The Spanish Epic

Literary/ Cultural Context Essay

Rebecca De Souza (Freie Universität Berlin)

Ed. by Andrew M. Beresford, University of Durham
The Literary Encyclopedia. Volume 1.6.2.01: Spanish Literature and Culture from the Beginning to the Golden Age.
Vol. editors: Andrew M. Beresford (University of Durham), Stuart Green (University of Leeds), Juan Pablo Rodriguez (Yale University), Duncan Wheeler (University of Leeds)

Domains

Literature Topic

Dates

Date of occurrence c.1200- c.1400

Places

Spain (Location)

Genres and Modes

Epic
Poetry (any)

Resources

Recommended Reading

The Medieval Castilian Epic

The medieval Castilian epic, or cantar de gesta [song of an individual’s deeds], is a genre of heroic epic poetry composed from the early thirteenth century through to the late fourteenth. Epics are believed to have existed much earlier, although we lack the manuscripts to prove so. Much of the genre is now lost, and we are only left with one extensive but incomplete poem, the Cantar de mio Cid [Song of the Cid] along with a later epic, the Mocedades de Rodrigo [Youthful Deeds of Rodrigo], and a short fragment of the Cantar de Roncesvalles [Song of Roncesvalles].

The paucity of manuscript evidence f…

Please log in to consult the article in its entirety. If you are a member (student of staff) of a subscribing institution (see List), you should be able to access the LE on campus directly (without the need to log in), and off-campus either via the institutional log in we offer, or via your institution's remote access facilities, or by creating a personal user account with your institutional email address. If you are not a member of a subscribing institution, you will need to purchase a personal subscription. For more information on how to subscribe as an individual user, please see under Individual Subcriptions.

7229 words

Citation: De Souza, Rebecca. "The Spanish Epic". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 13 February 2019 [https://staging.litencyc.com/php/stopics.php?rec=true&UID=19557, accessed 25 April 2024.]

View recommended reading for this article

Save this article

If you need to create a new bookshelf to save this article in, please make sure that you are logged in, then go to your 'Account' here