Medieval Epic. El Cid.

En la biografía novelada de Doña Jimena Díaz de Vivar (1960), escrita por María Teresa León desde el exilio, se conjugan dos arquetipos épicos femeninos castellanos encontrados: el de la honrada y virtuosa señora de los cantares de gesta y el de la lujuriosa pecadora del romancero, y esto da lugar a una versión renovada de la protagonista. No obstante, su herencia medieval, reflejada en sus actitudes más “conservadoras”, podría llamar a confusión si se interpreta como invención propia de la autora o como añejos valores patriarcales asimilados. Por lo tanto, el presente artículo tiene por objeto delimitar qué rasgos toma la autora de uno u otro arquetipo épico para poder dilucidar en qué medida la caracterización de Jimena es fiel a la tradición literaria medieval castellana y en qué medida se sobreescriben libérrimamente ciertos rasgos de su personalidad a la luz del feminismo, la militancia política o la recuperación de la memoria histórica.

Resumen: en este artículo examinamos el episodio de guerra entre cristianos en las Moce-dades de Rodrigo: las cabalgadas de Gómez de Gormaz (padre de Jimena) y Diego Laínez (padre del Cid). El episodio comienza con el robo del ganado contra los Laínez, quienes se vengan quemando propiedades, robando ganado y llevando presos de Gormaz. Los editores de las Mocedades y otros estudiosos atribuyen el incidente al tipo de conflicto típico de guerra entre clanes, pero el incidente es por fuerza ficticio. Ofrecemos una acla-ración de este incidente de gesta: en la Historia Roderici, los moros hacen cabalgada contra Gormaz mientras Rodrigo Díaz es señor de Gormaz. Este se venga, robando mucho ganado de los moros de Toledo. Basado en esto y en la Crónica de Castilla, sugerimos que los versos 280-289 (edición de Funes) de las MR es una trasformación literaria-típica de la epopeya-de la cabalgada, o incursión musulmana contra Gormaz del Cid. Palabras claves: Mocedades de Rodrigo, robo de ganado, Gormaz, el Cid, Crónica de Cas-tilla. Abstract: This article takes a look at the conflict between Christians depicted in Las Mo-cedades de Rodrigo: the raid carried out by Gómez de Gormaz (Jimena's father) and the counter-raid by Diego Laínez (the Cid's father). The episode begins with the livestock raid against the Laínez, who take revenge burning property, and by capturing livestock and people. The editors and scholars of the Mocedades have characterized the incident as typical clan warfare; however, the incident is clearly fictitious. To clarify this incident in the cantar de gesta, we look at the Historia Roderici, in which there is a Moorish raid made against Gormaz while Rodrigo Díaz (the Cid) was lord of Gormaz. Based on this and the Crónica de Castilla, we conclude that lines 280-289 of the Mocedades (Funes' edition)

This book explores the development of the early historical and legendary tradition concerning Rodrigo Díaz de Vivar, el Cid (c. 1048-1099), the most famous medieval Spanish hero. This study traces the development of the early heroic discourse mostly throughout the 12th century and how it takes shape in historical and poetic texts that built the legend. My starting point is that there is a relation between heroism and the political environment in which these texts played a role. For that reason, I argue that an analysis of the politics of those texts will clarify the political change in the hero’s portrayal as well as the cultural coordinates of the different texts. More specifically I analyze how the construction of this heroic portrayal is attached mainly to a specific geopolitical area in a sensitive corner of the Castilian kingdom, la Rioja, bordering the Navarrese kingdom. In addition, I argue that this political analysis equally clarifies the heroic portrayal that will emerge in the Cantar de mio Cid at the start of the 13th century, arguing that the Cantar de Mio Cid takes previous aspects of the tradition but refurbishes them to incorporate a new social politics that seems to be more connected with other geopolitical areas like Central Castile and Castile’s southern frontier. This new social politics may have existed before in oral legends but it will be reformatted at the beginning of the 13th century to fit the need of providing new military models in the changing atmosphere brought about the war between Muslims and Christians. The main conclusion is that the located politics in which this tradition thrived seems not to be far away from the cultural environment of the Castilian monarchy, that tried to appropriate the symbolic capital of the hero to bolster its own claims on legitimization and political expansion. Also, my study sheds light on the changing interpretation of the hero in the first century of this heroic tradition, pointing to a close interconnection between all the texts that created it and a delicate balance between innovation and maintenance of core aspects of Díaz de Vivar’s mythified portrayal.

In Arabo-Islamic civilization, both in word and in praxis, hila and its linguistic correlates (e.g. make, kaid) signify a complex range of cultural and ethical appraisals of "cunning" as "applied intelligence." Its poetic embodiments in Arabic belles-lettres (e.g. exempla literature, maqamat, adab treatises on 'ilm al-hiyal, etc.) offer a particularly revealing cipher of its possible valuations, whether as a cherished virtue or as an agent of social corruption. This presentation canvassed some of its literary expressions with an Old Spanish case study: i.e. a brief examination of the Cid, the Castilian epic hero, as a poetic avatar of Arabo-Andalusian makr.