Galician-Portuguese lyric


In the Middle Ages, the Galician-Portuguese lyric, also known as trovadorismo in Portugal and trobadorismo in Galicia, was a lyric poetic school or movement. All told, there are around 1680 texts in the so-called secular lyric or lírica profana. At the time Galician-Portuguese was the language used in nearly all of Iberia for lyric poetry. From this language derives both modern Galician and Portuguese. The school, which was influenced to some extent by the Occitan troubadours, is first documented at the end of the twelfth century and lasted until the middle of the fourteenth, with its zenith coming in the middle of the thirteenth century, centered on the person of Alfonso X, The Wise King. It is the earliest known poetic movement in Galicia or Portugal and represents not only the beginnings of but one of the high points of poetic history in both countries and in Medieval Europe. Modern Galicia has seen a revival movement called Neotrobadorismo.
The earliest extant composition in this school is usually agreed to be Ora faz ost' o senhor de Navarra by João Soares de Paiva, usually dated just before or after 1200. Traditionally, the end of the period of active trovadorismo is given as 1350, the date of the testament of D. Pedro, Count of Barcelos, who left a Livro de Cantigas to his nephew, Alfonso XI of Castile.
The troubadours of the movement, not to be confused with the Occitan troubadours, wrote almost entirely cantigas with, apparently, monophonic melodies. Their poetry was meant to be sung, but they emphatically distinguished themselves from the jograes who in principle sang, but did not compose. It is not clear if troubadours performed their own work.
Beginning probably around the middle of the thirteenth century, the songs, known as cantares, cantigas or trovas, began to be compiled in collections known as cancioneiros. Three such anthologies are known: the Cancioneiro da Ajuda, the Cancioneiro Colocci-Brancuti, and the Cancioneiro da Vaticana. In addition to these there is the priceless collection of over 400 Galician-Portuguese cantigas in the Cantigas de Santa Maria, which tradition attributes to Alfonso X, in whose court Galician-Portuguese was the only language for lyric poetry.
The Galician-Portuguese cantigas can be divided into three basic genres: male-voiced love poetry, called cantigas de amor female-voiced love poetry, called cantigas de amigo ; and poetry of insult and mockery called cantigas d'escarnho e de mal dizer. All three are lyric genres in the technical sense that they were strophic songs with either musical accompaniment or introduction on a stringed instrument. But all three genres also have dramatic elements, leading early scholars to characterize them as lyric-dramatic.
The origins of the cantigas d'amor are usually traced to Provençal and Old French lyric poetry, but formally and rhetorically they are quite different. The cantigas d'amigo are probably rooted in a native song tradition, though this view has been contested. The cantigas d'escarnho e maldizer may also have deep local roots. The latter two genres make the Galician-Portuguese lyric unique in the entire panorama of medieval Romance poetry.

Main manuscripts of the secular Galician-Portuguese lyric

For further bibliography see Galician-Portuguese.

Other references used