''Cantigas de escárnio e maldizer'' (

Portuguese Portuguese may refer to: * anything of, from, or related to the country and nation of Portugal ** Portuguese cuisine, traditional foods ** Portuguese language, a Romance language *** Portuguese dialects, variants of the Portuguese language ** Port ...

), ''cantiga de escarnio e maldicir'' ( Galician) or ''cantigas d'escarnho e de maldizer'' (

Galician-Portuguese Galician-Portuguese ( gl, galego-portugués or ', pt, galego-português or ), also known as Old Portuguese or as Medieval Galician when referring to the history of each modern language, was a West Iberian Romance language spoken in the Middle ...

), literally "derision and curse songs", are a type of literary composition of insult, mockery and scorn – always with comic intent – from the

Middle Ages In the history of Europe, the Middle Ages or medieval period lasted approximately from the late 5th to the late 15th centuries, similar to the post-classical period of global history. It began with the fall of the Western Roman Empire ...

, typical of the medieval

Galician-Portuguese lyric In the Middle Ages, the Galician-Portuguese lyric, also known as ''trovadorismo'' in Portugal and ''trobadorismo'' in Galicia, was a lyric poetic school or movement. All told, there are around 1680 texts in the so-called secular lyric or ''lír ...

.Cohen, Rip (2009). “The Medieval Galician-Portuguese Lyric / The Secular Genres.” In Companion to Portuguese Literature. Ed. Stephen Parkinson, Cláudia Pazos Alonso and T. F. Earle. Warminster: Tamesis, pp. 25-40.
/ref> Libro de los Juegos, Alfonso X y su corte

Libro de los Juegos, Alfonso X y su corte

The Galician-Portuguese lyrical ''corpus'' has approximately 400 texts belonging to the genre. It is often incorrectly characterized as

satire Satire is a genre of the visual arts, visual, literature, literary, and performing arts, usually in the form of fiction and less frequently Nonfiction, non-fiction, in which vices, follies, abuses, and shortcomings are held up to ridicule, ...

, the difference being that this genre normally insults named individuals, unlike the satire, that insults entire classes of people. The genre often has complex forms, with a variety of personae, and with the

rhetoric Rhetoric () is the art of persuasion, which along with grammar and logic (or dialectic), is one of the three ancient arts of discourse. Rhetoric aims to study the techniques writers or speakers utilize to inform, persuade, or motivate par ...

being roughly in the middle of complexity in comparation to the ''

cantiga de amor ''Cantiga de amor'' ( Portuguese and Galician) or ''cantiga d'amor'' ( Galician-Portuguese), literally "love song", is a type of literary composition from the Middle Ages, typical of the medieval Galician-Portuguese lyric. A male-voiced love ...

'' and the ''

cantiga de amigo ''Cantiga de amigo'' (, ) or ''cantiga d'amigo'' ( Galician-Portuguese spelling), literally "friend song", is a genre of medieval lyric poetry, apparently rooted in a female-voiced song tradition native to the northwest quadrant of the Iberian Pe ...

''. Insult or mockery are the essence, though techniques have a great variation, such as praising in order to blame, defending in order to accuse, thanking in order to insult. Obscenity is the rule in ''cantigas de maldizer''. The physical and social world of the time, unlike the two other Galician-Portuguese genres, is very present in the ''cantigas de escárnio e maldizer'', making this genre a great way of studying the social and cultural history of that time. This genre includes sexual themes, mockery of other

troubadour A troubadour (, ; oc, trobador ) was a composer and performer of Old Occitan lyric poetry during the High Middle Ages (1100–1350). Since the word ''troubadour'' is etymologically masculine, a female troubadour is usually called a '' trobai ...

s and their songs, social conflicts, legal and political questions, mockery of religion, more specifically of

Catholicism The Catholic Church, also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the largest Christian church, with 1.3 billion baptized Catholics worldwide . It is among the world's oldest and largest international institutions, and has played a ...

, including mockery of the

Pope The pope ( la, papa, from el, πάππας, translit=pappas, 'father'), also known as supreme pontiff ( or ), Roman pontiff () or sovereign pontiff, is the bishop of Rome (or historically the patriarch of Rome), head of the worldwide Cathol ...

and blasphemies against

biblical figures Names play a variety of roles in the Bible. They sometimes relate to the nominee's role in a biblical narrative, as in the case of Nabal, a foolish man whose name means "fool". Names in the Bible can represent human hopes, divine revelations, o ...

such as

Jesus Jesus, likely from he, יֵשׁוּעַ, translit=Yēšūaʿ, label=Hebrew/Aramaic ( AD 30 or 33), also referred to as Jesus Christ or Jesus of Nazareth (among other names and titles), was a first-century Jewish preacher and religiou ...

and Mary, mother of Jesus, and parodies of ''cantigas de amor'' and ''cantigas de amigo''. Usually the speaker is a man. The addressed person may be the target of insult, or a rhetorical "you", serving as an example of a bigger discourse, or a party to the action described or enacted. The rhetorical intent is always to insult. The insulted is usually a person, though in some compositions a class of people is mocked ("infanções") – making such poems a satire and not personal insult –. The background elements are far more varied than compared to the two other genres, and so too is the present situation and action. The techniques in the rhetoric by which the insult is articulated is also highly varied, and this allows a

elocutio ''Elocutio'' (l''exis or phrasis'' in Greek) is a Latin term for the mastery of rhetorical devices and figures of speech in Western classical rhetoric. ''Elocutio'' or style is the third of the five canons of classical rhetoric (the others bein ...

hardly possible elsewhere. The origins of the ''cantigas de escárnio e maldizer'' are not really known. Henry R. Lang argues that the genre has deep roots in the

Iberian Peninsula The Iberian Peninsula (), ** * Aragonese and Occitan: ''Peninsula Iberica'' ** ** * french: Péninsule Ibérique * mwl, Península Eibérica * eu, Iberiar penintsula also known as Iberia, is a peninsula in southwestern Europe, defi ...

, though the question is how deep it is. There is no comparably large body of verse in

Occitan Occitan may refer to: * Something of, from, or related to the Occitania territory in parts of France, Italy, Monaco and Spain. * Something of, from, or related to the Occitania administrative region of France. * Occitan language Occitan (; ...

Old French Old French (, , ; Modern French: ) was the language spoken in most of the northern half of France from approximately the 8th to the 14th centuries. Rather than a unified language, Old French was a linkage of Romance dialects, mutually intelligi ...

, or Italian. One way to find an explanation for this genre is to view it as a continuation of the Roman customs.

References

Notes

Bibliography

* LANCIANI, Giulia e TAVANI, Giuseppe, ''As cantigas de escarnio'', Edicións Xerais de Galicia, S.A, 1995, p. 106 * TAVANI, Giuseppe, ''A poesía lírica galego-portuguesa'', Galaxia, Vigo, 2ª ed. , 1988, p. 188 {{Medieval-music-stub Galician-Portuguese Poetic forms Western medieval lyric forms

See also

References

Notes

Bibliography