A COMPARISON OF THE USE OF EPIC EPITHETS IN THE POEMA DE MIO CID AND THE LIBRODE ALEXANDRE

Abstract

It is generally agreed that the Poema de Mio Cid was intended for public recitation, and there seems to be a great deal of evidence to support such a view. The position of the Libro de Alexandre in this respect is far less clear. Menéndez Pidal takes up a strong standpoint with regard to the Alexandre (and indeed to the whole mester de clerecia.

BSS Subject Index:

• EPIC
• LIBRO DE ALEXANDRE
• POEMA DE MIO CID/CANTAR DE MIO CID
• VERSIFICATION
• SPAIN — LANGUAGES — SPANISH LANGUAGE & ITS HISTORY — MEDIEVAL PERIOD

Notes

¹Cf. Ramón Menéndez Pidal, Poesia juglaresca y juglares (Madrid 1924), especially 330–33. (This and the other statements of Pidal here cited remain unaltered in the most recent edition, Poesía juglaresca y orígenes de las literaturas románicas (6^a. edición, corregida y aumentada, Madrid 1957), 279–80, 233–34 and Apéndice III, 388).

²“Ni del bon rei

no sabs que's fei

d'AIixandre fil Filipón,

d'Apoloiné

non sabes re

qu'estors de man de Perizón ”, quoted by Pidal, op. cit., 358.

³E. Alarcos Llorach, Investigaciones sobre el “Libro de Alexandre ” (Madrid 1948), 15–16.

⁴ op. cit., 358.

¹The proverb may have been well known even before the composition of the Alexandre. In addition, Menéndez Pidal admits that only the Paris ms. (fifteenth century) corresponds closely to the cazurro poem : “ se ve que el ms. de París refleja aquí una versión tardía, la que conocía nuestro juglar ”. Equally it could be maintained that P ms. is reflecting the cazurro poem.

²All quotations from the Poema are from Menéndez Pidal's critical edition, Cantar de Mio Cid, III (Texto) (Madrid 1946).

³The quotations from the Libro de Alexandre are taken from the edition of R. S. Willis, Jnr. (Princeton 1934). The numbers refer to his composite stanza-numbering.

¹The idea of “horned” signifying “cuckolded” was current in twelfth-century Provence, as can be seen, for example, from these lines of Bernart de Ventadorn :

“ E s'eu l'am a dezonor,

esquerns er a tota gen ;

e tenran m'en li pluzor

per cornut e per sofren.”

Carl Appel edition (Halle 1915), 33,

poem no. 6, stanza 111.

It also occurs in Spain in the early thirteenth century : “ Murie el rei don Alfonso e rregno so fillo el rei don Fruella, e fo auol omne e mato a so ermano ; e por la auileza que fizo matoronlo sos omnes, que muitos dellos auia feitos cornudos ” (Cronicón Villarense : Liber lïegum, BRAE vi, 1919, 209).

²For a full account of these explanations, sec the following : The Encyclopaedia of Islam (London 1913), 1, 961–62 ; F. Guillén Robles, Leyendas de José … y de Alejandro Magno (Zaragoza 1888), xxxii ; V.. García Gómez, Un texto árabe occidental de la leyenda de Alejandro (Madrid 1929), xlvii-xlviii.

³One thinks particularly of the famous horned statue of Moses by Michelangelo at the Church of S. Pietro in Vincoli in Rome. The idea sprang from the Vulgate version of Exodus xxxiv, 29 : “ Cumque descenderet Moyses de monte Sinai, tenebat duas tabulas testimonii ; et ignorabat quod cornuta esset facies sua ex consortio sermonis Domini.” Because of a misunderstanding, the Hebrew verb “ qãran ” was rendered as cornuta since it literally did mean “ to be horned ”, but it also could have a metaphorical meaning of “ to beam, shine with light ”, which the compilers of the Vulgate failed to discern in this passage. The English Authorized Version is correct : “ And it came to pass, … when he came down from the mount, that Moses wist not that the skin of his face shone while he talked with him ”. (I wish to thank my colleague Dr. P. Wernberg-Moller for his kind help in this matter.)

⁴Cf. García Gómez, op. cit., especially xxxiv.

¹Since this article was completed, Mrs. R. Hamilton, who first drew my attention to the problem of the epic epithet in the Poema de Mio Cid, has herself emphasized the conscious way in which the juglar often seems to use this formula—in a paper read to the Association of Hispanists of Great Britain and Ireland on 29 March 1960.