The Cantar de Mio Cid as Pre-War Propaganda

Abstract

The Cantar de Mio Cid was probably composed in the first decade of the thirteenth century. This situates it in the years just prior to the Battle of Las Navas de Tolosa, the decisive engagement that ended Almohad dominance in Al-Andalus. The Cantar seems to propagandize Peninsular Christians with regard to military projects that advanced the goals of the Reconquest. There is great emphasis on issues of leadership, recruitment, valor and teamwork, tactics and strategy, fair distribution of loot and lands, and so forth. But the Cantar is also about domestic things: the pursuance of feuds; the vindication of family honor; the arrangement of marriages. This epic, in other words, is also about the home front. In the poem, the real threat to the home front comes from treacherous and meddlesome nobility personified by the Infantes de Carrión. The Cantar exalts a system of royal justice that protects families from such nefarious elements. Aimed at the rank and file, the Cantar's vision of warfare thus promises justice, wealth, and landed property. It also allows men to prove their manhood to the maximum, as we see from the poet's continual emphasis on a gendered division of labor—women assigned to home and hearth, men to the domain of warfare and related activities—and on the virility exemplified by the Cid and his followers.

Keywords:

• battle of Las Navas de Tolosa
• Cantar de Mio Cid
• economic distribution
• gendered division of labor
• masculinity and virility
• war propaganda

Notes

1. The edition chiefly cited is that of Alberto Montaner, with occasional references to that of Ian Michael.

2. On the date of the Cantar's composition see Lomax (esp. his summary and conclusions, 79–81); Ubieto Arteta (9–11; 19–33); and Duggan (5–15), who provides a thorough summary of the question. Wright (189–93) speaks informatively and persuasively to issues of the political and cultural context of composition and possible performance.

3. Square-bracketed page numbers refer to Barton and Fletcher's translation.