| Publication details: |
La Discusión, Diario democrático (Madrid), no. 175 (25 sept., 1856), pp. 1-2; no. 178 (28 sept., 1856), pp. 1-2; no. 183 (4 oct., 1856), pp. 1-2; no. 189 (11 oct., 1856), pp. 1-2. |
| Commentary: |
Notes from Snow 1977, no. 25 bis: "These articles set out to revalue Alfonso's worth as a "guerrero, legislador y poeta" but succeed only in the latter. M. rejects, along with Amador, the attribution of the Querellas to Alfonso. With the CSM, his greatest work, Alfonso is credited with extending devotion to the Virgin, a devotion that also took the form of the establishment of a short lived Military Order. M. thinks Alfonso alone wrote the words and music for the CSM but cannot satisfactorily explain the choice of Galician as a poetic medium. He dates them, from internal evidence, between 1263 and 1279 (both of which dates now seem conservative). He praises the excellence of the loores (esp. cantigas 110, 150, 140, 340, 10, and 70) and the variety of the milagros. He believes that cantiga 32 has made use of Berceo's poem on the same theme. The concluding section stresses the dramatic content of several of the narrative poems, especially cantigas 105, 42, 16, 84, and 347. Although sketches rather than studies, these articles are the first seriously to assess the literary worth of the CSM (see also M.'s publication of selected texts, 1862)." |
