Cantiga

The cantigas are secular compositions typical of Galician-Portuguese poetry. This genre developed in the Middle Ages, especially between the 13th and mid-14th centuries, in the Kingdoms of Galicia and Portugal, although it was also cultivated in other places on the Iberian Peninsula, as is the case of theCantigas de Santa Maríaby Alfonso

They are composed in the Romance language to be sung and accompanied by music. Although they are of a troubadour style and with important Provençal influences, the cantigas also present an important native component reflected through the traditional. In this way, Occitan rhetorical structures and resources are combined with other characteristics of popular tradition, such as parallelism.

The songs are mainly divided into three large genres: the love songs, the friend songs and the songs of ridicule and cursing. The most recurrent themes of these compositions are the coitas (sorrows) of love of the poet for the lady, the praise of the lover or the joy of the lovers at meeting each other. Furthermore, they tend to use common and symbolic elements, such as the sea, fountains, hair, deer, pilgrimages, hermitages, etc.

The testimonies of this type of lyric have endured through three great songbooks and some scrolls. However, it must be understood that the production of cantigas was much greater than what has been preserved, since many of them, belonging to the oral tradition, were surely never recorded in writing.

The Galician-Portuguese school

Origins

Poetry in Galician-Portuguese has reached our days through, fundamentally, the Songbooks of the Vatican Library, the National Library of Lisbon and the Ajuda Songbook. Thanks to these songbooks, these lyrical manifestations composed in a period that spans from the year 1200 to the middle of the XIV century have been saved..

According to Tavani (1986: 11), the Galician-Portuguese poetic corpus is made up of 1679 texts, mostly framed in the century XIII and in the first half of the XIV century. Among all of them, the oldest testimony of this lyrical genre is usually related to a satirical song written by Johan Soarez de Pavha (or Paiva or Pavía) at the end of the century XII, of a political nature and which was addressed to the king of Navarre. The dating of this song, like many others of the Galician-Portuguese lyric, is not exempt from controversy among scholars: Tavani (1986: 11) points out that, while Carolina Michaëlis dates it to 1213, López Aydillo does so to 1196. At similar dates, another cantiga is considered, attributed by some experts to D. Sancho I, king of Portugal, and by others to Alfonso X the Wise (although this second option lacks as much weight as the first).

What there is no doubt about, and what all researchers agree on, is the existence of an earlier lyrical tradition of which no written testimonies have been preserved. In this sense, the Provençal troubadour Raimbaut de Vaqueiras wrote – between 1180 and 1205 – a song of a friend in the tongue d'oc according to the characteristic structure of the Galician-Portuguese lyric, unknown at that time in the south of France.

Thus, beyond the undeniable influence that Provencal lyric had on the literary manifestations of the peninsula, especially in the Galician-Portuguese case, it should be recognized

the existence of a traditional lyric that crystallized in the cantigas of friend, and that, in short, it would be nothing but the expression of a primitive lyrism with representatives in different linguistic domains of Indo-European peoples (jars, femme chansons, Frauenliedetc.). (Alvar and Beltrán, 1985: 4)

Although this poetry of a popular nature makes it difficult to establish a precise date of the upper chronological limit of Galician-Portuguese poetry - and, in general, of all poetry -, the end of this poetic school tends to be located around at 1350.

In the first half of the XIV century, two relevant events occurred that mark this decline: the death of the King Don Dinís in 1325, which caused a substantial decrease in royal support for the genus, and the will of Don Pedro of Portugal, count of Barcelos and son of Don Dinís, in 1350. In this will, Don Pedro bequeathed to his nephew Alfonso XI from Castilla a “book of songs” – now disappeared – predecessor of the preserved songbooks. From this point until the last compositions of the Cancionero de Baena, dated around 1370, there is a dark period in which “the gradual abandonment of the traditional forms” occurred (Alvar and Beltrán, 1985: 4).

Stages of Galician-Portuguese poetry

Researchers have accepted the existence of three major periods – although many later establish subperiods to be able to specify the different concepts – of Galician-Portuguese lyric:

• Pre-alphony period. To this first stage, the oldest texts, including the last years of the century, are adhered to.XII and about 1245. The main authors were Portuguese knights who met the European lyrics for the crusades, as well as for the travels of the players and troubers. At the beginning of the century the interest in the study increased, so schools were created in which this type of composition was taught and studied.

• Period of flowering. This stage of splendor coincides with the reigns of Alfonso X el Sabio, Alfonso III of Portugal and Don Dinís. That is why three subperiods can be established: alfonsi (1245-1280), dionisíaco (1280-1325) and post-dionisíaco (up to 1350). The alphony and dionisian periods constitute the classical era of the genre and are marked by their respective kings, both protectors of letters and poetry, as well as by the abundance and flourishing of the poets in Castile and Portugal. In the post-diosypsy period there are hardly any innovations and is marked by the death of Don Pedro, considered symbolically as the last trouber of this school.

• Period of Decay. This stage, which spans the second half of the centuryXIV and the whole centuryXV, is starred by the gradual distance between the Galician and Portuguese languages, which were configuring, little by little, around two literatures with well differentiated characteristics.

Cultural framework

The first manifestations of the Galician-Portuguese courtly lyric emerged at the end of the 12th century, an especially significant period for the culture Western world of the Middle Ages: the renaissance of cities and commerce, the rise of monastic schools and the new cultural perspectives of urban schools focused the intellectual panorama of the time. Furthermore, literary trends were modified and were conditioned by the large influx of students to schools, coming from varied origins (Alvar and Beltrán, 1985: 10). Without forgetting the great weight that culture held in the courts of kings, nobles and ecclesiastical personalities, converted in many cases into first-rate cultural centers.

Parallel to the work of schools and courts, the figure of the minstrel also played a leading role in the dissemination of certain themes and forms. In this way, the rhetorical tradition of the schools, added to the literary and stylistic resources characteristic of the minstrels, are evident in the Galician-Portuguese lyric.

On the other hand, the popular lyrics of the area also played an important role, as it reinforced, through the songs of friend, the new courtly currents. Furthermore, it is very likely that the lyrics prior to the troubadours did not obtain their written form until the most elaborate compositions already had a certain dissemination and prestige (Alvar and Beltrán, 1985: 12).

Minstrels and troubadours

Most of the first Galician-Portuguese poets were of noble origin – among them there were even kings like Alfonso X or Don Dinís – although minstrels were not scarce. The usual distinction that is usually made between minstrel and troubadour is to consider the former as the performer of the composition and the latter as its author. However, the barrier between both categories was crossed on numerous occasions and in both directions.

Some knights or authors of noble or hidalgo origin became gallbladders as they lead an improper life of their condition and by preferring the company of tahures, welders and troublemakers. [...] More frequent are the examples of jugulars that aspire to be considered bulldozers, after having accompanied a poet for some time. (Alvar and Beltrán, 1985: 13)

The troubadours' criticisms of those minstrels who sought to ascend were frequent and firm, attacking both their art and their musical qualities, which they considered inferior. However, this attitude can be understood as a position against the rupture of the social status quo, trying to defend its status against the arrival of intruders from an inferior one.

In some cases, author and performer would coincide, but in others notable differences were established between the two, both social and educational. In fact, many troubadours tried not to be confused with minstrels, clearly stating the different work that each one carried out. The Suplicatio addressed by Guiraut Riquier to Alfonso

As a result, compared to the large number of names of troubadours that have survived, practically all of the minstrels have remained anonymous.

Entryways of Provençal influence

Beyond the discrepancies about the quantitative and qualitative volume that the Occitan influence had in Galician-Portuguese literature, the majority of scholars point out the decisive role it had in the formation of some of the genres, such as lyricism.

To try to respond to the way in which the Provençal tradition could influence the Galician-Portuguese tradition, two points of view have been established. On the one hand, the action of indirect agents that allowed this Provençal penetration through the old Jacobean route. On the other hand, individual contacts between troubadours, which generally took place outside the linguistic borders of Galician-Portuguese.

Ramón Pena (1986: 98-99) exposes the main indirect agents of Provençal influence:

• The monks of Cluny.
• The Camino de Santiago and the pilgrimages to the city.
• The presence of warriors and settlers from beyond the Pyrenees during the Reconquest.
• Trade exchanges.

Regarding direct agents, Ramón Pena (1986: 99) points out the following:

• Alfonso III “the Bolognes”. Before occupying the throne of Portugal he resided for many years in France. He came in the company of numerous French nobles and teachers, whose influence was marked, especially, in the heir, Don Dinís.

• The personal troubadour-trovador contacts that took place in the Cortes de Castilla y catalano-aragonesas.

However, Tavani (1986) defends, without downplaying its importance, that the ancestry of Provençal literature over Galician-Portuguese literature should not be sought either in these personal contacts or in the confrontation of texts and poets. Therefore, the true reason for the Occitan extension would lie in the Albigensian defeat (1213) and the subsequent exile.

The preserved texts

What has been preserved from the lyrical activity of the Galician-Portuguese period should not be understood as the totality of what was composed at that time, since many of the compositions, the source in which they were captured in writing has disappeared., they belonged to the oral tradition and were not collected. The known repertoire has survived through three great songbooks: the Cancionero de Ajuda, the Cancionero Colocci-Brancutti or from the National Library and the Vatican Songbook.

Ajuda Songbook (A, CA)

The Ajuda Songbook is so called because it is kept in the library of the same name in the Royal Palace of Lisbon. Apparently, it comes from the Alfonsí writings and was composed in the last decades of the 13th century. Regarding its formal characteristics, Ramón Pena (1986: 29-30) gives a detailed description of the songbook.

The CA is a parchment manuscript composed, in its current state, of 88 sheets of 443 x 334 mm that are bound together with the Nobiliário do Conde de Barcelos – made up of 93 sheets that precede to the songbook. The AC is incomplete, especially in the initial and final parts, either because the blank parchment was used at the time or because someone stole the miniatures with which it was adorned.

It is written in Gothic, lowercase, very regular script, in a single hand (although it presents corrections, glosses and other annotations from at least two other hands), in two columns and on both sides of the folio. The initials are black or colored.

Its production remained unfinished, because, although the texts are complete, the miniatures that were going to accompany them were not finished. He also did not copy the music that was going to be associated with the compositions – for which a space is reserved under the first stanza of each composition. Likewise, the rubrics do not appear, which contained the names of the poets, which were identified thanks to comparison with other sources: the compositions appear repeated in two other apographic songbooks of Italian origin, the CBN and the CV.

Colocci-Brancutti or National Library Songbook (B, CBN)

The name Colocci-Brancutti Songbook is due to the fact that the humanist Angelo Colocci was in charge of compiling it. Constantino Corvisieri and Enrico Molteni discovered it in the library of Paolo Brancuti, Count of Cagli (Italy), and, upon Molteni's death, the family donated it to the Portuguese government. Since 1924 it has been kept in the National Library of Lisbon, hence the title of Songbook of the National Library of Lisbon.

It was copied in Italy at the end of the 15th century or at the beginning of the XVI (this second option is the most probable) and made on a previous songbook by amanuenses under Colocci. Ramón Pena (1986: 31-32) explains the technical characteristics of the songbook.

The CBN is made up of 355 sheets, numbered by Molteni, measuring 280 x 210 mm that contain numerous gaps throughout the entire work. Six hands were involved in its writing, one of which was Colocci himself. Many of the rubrics and annotations in the margins are due to him, as well as the progressive numbering of the texts.

This songbook is the most abundant of the three and, in addition, it contains at the beginning the anonymous Arte de trobar and the narrative lais.

Vatican Songbook (CV)

The Vatican Songbook was copied jointly with the CBN by order of Angelo Colocci. Like the CBN, the CV is supposed to have arrived in Italy as a gift from an embassy sent by King Manuel I of Portugal to Pope Leo X in 1514. It is currently kept in the Vatican Library, hence its name..

In the description offered by Ramón Pena (1986: 32-33) of this songbook, he points out that it is composed of 210 pages, numbered from 1 to 10 and, then, again, from 1 to 200, leaving 18 unnumbered. It measures 300 x 200 mm and has frequent gaps in the text. The writing is cursive, irregular, in one hand and, according to scholars, is the work of an amateur. As in the CBN, Colocci is the author of the attributive rubrics and some of the marginal notes.

Other remains of the manuscript tradition

In addition to the three great songbooks, some other sources have been preserved with testimonies of the Galician-Portuguese lyrical tradition in its secular aspect.

• The Pergamino Vindel (R, PV). Copyed at the end of the centuryXIII or beginnings of XIV, is a parchment folio, of 340x 460 mm, written by a single face and four columns, in Gothic and very regular tiny, with similar characteristics to the CA. The PV contains the seven cantigas of friend of Martin Codax, in the same order as in the CBN and the CV, with minimal variations. Now its importance lies in the fact that six of these seven compositions are accompanied by their corresponding musical notationwhich constitutes a unicum in all the profane tradition of the medieval Galician-Portuguese lyric that has allowed to know the music of the time.
• La Tavola Colocciana (C, TC) is an index or catalog of authors made by Angelo Colocci and contained in a Vatican codex. The name of the authors is preceded by figures that go, in progression, from 1 to 1675, coinciding with the numbers and powers of the CBN.
• La Tensón entre Alfonso Sanches e Vasco Martins de Resende (M) (P) appears with number 416 in the CBN and 27 in the CV. In addition, two apographs of the century are preservedXVII which were held on the peninsula and which are at the National Library of Madrid (M) and the National Port (P). In P it is found that the sign contained the melody, but this was not copied. Thus, Tavani (1986) points out that both M and P are a clear example of a liederbläter of the end of the 13th and early 14th and that they should have a similar appearance to the PV.
• The Five Lais of Britain (Va) are three folios of 215 x 145 mm without numbering found in a Vatican codex, written in the centuryXVI for a single hand, in tiny and in Gothic letter of the Spanish school. These five. Lais They are also present at the CBN and, although both belong to the library of Colocci, they are supposed to be copied from different sources, albeit close.

Metrics and stylistic resources

The Art of trobar is a treatise found at the beginning of the Songbook of the National Library of Lisbon and which defines and summarizes the precepts of troubadour poetics. Despite being incomplete, thanks to it you can know the terminology used to refer to the poetic technique used by the Galician-Portuguese troubadours to compose their cantigas. As Tarrío Varela (1994: 46) points out, “if we add to this the data offered by direct observation of the preserved cantigas, it is not difficult to reconstruct a formal structure” for this type of compositions.

In this way, we know that the structure of the cantiga is called talho (the body of the composition). This is divided into cobras (the stanzas), each one with a certain number of palavras (verses). When one of these palavras appears isolated within a song, it is known as palavra perduda (free verse, without rhyme).

The conjugation of these elements tends to adapt quite frequently to a series of established models. Hence, one of the main features that characterizes the Galician-Portuguese cantigas is their formal homogeneity, ascribing a large part of the preserved compositions to a structural model in which the talho is articulated in three or four you charge.

This homogeneity, in addition to affecting the dimensional structure of the text, also affects the internal structure of each stanza and the distribution of the rhyme. Thus, most of the cantigas were composed based on three strophic formulas that give rise to seven rhyme schemes: the scheme of four verses plus two of the refram (abbaCC and ababCC), the composition of seven verses with three rhymes (abbacca, ababcca, abbaccb, ababccb ) and parallel structures (aaB...).

The broad and manifest homogeneity of the Galician-Portuguese cantigas does not prevent other schemes from appearing, although in a minority, from simple stanzas in aaa to more complex ones in abcddab, among many examples.

Within the uniformity of this manifestation of Galician-Portuguese lyric, the texts collected in the different Songbooks attest to two kinds of stanzas, each one related to a type of song: those of meestria and the of refram. The main difference between the two lies, precisely, in the presence of a chorus or refram.

Meestria stanza

The cantigas of meestria or mastery are characterized by the absence of a chorus. According to Alvar and Beltrán (1985: 17) this shows that they are “direct heirs of Provençal forms”, since the Provençal troubadours used to refuse to include these choruses, which they considered typical of popular lyrics. Hence the meestria stanza appears mainly in the songs of love and derision and is very rare among the songs of friend.

The metric scheme that is usually found among the cantigas of meestria is that of seven verses with three rhymes, which is organized as follows: a border or initial song formed by a tetrastic of crossed or embraced rhymes (abba) or alternating (abab) followed by a cauda or auction. This cauda is composed of a couplet and, in addition to introducing the new rhyme, it serves as a passage for a final verse that takes up one of the initial rhymes.

The result of this combination gives rise to four types of scheme, which can be combined throughout the same text: abbacca, ababcca , abbaccb and ababccb.

The greater amplitude in the number of verses of the meestria stanza compared to that of refram makes it “more ambitious in its aesthetic formulations, in its desire to achieve greater complexity and formal and thematic evolution” (Beltrán, 1993: 139). Furthermore, Alvar and Beltrán (1985: 18) emphasize that this greater number of verses “facilitates the expression of more complex thoughts.”

Saver stanza

Compared to those of meestria, the cantigas of refram include a chorus. Its metric scheme is simpler, hence this type of stanza was related to popular compositions. Based on this consideration, and contrary to what happened with meestria, the refram stanza is the predominant one in the cantigas de Amigo.

The strophic formula used most frequently by refram songs is made up of six verses articulated around three different rhymes. To achieve this, the stanza is formed with a tetrastic of crossed rhymes (abba) or alternating rhymes (abab) followed by a monorhyme couplet (CC). which, as Tavani (1986: 84) points out, is generally presented as a refram and which results in the schemes abbaCC and ababCC.

Parallelistic structure

To the stanzas of meestria and refram we could add a third type of strophic structure used regularly and which is characterized by being structured around the resource of parallelism. These parallel cantigas result from the combination of a monorhyme couplet topped with a newly rhymed verse that, almost always, fulfills the function of refram (aaB), so they also They could be understood as a subgroup of those of refram.

Due to its simplicity, this formula is the one that most easily adapts to the frequent parallelistic game used in the cantigas (Tavani, 1986: 85) and was used, almost exclusively, in the cantigas de Amigo.

Final verse: the fiinda

Another consideration to take into account about the strophic structure of the cantigas is that referring to the fiindas, a special type of stanza of the Galician-Portuguese lyric that appears differentiated from the strophic body of the cantiga.

The fiindas are made up of one or several stanzas of one or more short verses and are found at the end of the cantigas, finishing them off and concluding them with the troubadour's reasons or intentions. The Art of trobar presents the fiindas in the following way:

As fiindas are cousa that the sempre troubadours used of poer in the end of sas cantigas, to conclud and acavaren melhor e[n] elas as razões that dissembled nas cantigas, chamando-lhis fii[n]da because want so much diz[er] eats “advament of reason”. E esta fiinda poden fazer de ₡na, ou de duas, ou de tres, ou de quatro palavras [“verses”]. E se for a cantiga de meestria, deve a fii[n]da rimar con a prestumeira cobra, e se for de refran deve de rimar con o refran. And as you want them to say that to the singer deve d’aver flexiona d’elas, taes i ouve that lhe fezeron duas ou three, second sa vontade of each one d’eles; and taes i ouve that as fezeron be fiindas, but fiinda é mais comprimento.

Based on the ideas presented in this fragment of the poetic treatise, Beltrán (1995: 105-106) points out that the function of the fiindas was to “explain the conclusion of the cantiga, summarizing what the author wanted to say.” Going further, although along the same lines, Arias Freixedo (2003: 57-58) shows the fiindas as “finishing verses that in many compositions are located after the last stanza”, with a “function conclusive conclusion of the reason.”

All these arguments may indicate that the fiindas were an element with a notable presence in the corpus of the cantigas and with a notable importance that forced their inclusion in the composition. However, although its volume is not negligible, the exceptions are much more numerous than the guidelines of the Arte de trobar indicate: barely a quarter of the preserved cantigas include fiinda.

As a result, the fiinda cannot be considered an essential and strictly necessary element in the Galician-Portuguese cantiga, so its presence or omission is not gender discriminatory.

The rhyme

Regarding the syllable count of a cantiga, it is important to keep in mind that both the Provençal and Galician-Portuguese systems count up to the last stressed syllable (unlike the Spanish system, which takes all syllables into account)..

According to this criterion, in the songs it is possible to distinguish between a masculine rhyme and a feminine: the first is present in the words that, at the end of the verse, have the accent on the last syllable (acute); The second appears in words that, in the same position as the previous ones, are stressed on the penultimate syllable (plains). One type of rhyme must be graphically differentiated from another when creating the metric scheme, so an apostrophe is written after the number of syllables in the verse if it is a female rhyme verse (10' , feminine rhyme; 10, masculine rhyme).

The rhyme tends to be mostly consonant, although it is not unusual to find assonant rhymes typical of popular lyrics, especially among the songs of friends.

Syllabic scheme

Although fixed schemes that mark the distribution of rhymes are abundant, there are also schemes related to the number of syllables in each verse. This is evident in the fact that half of the preserved cantigas are built with monometric stanzas of decasyllables with accent and caesura on the fourth syllable. The remaining half is divided between monometric and polymetric texts of other sizes (between five and sixteen syllables), such as verses of eight and seven syllables, also frequent.

The shorter verses were considered to be of popular origin, while the long verses tended to be divided into two regular hemistiches, something common in parallel cantigas de Amigo and in some mockery.

Composition resources: cobras

In the cantigas, the rhyme can be repeated in each of the stanzas, although you can also find your own rhyme in each stanza or it can be grouped in various ways. The distribution of rhymes thus becomes a composition technique that gives rise to different types of stanzas:

• Unique collections: estrofas with different series of rhymes, but they share the same rhyme scheme.
• Unissonous cobras or Unisoning: estrofas with the same series of rhymes repeated in all of them (in addition to the rhyme scheme, the vocálic endings of the verses are the same in all verses).
• Cobras folds: estrofas with the same rhyme scheme, but in which the rhymes series are repeated every two verses.
• Cobras ternas: estrofas with the same rhyme scheme and in which the rhymes series are repeated of three in three verses.
• Alternate collections or alternate: estrofas that have the same rhyme scheme, with a series of rhymes for pairs and another for the odds.
• Cobras capcauda: verses in which the rhyme of the final verse of one is repeated in the first of the following.
• Cobras capdenals: verses in which the initial verse of two or more of them is linked through a word or term.
• Capfinite Cobras: verses in which a word or term of the final part of the verse of a verse is repeated at the beginning of the following. This repeated term may appear exactly the same or with some slight modifications.
• Retrograms: verses in which the rhymes of one are repeated in the following, but in reverse order.
• Rima dissolute: circumstances given when the Talho (the entire structure) of the chant is composed from free verses, known as perpetual palavras.

Formal and stylistic resources

The composition technique of the cobras is achieved through a series of formal and stylistic resources present in the poetic technique of the Galician-Portuguese lyric. However, according to Pena (1986: 128), their limited variety “further explains the resolution of the Galician-Portuguese cantiga to formally contain a very limited number of schemes and possibilities”, all of them very closely linked to each other. These resources are parallelism, the leixa-pren, the dobre, the mordobre, the word-rhyme, the palavra perduda, the atá-fiinda, the fiinda and the refram.

Parallelism and leixa-prén

Parallelism is a resource that is based on two aspects, repetition and variation, this repetition being the structuring principle of the composition. Galician-Portuguese poetry used parallelism on so many occasions that it has become one of its most recognizable features.

This resource can appear in various forms: verbal parallelism (affecting words), structural parallelism (referring to the syntactic and rhythmic structure) and semantic parallelism (related to meaning or concept).

In Galician-Portuguese lyric, the parallelism that affects the structure of the cantiga (formal parallelism) can occur in several ways: either by repeating the first part of a verse in a strategically located place throughout the cantiga (literal parallelism) or returning to a certain syntactic and rhythmic construction in pre-established places in the text (structural parallelism). This formal parallelism gives the composition a certain homogeneity and a logical arrangement thanks to which missing verses have been reconstructed.

Scholars have called perfect parallelism that which has been constructed in an orderly manner, combining refinement and artifice with popular tradition, and whose rhythmic unit of composition is the pair of stanzas: in each pair of stanzas, the second repeats the idea and content of the first. At the same time, the pairs of stanzas are linked together in such a way that the second verse of the first stanza corresponds to the first of the third (and the second of the second to the first of the fourth). The resulting metric scheme would be abC abC bdC bdC.

When this chain of verses extends over several pairs of stanzas, it is called laixa-prén.

Fiindas

The fiindas are a type of stanza that appears at the end of the song as a thematic and metric ending. This final part is made up of one, two or three verses (even four, in rare exceptions) and the composition could have a variable number of finds. They bear a certain resemblance to the Provencal tornada and the Italian commiato and their function in the text is to conclude the conceptual development of the poem through the troubadour's thought.

Atá-fiinda

The atá-fiinda is a procedure by which the meaning of the cantiga is progressively presented, from the beginning to the end, through enjambments between the stanzas that link the last verse of a song. with the first of the next.

Refram

The refram is the artifice consisting of the repetition of one or two verses at the end of each stanza, as a finishing touch. It is usually related to what is stated in the fronte or initial song, although there are some examples in which they are autonomous. Regarding rhyme, it has an independent character.

Double

The dobre is a rhetorical figure that is based on the repetition, without inflection variations, of words in different places in the poem. These terms must be repeated one or more times throughout the same stanza and in the same position in all the stanzas of the composition, including the fiinda. The Art of trobar defines this type of interstrophic connection like this:

Dobre é dizer 한a palavra cada cobra duas vezes ou méis: mais deven-[n]o meter na cantiga mui gardamente; e conven, como o mendo en 한a das cobras, que assi a metan nas outras todas. And I know that dobre that puts in flexiona, puts na[s] outras, can-not put in shovel outras, but sempre n’aquele talho e d’aquela mane[i]ra that or they put na prima. E outrossi o deve[n] to put na fiinda per that mane[i]ra.

Cunha (1982) distinguishes four varieties of dobre, which he differentiates from the Provencal rim equivoc with which H. R. Lang compared it:

1. Repetition of the same word at the end of all the verses of a verse.
2. Repetition of the same word in successive statements of the same verse (the repeated word varies from estrofa to estrofa).
3. Repetition of the same word, in rhyme position, in two verses of the verse (usually in the first and last).
4. Alternance of two different words in each of the rhymes of a verse.

However, this canonical requirement of the dobre is not always respected and the rule of the fixed position of the repeated words is made more flexible, both throughout the stanzas and the entire poem. Thus, this regulation tends to be interpreted more as a “scholastic precept of medieval treatise” rather than “a verification born from the observation of the texts” (Beltrán, 1993: 220).

As a result, under the term dobre all lexical repetition that does not present inflection variations is considered, regardless of its textual position and regularity.

Bite

The mordobre or mozdobre is a rhetorical ornamentation resource that consists of the repetition of words with morphological variations (example: amar / amei ), this being its main difference with the dobre. The Art of trobar says about it that

as much as dobre, quanto e no compremento das palavras: mais as words desvairan-se, because they move you tempos. E, like you ja dixi do dobre, outrossi or mozdobre - in that stew and per that mane[i]ra that or meddle in ₡a cobra- assi or deven med nas outras e na fiinda, pera seer mais comprimento.

According to this, mordobre corresponds to a type of grammatical rhyme that plays on the alternation of different forms of the same verbal base, that is, on the morphological variations of the word and that, As was the case with the dobre, it serves as an interstrophic connection.

Like the dobre, the mordobre should adhere to the rule of fixity and repeat the word (in this case with the exception of being derived terms) in the same position in all the stanzas of the poem and in the fiinda. However, as was the case with the previous resource, the restrictive requirement presented in the Art of trobar is relativized.

In short, lexical repetition that presents morphological variations is known as mordobre, regardless of its textual position and regularity.

Mot-refranh and mot-tornat

A procedure similar to that of dobre is used by Provençal poetic doctrine. This is the mot-refranh, a resource that is based on the repetition, symmetrically in all stanzas, of the same word at the end of the verse, that is, in rhyming position.

The mot-refranh was considered a resource typical of good troubadours, which is why they tried to subscribe to its schemes. The mot-tornat did not have the same consideration, which consisted of the asymmetrical repetition of a word throughout the entire composition, in a rhyming position.

Rhyming word

In line with the dobre and the mot-refranh, the word-rhyme is considered an artifice of lexical repetition and interstrophic connection that repeats one or several terms symmetrically and in rhyming position in pairs of stanzas or in isolated stanzas.

Perdude word

This term was known in Galician-Portuguese poetry as the verse of a stanza that did not rhyme with any other verse (although it could be the case that it rhymed with a verse of another stanza).

The problem of repetition in rhyming position

The deep similarities between the dobre, the mordobre, the mot-refranh, the mot-tornat, the palavra-rima and the palavra perduda, together with the formal flexibility with which the troubadours used these resources, represents a problem of differentiation and classification. To try to clarify it, Ramón Pena (1986: 283) offers a summarized scheme with the formal definition (which does not always imply the implementation) of each resource:

• Door: repetition of words without lexic variation in symmetrical places of the verses of the chant, moving the repeated term from one verse to another.
• Mordobre: the same casuistic as in the Doubt, but the repeated term adopts morphological changes.
• Mot-refranh: repetition of the same word in rhyme position and in a symmetrical place along all the verses of the chant.
• Mot-tornat: differs from mot-refranh in which the term is not repeated in a symmetrical way, but in isolation, throughout the composition.
• Palavra-rima: repetition of one or more words at the end of verse and symmetrically in pairs of verses or in isolated verses.
• Palavra perduda: verse of a verse that does not rhyme with any other of the verse.

The genres of secular songs

Within the set of Galician-Portuguese lyrics, three major genres can be established that correspond to three types of songs already defined in the Arte de trovar: the love songs, the friend songs and the songs of ridicule and cursing.

Songs of a friend

The more than five hundred compositions of Cantigas de Amigo that have been preserved present a marked thematic and formal cohesion. In this genre, the poet puts in the mouth of a woman a lament or a dialogue with her friend or mother.

Through the use of exclamation and rhetorical questioning, the motifs related to the farewell and separation of the lovers predominate, capturing a feeling of melancholy through the coita (sorrow) of love. However, foreign to the troubadour tradition, requited love, a source of joy, is also usually present. Likewise, unlike what happens in love songs, in friend songs the female description is not free of multiple references to physical appearance (such as body or hair), as well as popular qualifiers along with others belonging to the polite world.

The presence of these adjectives, added to the adaptation of terms typical of feudal vassalage to the style of love songs, signals the communion between the Provençal influence and the native and pre-troubadour tradition of the area.

On the other hand, the landscape setting takes on special relevance in this type of compositions, because, although in some cases the environment is merely descriptive or is part of the environment, in others it acquires a marked symbolic value that gives meaning to the song.. Among the frequent symbols you can find aquatic elements – fountains, rivers and the sea –, spring elements – mountains, meadows, flowers, trees, etc. – and the intervention in the action of animals such as birds and deer.

In terms of form, the cantiga de Amigo rejects in most cases the meestria stanza, almost always includes a refram and the six-line stanza, rejecting the structure in four cobras typical of love verses. Some features that reveal his greatest distance from Occitan precepts.

Leaving aside the troubadour-type cantigas de Amigo, there is a group of cantigas de Amigo that use the couplet with a chorus (aaB or aaBB). According to this structure, a stanza is followed by another identical one, but modifying the rhymes. To achieve this, two procedures are used: either invert the order of the words or replace a term with another that is synonymous. This parallelism, together with the leixa-pren, constitutes the most characteristic resource of these compositions.

Within the friend's songs, several subgenres appear, related to the theme of the text:

• Dance. Songs of a joyful character in which the joy of loving and living is reflected. There are frequent invitations to dance, because they are precisely composed to be danced.
• Barcarolas or mariñas. Songs related to the sea, often present as a prolongation of the feelings of the enamored. The sea and its waves are presented as recipients of the laments of a young melancholy whose beloved has departed by sea (well to make war well) and does not know when he will return.
• Romerías. As its name indicates, they are related to pilgrimages and pilgrimages to hermits or shrines, occasions that lovers used as a pretext to meet.
• Albas, on board or alba. The dawn is presented in these compositions as responsible for the separation of lovers.
• Mayas. Songs dedicated to the month of May, the time of the year related to the geese: the beginning of the spring. In addition, it is in this month that, due to good weather, they used to start military campaigns.
• Venatory. Songs linked to the world of hunting that tend to symbolize how the masculine comes out to hunt for the feminine.

Love songs

The love songs are those that show the greatest Occitan influence – in fact, many critics consider them direct heirs of the Provençal canso. They represent the courtly genre and show the heritage received by the Galician-Portuguese poets: a feudal conception of love in which the lady becomes the senhor and the poet in the vassal.

These compositions take the form of a love song performed by a man and addressed to a lady, which is almost never reciprocated and, therefore, complains about his hostility and indifference.. In this way, the intercourse of love are abundant and constant, since the hyperbolic flattery and praise that the troubadour dedicates to her beloved are of little use: she remains haughty and oblivious to the suffering of the lover..

Considered as the most “cultured” of the three genres of Galician-Portuguese lyric, the theme of the love songs suffers “a considerable impoverishment with respect to the troubadour tradition” (Alvar and Beltrán, 1985: 29). To this we must add that they do not reach the degree of artificiality of the Provençal ones that serve as their model, subject to rigid stylistic rules and defined and categorized formal artifices, “nor, it must be said, is their beauty,” says Tarrío. Varela (1994: 30).

In the love songs, not only is the feudal vocabulary and that related to the degrees of amorous vassalage simplified, but the joia, the gaug (the joy of loving), replacing them with sadness and turning love into torment.

One of the main points that characterize this genre and differentiate it from the cantigas de Amigo is the disappearance of sensitive and concrete elements – such as the body, physical beauty or the locus amoenusin which the action takes place–, replacing them with a “monotonous game of abstractions dedicated to a strongly idealized lady, the object of topical feelings fixed in conventional schemes” (Tarrío Varela, 1994: 31). The result is none other than that of an abstract and disembodied lady, as Tavani (1986: 106) expresses, compared to the “concrete carnality [...] of the Provençal lady.”

The physical beauty of the lady is hidden by the abstract and her greatest virtues, those worthy of praise, are those related to her actions – her sweetness, her discretion in speaking, her expressive laugh, her beautiful look – and with its moral qualities – bõa (good), melhor (better), sen (good judgment), prez (merit, value), etc.–.

The Galician-Portuguese lyric thus reduces the physical description of the lady to generalities, almost always completed by allusions to divine intervention, because it is presupposed that “the senhor is perfect and the poet he loves her” (Alvar and Beltrán, 1985: 31).

Regarding its structure, in the love songs the meestria stanza is much more abundant than in the other types. In addition, compositions of four cobras with seven octosyllabic or decasyllabic verses are common, in the style of the Provençal canso.

The parallelism most used in this genre is the one consisting of the repetition of the same (or similar) motifs in all the stanzas, supported by the dobre or the mozdobre –although there is also a clear tendency to variation, with nuances, from one stanza to another–.

The syntax is more complex than in the friend songs: while in these the verses are autonomous and are associated either by coordination or by juxtaposition, in the love songs each stanza is constructed as a complex unit and prone to subordinations and ramifications. “This conception acquires its greatest development through enjambment, which is very common in the genre” (Alvar and Beltrán, 1985: 33), which can lead to its own model: the cantiga atehuda or ata a fiinda.

Songs of ridicule and cursing

The Arte de trobar dedicates a section to songs with burlesque and satirical themes, as opposed to those with love themes. These are the songs of derision and those of cursing (or maldizer), differentiated between them only in the medium used to carry out the mockery.

“Songs of mockery are those that the trobadores do wanting to say evil about something and them, and say the words covered words that leave our understanding”, while “ Bad saying songs are those that the trobadores make […] inadvertently, and them between words to those who want to say badly and not having another understanding but the one they want to say badly”.

Among the songs of derision and cursing, several subgroups can be established, since under this name compositions of diverse nature are assigned, such as personal invectives, political and moral adjectives, and literary satires.

Personal invectives constituted one of the most important nuclei of this type of songs, focusing on elements such as physical appearance, lack of ability to perform a job, tendency to vices, etc. Along the same lines, mockery aimed at the recipient's wife abounds, although always with the focus on the same victim: marital infidelity is the main protagonist in this case.

This group would also include attacks on troubadours and minstrels for their lack of skill and knowledge, on soldaderas (including those in love with a clergyman, mixing on these occasions, often in a crude manner, religious and erotic elements) and satires directed at representatives of other classes.

“In short, Galician-Portuguese poets seem to be interested, above all, in the mockery directed against the person and the laughter that this mockery can produce” (Alvar and Beltrán, 1985: 40). However, this does not imply that the poets relaxed the rules of composition, but rather that, as in other genres, the songs of derision and cursing are the result of rigorous elaboration. As stated (Alvar and Beltrán, 1985: 41), “Galician-Portuguese satirical poetry is [...] a cultured poetry of perfect technicality, which has inherited a traditional theme, enriched in the different poetic moments, and a clear awareness of style.”

Minor genres

In addition to the three major genres, within the Galician-Portuguese lyric we could talk about other minor genres with little contribution of examples and testimonies.

One of these genres is pranto, of possible Provençal origin, a composition in which pain is expressed over the disappearance of some renowned or valuable character.. The structure is the usual one in this type of texts: invitation to lament, exaltation of the deceased, imploration and request for prayer for the rest and salvation of his soul, description of the pain caused by his death, etc.

Another is the pastorela, present in the Galician-Portuguese tradition as a genre that combines elements of the songs of a friend and those of love. The essential characteristics of this genre are the geographical location and a dialogue in which a knight demands the love of a shepherdess. However, the models present in the Songbooks tend to dispense with this dialogue, giving rise to a soliloquy by the shepherdess.

The tenções, which, in addition to their literary value, provide a valuable historiographical point of view. These are texts prepared between two poets who agree on a series of conditions to develop the game, configuring themselves as a dialogue composition in which each author defends a point of view on a specific topic.

Three descordos have also arrived in Galician-Portuguese – compositions whose structure varies in each stanza – and it is interesting to take into account the cantigas to follow and those of vilão.