect his own experience. Two of them contain the essentials of the plot of "The Taming of the Shrew". A collection of songs which, like Alfonso, he probably wrote in Gahcian, has pa.s.sed from view.
Returning now to follow down the course of Spanish poetn,' we encounter in the fourteenth centun,-, and in the first half of it, a real poet, ,Iuan Ruiz.archpriest of Hita. He was a bad cleric and his bishop kept him
long in prison for his misdeeds. As a poet he was the
first to strike in Spanish the t rue lyrical and subjective
note, revealing unblushingly his own inner man in his
scabrous "Libro de buen amor", which is in part an
account of his lubricous love adventures. He was
a man of some reading, as his use of Ovidian or Pseudo-
Ovidian matter and of French fablcaux, dits, etc.,
shows. His rhymes and metres are varied according
to his subject-matter and his mood. Rodrigo Ydnez's
"Poema de Alfonso Onceno", a sort of chronicle of
Alfonso XI's deeds, may be only a version from the
Gahcian. The Rabbi Sem Tob's " Proverbios morales",
a collection of rhymed maxims, is not devoid of grace.
In the second half of the century there stands forth
Pedro L6pez de Ayala, statesman, satirical poet, and
historian, who died Grand Chancellor of Castile, after
serving four successive monarchs whose ex-ploits he
chronicled in his prose "Cr6nicas de los reyes de Cas-
tilla". His poetical work is the "Rimado depalacio",
which is chiefly a satirical arraignment of the society
of his time, and useful as a picture of living manners
of the period. Besides his "Cr6nicas" he wrote other
prose works and made versions of Latin compositions.
The fifteenth century is, throughout its first half, pi'e-eminently an age of court poetry. At the Court of Juan II of Castile (1419-54) hundreds of poetasters dabbled in verse; a few really gifted spirits succeeded occasionally in writing poetry. There was much de- bating on love and kindred themes, and, following up Provengal processes, the debating took often the form of versified plea, repUcation, rejoinder, sur-rejoinder, etc. Along with this arid, provengalizing, love specu- lation, we find two other factois of imjiortance in the literature of the period: (1) an allegorizing tendency, which continued, generally in a pedestrian manner, the allegorical methods of the Italians Dante, Petrarch, and Boccaccio, and, doubtless, also of the "Roman de la Rose" and similar French works, and (2) a humanis- tic endeavour, which manifests itself especially by the rendering into Castilian of noted classical documents of Latin antiquity. The occasional pieces of the court poetizers will be found represented fully enough in the collection made by the king's physician, Juan Baena, in his "Can- cionero". In gen- eral it is safe to say that the countless pallid, amorous effu- sions of the court poets transfer to the Castilian Court the earlier Gah- cian aping of the convention alized Provengal manner. And not only did the Castilians, gath- ered about their king, Juan II, trifle thus with the poetic muse: the Aragon- ese and the Castil- ian nobles who fol- lowed the Aragonese arms to the domination of Naples and Sicily engaged in the same practice, and their futilities are embalmed in the "Cancionero de Stiiiiiga", prepared at the Aragonese Court in Naples.
At the opening of the century, one man, Enrique de Villena, related to the royal liou.ses of both Castile and Aragon, calls for particular attention. He did much to propagate the Provengal style of poetry, but at the same time he was a forerunner of the Spanish Humanists, for he made a version of the iEneid, and he declared his love of allegory by writing his "Doce trabajos de Hercules" and his love for the Italians by
LEA>a)BO Fernandez db Mobatin
