Rethinking the Genre Question: The Cantar de mio Cid as Heroic Epic, Carnival and Sentimental Melodrama

Abstract

RETHINKING THE GENRE QUESTION: THE CANTAR DE MIO CID AS HEROIC EPIC, CARNIVAL AND SENTIMENTAL MELODRAMA Michael D. Thomas Baylor University How can we best describe the genre of the Cantar de mio Cid? This issue should be relatively easy to resolve since on the surface the work appears to be a rhymed narrative about a larger-dian-life hero, in many ways similar to ejiic poems such as the Odyssey, UieAeneid., or die Chanson de Roland. Even the tide ofpoema assigned by Ramón Menéndez Pidal seems to make die question of genre patendy obvious. Surprisingly, the history of CMC criticism reveals diat proposed answers have come in varied packages, depending on how a given critic chose to wrap diem.1 Genre labels assigned by scholars discussed in diis essay have ranged from "epic poem" to "historical chronicle" to "novel", suggesting the seemingly irreconcilable extremes of documentary historicity and creative fictionalization. A careful examination of diese nominations for the CMC's genre underscores its protean nature. In order to present both public entertainment and a social critique, the juglar incorporated at least diree different genres into the telling of die popular story: (1) heroic epic- in consonance with other epic traditions, he blended die rudiments of history widi a fictional flare in die presentation of a popular hero; (2) carnival - in accordance with the norms observable in other 1 For other discussions ofthe evolution of CMC criticism, historiography, and the genre question, see Larson 48-73; Lacarra, El Poema de Mio Cid. . . 1 04- 1 05, n(3 ; De Chasca, El artejuglaresco 18-19; Smith lxxxi-xc. I would like to thank Paul Larson, Baylor University, for his invaluable assistance in this area. La corónica 34.1 (Fall, 2005): 99-122 100Michael D. ThomasLa colonica 34.1. 2005 European cultures, his tale cloaks projiaganda for socio-economic dreams in creative costume using carnivalesque techniques of social satire, identified and analyzed in the twentieth centun' bv Russian theorist Mikhail Bakhtin; and (3) sentimental melodrama - the juglar weaves into his story a significant sentimental strand that exjioses the invincible warrior's onlv vulnerable jioint, his "Achilles' heel'', i.e., his wife and daughters. The present study will analyze how the anonymous author developed and integrated these three generic currents into a compelling narrative. Considerations of genre help us better understand the poem's internal narrative structure as well as a dénouement puzzling to later readers. According to Stephen Raulston, "the poem's climax and conclusion have proved less than satisfying, even irksome, to some modern scholars" (203). Tracking the histon- of critical thought on the issue ofthe CMC's genre reveals that literary historians have made strikingly varied attempts to categorize it. When Tomás Antonio Sánchez first published the extant text ofthe CMC in 1779, in his Poetas castellanos anteriores al siglo XW he initially described the work as an ejDic jjoem that mirrored Horace's "conditions for heroic verse": "V no le falta su mérito para graduarse de poema épico, así por la calidad del metro, corno jjor el héroe y demás personajes y hazañas de que en él se trata, conforme a las condiciones que jiide Horacio para el verso heroico, en su Arie poética..." (xviii). Sanchez's ajipeal to classical precedent reflects his engagement with the Neo-Classical tastes of his period. In his view, form and content corresjiond to the heroic model, but he does add that in the poem "todo es histórico" and that "sobre todo reina en él un cierto aire de verdad, que hace niuv creíble cuanto en él se refiere de una gran parte de los hechos del héroe" (xviii). What Sánchez obsenes about the CMC's "heroic ejjic" qualities works on a sujierficial level, in the first cantar and in parts of the second where the jioet presents a rhymed and metered narrative, a story with broad scoj^e, valiant deeds and other elements that Horace had obsened in Homer and Tyrtaeus.'-' But Sánchez also noted the jioem's distinctiveness as he observed that it j^resents a decidedly realistic story, clearly more "historical" than the unrealistic...