Academic literature on the topic 'Castilean literature'

In this paper I argue that the Mio Cid epithet, most widely associated with the Castilian warrior exile Rodrigo Díaz and traditionally believed to have been bestowed upon him by Arabic speakers, is in fact an autochthonous Castilian formula closely related to equivalent hybrid formulas such as Mi Anaya and Mi Echa. Close attention to the charters of the Northern Meseta allows us to flesh out a small but significant corpus of such references and also observe such names being used in a second idiosyncratic way as generic witnesses. By framing the Mio Cid usage within this broader onomastic tradition, a more solid geography and chronology emerge and these in turn indicate a relatively widespread use of such terms in late eleventh and early twelfth-century Castile, initially in aristocratic circles, before the epithets morphed into personal names.

The diverse literary expressions comprised in the concept “Hispanic literature” —Catalan, Castilian, and Basque as well as the literature from Galicia— form a polysystem of great hermeneutical possibilities, according to the model proposed by Itamar Even-Zohar. A common historic and institutional context gives cohesion to this polysystem, but the existence of particular national traditions introduces differences within it. The study that we present in this article centers on a precise time and genre —post Civil War poetry— and should be considered as another aspect of this vast analytic territory, which could be extended to other periods and other genres. The Castilian system has been at the center of the polysystem, due in large part to political factors. In the 1960s Castilian hegemony gives rise to a form of polycentrism that would have its most innovative and dynamic foci in Castilian and Catalan literatures respectively. The symbolism-realism dialectic —inherited from the pre-War time— extends across the entire period. Francoist refression produced a politicization of literary creation that subordinated forma aspects to the will to denounce. The realist repertoire, which except for the Basque system manifested mainly in exile, is the principal cohesive factor of the Hispanic systems. When this closed code automates itself in the 1960s, codes that had been marginalized will emerge.