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Terms
of Response Language and the Audience in Seventeenth- and
Eighteenth-Century Theory
Robert Montgomery
1992 | 224 pages
Comparative Literature, Literary Theory and Criticism
Hardback: $46.00 SH
ISBN: 978-0-271-00764-9
Paperback:
$23.95 SH
ISBN: 978-0-271-02654-1
This book takes a new look
at the place occupied by medieval Spanish epic within European folk
and literary tradition. Thomas Montgomery traces the origins of key
parts of most known medieval Spanish epics to an ancient myth. He
shows how the myth of the initiation of the young warrior, shown by
Georges Dumézil to be fundamental to the belief systems of
widely distributed Indo-European peoples, was variously adapted to
shape the action of texts including the Siete Infantes de Lara,
the Mocedades de Rodrigo, and the Poema de Mio Cid,
in which it accounts for the peculiar behavior of the Infantes de
Carrión. Montgomery also connects the same mythic tradition
to works as diverse as Tristan and the Chanson de Roland.
In a pre-literate
society, the oral presentation of this archetypal lore required
a special language capable of re-creating the ritualized behavior
of the epic characters and maintaining the ceremonial tone of the
performance. Focusing on the Poema de Mio Cid, Montgomery
examines the ways in which the poetic language worked to evoke a
feeling of group unity that absorbed the audience and still works
its spell upon today’s readers.
Thomas
Montgomery is Professor of Spanish at Tulane University.
He is the co-editor of Simply a Man of Letters (University
of Maine, 1980) and El Nuevo Testamento según el Ms. Escurialense
I.I.6 (Real Academia, 1970).
