Interaction of Factors in Tense Choice in the Poema del Cid

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Notes

1. Manfred Sandmann, ‘Narrative Tenses of the Past in the Cantar de Mio Cid’ in Studies in Romance Philology and French Literature Presented to John Orr (Manchester: Manchester U.P., 1953), 258–81.

2. Lucien Foulet, ‘La disparition du prétérit’, Romania, XLVI (1920), 271—313.

3. Manfred Sandmann, review of Friederike Stefenelli-Fürst, Die Tempora der Vergangenheit der Chanson de Geste (Diss. Wien, 1964): Wiener Romanistische Arbeiten, dir. C.-Th. Gossen, V (Wien: Wilhelm Braumüller, 1966), in Romance Philology, XXI (1968), 570–74.

4. Manfred Sandmann, ‘Syntaxe verbale et style épique’, in Atti del VIII Congresso Internazio-nale di Studi Romanzi, 2 vols. (Firenze: Sansoni, 1959), II, 378—402.

5. Art. cit.

6. Poema de Mio Cid, ed. R. Menéndez Pidal, 8^a ed. (Madrid: Espasa-Calpe, 1958), 9.

7. Thomas Montgomery, ‘Narrative Tense Preference in the Cantar de Mio Cid’, Romance Philology, XXI (1968), 253–74.

8. Matthew Bailey, ‘The Present Tense in Ennius and the Cantar de Mio Cid’, Romance Notes, XXVI (1986), 279–85.

9. I hope this is a fair and accurate representation of the opinion in question, although linguistically it is naive to the point of absurdity.

10. Steven Gilman, Tiempo y formas temporales en el ‘Poema del Cid’ (Madrid: Gredos, 1961).

11. He restates his opinion in ‘The Poetry of the "Poema" and the Music of the "Cantar" ‘, Philological Quarterly, LI (1972), 1–11.

12. Suzanne Fleischman, ‘Discourse Functions of Tense-Aspect Oppositions in Narrative: Toward a Theory of Grounding’, Linguistics, XXIII (1985), 851–82; ‘Evaluation in Narrative: The Present Tense in Medieval "Performed Stories" ‘, Yale French Studies, LXX (1986), 199–251.

13. An example: ‘Un faldestoet out suz l'umbre d'un pin; / Envolupet fut d'un palie alexandrin: / La fut li reis qui tute Espaigne tint’, La Chanson de Roland, ed. Joseph Bédier (Paris: L’Édition d'Art H. Piazza, 1960), lines 407–09. But the system is complex, with many imperfective verbs in the present tense.

14. As also by Michel H. A. Blanc, ‘Time and Tense in Old French Narrative’, Archivum Linguisticum, XVI (1964), 96–124.

15. Oliver T.Myers,'AssonanceandTenseinthePoemade/C¿d’,PMLA,LXXXI(1966),493–98.

16. Confirmed by Fleischman, ‘Evaluation’, 210.

17. Thomas Montgomery, ‘Assonance, Word, and Thought in the Poema del Cid’, Journal of Hispanic Philology, XI (1986), 5–22.

18. Poema de Mio Cid, ed. Ian Michael, 2nd ed. (Madrid: Castalia, 1980).

19. Especially laisses 16, 41, 51,109, 129. The women's names do not form the t-a assonance.

20. Bermúdez (Vermuez, in ó) and Gustioz rhyme occasionally. Antolínez, of course, does not. Minaya makes surprisingly few rhymes, and only in a brief stretch of the poem: once in laisse 44, four times in laisse 47, five times in laisse 49. When used internally, the name, unlike the others, does not favour a particular assonance.

21. Cantar de Mio Cid, ed. Ramón Menéndez Pidal, 3^a ed., 3 vols. (Madrid: Espasa-Calpe, 1953–57), I, 90–91.

22. Ramón Menéndez Pidal et al. (eds.), Crestomatía del español medieval, 3 vols. (Madrid: Gredos, 1965), I, 109–11.

23. Roman Jakobson and Krystyna Pomorska, Dialogues (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1983), 134.

24. Roland Barthes, ‘Introduction à l'analyse structurale des récits’, Communications, VIII (1966), 1–27, at p. 26.

25. Ibid.

26. E. Kullmann, ‘Die dichterische und sprachliche Gestalt des Cantar de Mio Cid’, Romanische Forschungen, XLV (1931), 1–65, at 45–57; Colin Smith, ‘Realidad y retórica: el binomio en el estilo épico’ in Estudios cidianos (Madrid: Cupsa, 1977), 161–217; Edmund de Chasca, El arte juglaresco en el ‘Cantar de Mio Cid’ (Madrid: Gredos, 1967), 194–201; but this point requires further study.

27. Gilman, Tiempo, 16n.

28. Strikingly evident in the diagrammatic presentation of Menéndez Pidal, Cantar, I, 90—91.

29. Tomás Navarro, Métrica española: Reseña histórica y descriptiva (Syracuse: Syracuse U.P., 1956), 35.

30. Some lines are counted more than once, for example as having either seven or eight syllables, where synalepha is possible. Menéndez Pidal's method of disregarding doubtful hemistichs would allow 22 of 50 to be counted, giving little sense of the texture of the passage, although yielding comparable proportions.

31. Federico Laredo, ‘La influencia de las formas verbales tetrasilábicas en la métrica del Cantar de Mio Cid’, Bulletin Hispanique, LXX (1968), 426–30; also Thomas Montgomery, ‘Narrative Tense Preference’, p. 264.

32. Gilman, Tiempo, 56.

33. Complete figures are not to be found in Franklin M. Waltman, Concordance to the ‘Poema de Mio Cid’ (University Park: Pennsylvania State U.P., 1972); but see ‘Poema del Cid’ in Verse and Prose, ed. Victor R. B. Oelschläger (New Orleans: Newcomb College—Tulane University, 1948).

34. The -ieron inflection is not used to make the rare (11 lines) é-o assonance; the poem's third person plural preterites total 237, with 505 present and 164 imperfect forms: Gilman, Tiempo, 23.

35. Montgomery, ‘Narrative Tense Preference’.

36. Gilman, Tiempo, 23.

37. Fleischman, ‘Evaluation’, 209, ‘Discourse Functions’, 857, 868. In the first two passages, tense-switching is said to be an oral device used to compensate for the limitations of parataxis. Here, as elsewhere in her work, twentieth-century usage seems to be taken as a standard against which to evaluate old texts.

38. Emile Benveniste, Problèmes de linguistique générale (Paris: Gallimard, 1966), 241.

39. Biblia Sacra iuxta Vulgatam Clementinam, eds. Alberto Colunga and Laurentio Turrado, iterata ed. (Madrid: Biblioteca de Autores Cristianos, 1951).

40. El Nuevo Testamento según el Ms. Escurialense I-I-6, eds. Thomas Montgomery and Spurgeon W. Baldwin, Añejos del Boletín de la Real Academia Española, XXII (Madrid: Real Academia, 1970).

41. Rafael Lapesa, ‘Del demostrativo al artículo’, NRFH, XV (1961), 23–44.

42. Reliquias de la poesía épica española, ed. Diego Catalán, 2^a ed. (Madrid: Gredos, 1980), 41, lines 15abc.

43. The stress pattern sabién is clearly present in the Libro de buen amor, but the case is not clear in earlier texts, and Menéndez Pidal included such forms among those of undetermined syllabic count in the Poema del Cid. On this one point I depart from the Michael edition, placing no graphic accent on -ie(n). See Yakov Malkiel, ‘Toward a Reconstruction of the Old Spanish Imperfect in -ìa I -ié’, HR, XXVII (1959), 435–81.

44. Compare Elizabeth Block, ‘Narrative Judgment and Audience Response in Homer and Virgil’, Arethusa, XIX (1986), 155–67.

45. Jakobson and Pomorska, 93.