Reading Illegitimacy in Early Iberian Literature [1st ed.] 9783030595685, 9783030595692

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THE NEW MIDDLE AGES

Reading Illegitimacy in Early Iberian Literature Geraldine Hazbun

The New Middle Ages

Series Editor Bonnie Wheeler English and Medieval Studies Southern Methodist University Dallas, TX, USA

The New Middle Ages is a series dedicated to pluridisciplinary studies of medieval cultures, with particular emphasis on recuperating women’s history and on feminist and gender analyses. This peer-reviewed series includes both scholarly monographs and essay collections.

More information about this series at http://www.palgrave.com/gp/series/14239

Geraldine Hazbun

Reading Illegitimacy in Early Iberian Literature

Geraldine Hazbun University of Oxford Oxford, UK

The New Middle Ages ISBN 978-3-030-59568-5 ISBN 978-3-030-59569-2 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-59569-2 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. Cover credit: Lebrecht Music & Arts/Alamy Stock Photo This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland

Dedicated with love to my family: Saleh, Gabriel, Madeleine, and Evangelina

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank all those who have contributed, directly or indirectly, to the creation of this book. Warm thanks must go to the anonymous peer reviewer who helped me to really see what I was trying to say. I would also like to thank my Modern Languages colleagues at St Anne’s College for their unique brand of encouragement and mockery. The book was delayed because of the Covid-19 pandemic and I would like to thank the team at Palgrave Macmillan, especially Allie Troyanos and Rachel Jacobe, for their patience while I took longer to complete it than expected. Also related to Covid, special thanks are reserved for my husband Saleh, for providing enormous amounts of moral support when finishing the revisions to the book seemed to me to pale in comparison with his own job as an NHS Consultant, and yet to him seemed more important than ever. In a book that is so much about fathers and children, I would like finally to thank my father, John Coates, for encouraging me, years ago, along the path that led me here and for teaching me what is at the core of this book: that things are rarely as they seem.

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Contents

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1

The Scope of Illegitimacy

2

Epic Illegitimacy: The Cantar de Mio Cid and Las Mocedades de Rodrigo

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3

Split Identity: Illegitimacy in the Romancero

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Narrating Illegitimacy: The Novelas ejemplares

143

5

Lope de Vega’s Bastard Heroes: Pieces and Traces

201

Conclusion: The Legacy of Illegitimacy

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Index

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Abbreviations

AC AL ASR BAE BCom BHS BRAE BSS Cervantes CFH CH CIF CLHM ELH FMLS HR JHP JVf KRQ MLN MLR NRFH PMHRS RCEH REH RFE

Anales Cervantinos Anuario Lope de Vega American Sociological Review Biblioteca de Autores Españoles Bulletin of the Comediantes Bulletin of Hispanic Studies Boletín de la Real Academia Española Bulletin of Spanish Studies Cervantes: Bulletin of the Cervantes Society of America Cuadernos de Filología Hispánica Crítica Hispánica Cuadernos de Investigación Filológica Cahiers de Linguistique Hispanique Médiévale English Literary History Forum for Modern Language Studies Hispanic Review Journal of Hispanic Philology Jahrbuch für Volksliedforschung Kentucky Romance Quarterly Modern Language Notes Modern Language Review Nueva Revista de Filología Hispánica Papers of the Medieval Hispanic Research Seminar Revista Canadiense de Estudios Hispánicos Revista de Estudios Hispánicos Revista de Filología Española xi

xii RFR RPh RQ YES

ABBREVIATIONS

Revista de Filología Románica Romance Philology Romance Quarterly Yearbook of English Studies

CHAPTER 1

The Scope of Illegitimacy

Illegitimacy in so Many Words Illegitimacy cannot exist without legitimacy, the thing that it is not. It is a concept defined by deviation from the spectrum of words and ideas pertaining to rightness, authority, regularity, propriety, legality, reason, and truth. It is ancient and it is problematic, “a problem as old and unsolved as human existence itself” (Davis 1939, 215). Illegitimacy traditionally evokes all manner of forbidden practices: extramarital sex, prostitution, interreligious trysts, rape, incest, usurpation, heresy, and treason. It crosses from individual bodies to entire political systems. The earliest use of the word in English, according to the OED, concerns not being born in lawful wedlock or recognised as lawful offspring, marking its historical identity as a legal doctrine. However, its dictionary cognates spill over into a more general vocabulary of impropriety: “unauthorized, unwarranted, spurious; irregular, improper; not in accordance with rule or reason; not correctly deduced or inferred; naturally or physiologically abnormal”. In the Western tradition, the legal doctrine of illegitimacy was sanctioned by Christian theology. The Bible contains several particularly vehement passages which caught the attention of jurists and theologians, notably Deuteronomy 23.2: “A bastard shall not enter into the congregation of the Lord; even to their tenth generation shall they not enter into the congregation of the Lord”. Similarly, the Book of Genesis describes how Ishmael, the illegitimate son of Abraham, was condemned in utero:

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 G. Hazbun, Reading Illegitimacy in Early Iberian Literature, The New Middle Ages, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-59569-2_1

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“And he will be a wild man; his hand will be against every man, and every man’s hand against him” (16.12).1 The notion of the sins of the fathers being visited upon their children unto the third and fourth generation is also found in Exodus (20.5, 34.7), Numbers (14.18), and Deuteronomy (5.9). A more clement view of illegitimacy also exists, however, in the Bible: Deuteronomy, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel all explicitly prohibit visiting the sins of the parents upon children […] Matthew includes five bastards in the genealogy of Christ, and Hebrews counts the child of a harlot on the roll of the righteous. The Bible repeatedly calls God’s people to do justice and mercy to the fatherless and the orphan. (Witte 2009, 46)

John Witte observes that the Church Fathers “reduced the sting of illegitimacy by expanding the texts that count, and reading them inventively”, for example, the sins of the fathers passages are “about God’s mercy in postponing punishment for three or four generations, in hopes that later generations will repent” (46). However, he describes how a combination of the Roman laws on illegitimacy and increasingly severe views on extramarital sex from the church councils and Church Fathers from the first to the sixth centuries created the Western rules about illegitimacy that exclude illegitimate offspring. Sara McDougall disagrees: Witte and the specialist scholarship he draws on miss a real and dogged fidelity to the teaching of the Fathers on the part of many leading ecclesiastical officials, and ongoing insistence that the sins of the fathers not be visited upon the children. Careful attention to the period, particularly the often obscure tenth, eleventh, and early twelfth centuries, reveals a very different history of illegitimacy, a host of different ideas and practices concerning marriage, legitimacy, and a child’s rights to inherit. (2017, 11)

Even at this early stage, it seems that illegitimacy was subject to interpretation; the idea of the Church Fathers reading it inventively, subjecting it to a creative approach, is fascinating and lays the foundations for one of the central points of this book: to tell a different story of illegitimacy, to see and to value illegitimacy as story. Illegitimate figures are symbolic as well as literal products of lines and laws, and their overspills and transgressions, and with that comes a fluidity of interpretation. Richard Adair describes it as a “culturallyspecific concept, meaning different things in different ages to different

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status groups” (1996, 4). Lisa Zunshine also questions the usefulness of a blanket concept of illegitimacy when applied across social classes and geographical regions, calling it “anything but monolithic” (2005, 5). Underpinning illegitimacy with notions of legitimacy also presupposes that legitimacy is a stable thing when in reality, as David Beetham argues “legitimacy in the wide sense always depends on the ability of dominant political and social systems to underscore formal legal conventions with the dual authority of ideal normative principles and broad social consent; but it is extremely seldom that these elements are unproblematically aligned” (Finn et al. 2010, 4). The fluidity of illegitimacy is evident in law codes from medieval Spain. Alfonso X’s fourth Partida (IV.15) defines illegitimacy in accordance with ancient descriptions of it, as children born outside of a legal marriage, “Naturales e non legítimos llamaron los sabios antiguos á los fijos que non nascen de casamiento segunt ley” (1807, 87) (The wise men of old called children who are not born of a lawful marriage natural and illegitimate). There are a number of subcategories of illegitimates, namely “fornecinos” (born of adultery, or from a relative or a woman in holy orders), “manzeres ” (the children of prostitutes), “spurii” (born of women kept as concubines outside the man’s house), and “notos” (born as a result of adultery) (1807, 87–88).2 The code reserves its most damning judgement for the “manzeres ”, connecting the word to the Latin “mania” and “scelus ” meaning infernal sin. However, illegitimacy is not a permanent state. Emperors, kings, and popes, in accordance with their temporal and spiritual jurisdictions, have the power to legitimise; a cleric cannot regulate “cosas temporales” (temporal matters), nor can an emperor or king influence “las cosas espirituales” (89) (spiritual matters).3 Similarly, the Fuero Real (Royal Law Code) describes how a “fijo que no es de bendicion” (son who is not from a marriage) may not inherit, unless the king decides to legitimise him, which is a power over worldly affairs that the monarch possesses: “como el apostóligo puede legitimar a aquel que non es legitimo pora aver ordenes e beneficio, asi lo puede legitimar el rey para heredar e para las otras cosas temporales” (Alfonso X 1836, vol. 2, 82) (just as the apostle may legitimise he who is not legitimate to take orders and benefice, so the king may legitimise him to inherit and for other temporal matters). According to the fourth Partida, a father can make his son legitimate by devoting him to the service of his emperor, king, or ruling council, by his will being submitted for the king’s consent, or by

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providing a written document recognising his son as such (1807, vol 2., 89–90). A woman can become legitimate by dint of her father marrying her to an official in an important office (91) The principal benefit of legitimacy is the right to inherit the property of one’s father or one’s share of it if there are other legitimate offspring (91); a further advantage is becoming eligible for honours, “pueden seer cabidos á todas las honras et á todos los fechos temporales” (91) (they can be admitted to all honours and all temporal affairs). The Alfonsine description of illegitimacy highlights some of its most important features in the thirteenth century. Illegitimacy appears correctible, reversible, a mixture of accepted categories and subjective notions. Illegitimacy is also closely understood in relation to public knowledge of it, or not. Alfonso’s code repeatedly refers to the role of speech is rendering a child legitimate. For example, a father wanting to make his son legitimate by devoting him to political service, must publicly speak some lines: “et dixere publicamente ante todos: este es mio fijo que he de tal muger, et dolo á servicio deste concejo; por estas palabras lo face legítimo” (89) (and say in public in everyone’s presence: “this is my son born of such a woman, and I present him to serve this council”; with these words he makes him legitimate). The role of the speech act is reiterated in an ensuing section, “deciendo concejeramiente ante todos como es fijo de tal home, nombrándolo” (91) (stating in front of everyone that he is the son of such a man, naming him). Similarly, a will must specifically state “quiero que fulan et fulan mios fijos que hobe de tal muger, que sean mios herederos legítimos” (90) (it is my wish that these sons of mine that I had with such a woman be my legitimate heirs), and any written document recognising a child must mention him explicitly as his son, must not mention that he is a natural one, and must be witnessed by three reliable men: Instrumento ó carta faciendo algunt home por su mano mesma, ó mandándola facer á alguno de los escribanos públicos, que sea firmada con testimonio de tres homes bonos, en que diga que algunt fijo que ha, nombrándolo señaladamiente, que lo conosce por su fijo; esta es otra manera en que se facen los fijos naturales legítimos: pero en tal conoscencia como esta non debe decir que es su fijo natural ca si lo dixiere non valdrie la legitimacion. (90)

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(If a man writes an instrument or letter with his own hand or orders it to be done by a public scribe, it should be signed with the testimony of three good men, and it should say that the child in question, naming him specifically, is recognised as his child; this is another way in which natural children are made legitimate but, in recognising this, it should not say that the child is a natural one because if it does the legitimisation will be worthless.)

In all these cases, legitimacy is about converting the child from being anonymous and socially irrelevant to an individual named, recognised, and accounted for in public discourse. The connection with a father is recreated and formalised. Heath Dillard describes how formal paternal recognition took place in many towns in assemblies and public gatherings were witnesses were present and could testify to the father acknowledging the child (1984, 130–31). The inherently theatrical nature of this act, and of illegitimacy itself, is something that will be explored in this book. The role of speech necessarily also calls to mind the silence and secrecy which surrounds illegitimacy. Mary Ebbott’s assessment of illegitimacy in Classical Greek literature (2003) turns on the distinction between social recognition and anonymity that the fourth Partida indirectly raises. Ancient Greek poetry, she writes, employs a metaphor of “shadowy” to describe illegitimate children: “the public invisibility of the illegitimate child […] finds expression in another term, skotios. The term is usually translated as ‘dark’ or ‘shadowy’ […] not, as I shall argue, dark color, but rather colorlessness” (2003, 20). The notion of darkness is echoed in Covarrubias’s description of illegitimate offspring as made in the dark and corners: “lathremaeos, hechos a escuras y por los rincones” (2006, 298). This is reminiscent of the Bible keeping the bastard out of the congregation of the Lord (Deuteronomy 23.2), implicitly out of the light. Although the term bastardo exists in Castilian from 1206, and in Latin as bastardus in the eleventh century, we do not see it in the early Iberian law codes. Alfonsine law prefers the term fornezino for its blanket description of a child born out of wedlock. The term is certainly used and understood in the Golden Age, however. Covarrubias describes “bastardo” in generic terms as “lo que es grosero y no hecho con orden, razón y regla” (that which is coarse and not made with order, reason, or rule) but goes on to invest it with a number of different associations. The first is degeneracy, whereby illegitimate unions are likened to those between

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different species of animals or birds, “porque estos tales degeneran de su natural” (2006, 298) (because these are degenerate versions of their kind). This is followed by emphasis on the uncertainty of the father’s identity. Here Covarrubias follows Diego de Guadix in connecting “bastardo” with the Arabic word baxtaridu, meaning whoever you like: “dando a entender que el bastardo le podemos dar el padre que quisiéremos por la incertidumbre dél” (leading to the understanding that we can give the bastard any father we like given how uncertain his identity is). The definition then turns to the nature of women and likens the adulterous woman to a she-wolf, “cosa ordinaria es llamar lobas a las ruines mujeres” (it is common to call ruined women she-wolves), although with the clarification that this does not necessarily apply to women who have simply been tricked or have succumbed to a moment of weakness, or have not been able to fight back, but rather to flagrantly promiscuous females: Se ha de entender no de los hijos cuyos madres solo han hecho flaqueza con un hombre, o por las haber engañado, o por no tener valor y fuerzas para resistir, sino de los de aquellas que desenfrenadamente han sido perdidas y dado ocasion a que no hallen padres a sus hijos por haber tratado con muchos. (298–99) (This does not apply to sons whose mothers have only succumbed to weakness with a man, or have been deceived, or have not had the strength and courage to resist, but to those who have been completely lost and for whom it is the case that the fathers of their children cannot be identified because they have been with so many men.)

Courtesy of Covarrubias, we undertake an etymological journey from mule to brothel, one intended to highlight the central thread of an “ilegítimo ayuntamiento” (illegitimate coming-together): burdo (mule)bustardo-bastardo (bastard)-borde (child born outside of wedlock with unknown father)-burdel (brothel).4 As for the term illegitimacy, in a wider European context it appears chiefly in thirteenth-century texts and may reflect “the shift from a preoccupation with illicit unions […] to new interest in the children born of such unions” (McDougall 2017, 48). Evidence from medieval Britain suggests that outside of Iberia illegitimacy was also a combination of the categorical and the subjective. Chris Given-Wilson and Alice

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Curteis describe how from about 1050 onwards there was “a clear demarcation line” between legitimacy and illegitimacy (1984, 42), and the twelfth century saw great efforts being made to apply more definite rules concerning inheritance, leading to the established common-law principle that the bastard was legally filius nullius , the son (heir) of nobody (43).5 However, canon and common lawyers were unable to agree on how legitimacy was to be defined in a context where “ideas on who is legitimate and who is not will always depend on a number of other factors, such as the preoccupations and prejudices of those whose job it is to make laws, prevailing social and moral customs, precedents and so forth” (GivenWilson and Curteis 1984, 44).6 Clearly, bastardy is “a socially constructed concept”, and “the apparent ‘fact’ of an illegitimate birth can be unclear” (Levene et al. 2005, 5). Alan Macfarlane notes the historical distinction in English law between “general bastardy” where the parents did not marry after the birth of the child, and “special bastardy” where they later married (1980, 73); this is also cited by Given-Wilson and Curteis as the distinction between those bastardy cases which were sent to the church courts and those which were not, “special bastardy was the name given to those cases where substantive law differed; ‘general bastardy’ concerned more straightforward cases” (1984, 47). Richard Adair describes a “spectrum of irregular unions, ranging from consensual relationships at one end to fully sanctioned church marriage at the other” (140). The overspill of illegitimacy as a concept means that there are potentially other categories of protagonist who might be included alongside the bastard. Orphans, foundlings, and changelings are often associated with illegitimacy and with being on the fringes of the social order. I do not deal with these categories as such in this book, but abandonment and displacement of illegitimate children is an important part of many of the narratives I examine, as is the ultimate realisation of who the child is after some compelling twists and contortions of the plot along the way. For example, in the old ballads Espinelo is cast out to sea in a chest and found by a group of travelling sailors. In Entre las gentes se suena (Among the People is it Heard) and Entre las gentes se dice (Among the People it is Said), the illegitimate child is taken away to be raised in Llerena by a Jewish woman. In Cervantes’s Novelas ejemplares (Exemplary Novels ), the lost child topos is widespread; in La ilustre fregona (The Illustrious Kitchen-Maid) Costanza is left by her aristocratic mother to be raised in the care of an innkeeper. In Lope de Vega’s plays, as in much folkloric material, the illegitimate hero undergoes a period of obscurity, unaware

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of his true honourable credentials. In El bastardo Mudarra (Mudarra, the Bastard Son), Mudarra is raised in Castile in ignorance of his distinguished bloodline while in La mocedad de Roldán (The Youth of Roland), Roland is brought up in a rural hamlet and only later discovers that he is the son of Count Arnaldo. These alternative upbringings lend a mythical, otherworldly dimension to the narratives, particularly when the child travels a significant distance, as in the ballads. The fluidity of illegitimacy is reified in alterations to the physical and social landscapes surrounding the illegitimate child. Ultimately, they raise the fundamental questions of what can and can not be changed, what can and can not be hidden, where illegitimacy is concerned. And the answer, always, is that identity runs deeper and truer than the social stigma which might be temporarily inhibiting or masking it.

Iberian Illegitimacy Historical evidence from medieval Iberia suggests that despite the deeply negative associations of illegitimacy in biblical and dictionary sources, the creativity with which it can also be interpreted was put into practice. Alfonso X’s father, Fernando III, is one of the most prominent examples of this. He was fruit of the illegal marriage of Alfonso IX of León and his second wife Berenguela of Castile, who was his first cousin once removed. The marriage was pronounced illegitimate by Pope Innocent III in 1197 and any offspring were “spuria et illegitima” and ineligible to inherit their father’s throne (McDougall 2017, 253–54). Nevertheless, as McDougall describes, Fernando went on to become not just king but a saint: Fernando was not legitimated, and did nevertheless become king. In the 1230s this bastard child of an illegal marriage ruled in Iberia, and would one day be recognized as a saint of the Catholic Church. As this suggests, well into the thirteenth century, illegitimate children of the right lineage could still inherit thrones, with or without the help of legitimations or dispensations. (2017, 255)

There were other prominent illegitimate monarchs, including Ramiro I of Aragon, illegitimate son of King Sancho Garcés of Navarre and a noblewoman who went on to become the first king of Aragon. The Estoria de España applauds him as a courageous knight, “cauallero muy esforçado”

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who always defeated the Muslims (Alfonso X 1955, vol. 2, 475). Another fascinating case is Sancho Alfonso, the son of King Alfonso VI of Leon and Castile who was considered to be the child of a Muslim mistress named Zaida. In the early twelfth century he was pronounced Alfonso’s heir, but he died in 1108 before succession could take place. Although the prospect exists, as McDougall notes, that “the child of a Muslim concubine might well have been able to inherit his father’s imperial title” (2017, 260), the Estoria de España’s description of Zaida emphasises her conversion to Christianity (Alfonso X 1955, vol. 2, 521). When describing the premature death of Sancho, the chroniclers are then able to stress the loss of his only rightful heir, and dear son (555). Extramarital relationships were common in early medieval Iberia. Alfonso X himself took lovers outside of marriage. H. Salvador Martínez describes how this was typical of the time (2003, 95). Simon Doubleday confirms that “in the thirteenth century, a widespread cultural expectation held that young men needed to find an outlet for their sexual energies before settling down […] courtly culture and the secular world more generally saw it [premarital sex] as a natural and medically advisable expression of healthy masculinity” (2015, 35). Doubleday also describes Alfonso’s relationship with the noblewoman Doña Mayor Guillén de Guzmán as one which the church “frowned on but tolerated […] and the Castilian court widely accepted” (34). By extension, there was also surprising tolerance for children born out of wedlock to noblewomen. Alfonso’s daughter to Doña Mayor, Beatriz, was married to Alfonso III of Portugal in 1254 and Alfonso is said to have had a particularly close bond with her all his life (Doubleday 2015, 50; Martínez 2003, 94). The church officially condemned the keeping of mistresses and concubines, but the practice was widespread among the nobility and that the children of these unions were frequently allowed to succeed their parents. These children, born outside of marriage to noblewomen, essentially long-term concubines, were known as “fijos de ganançia” or “fijos de barragana”. Dillard describes how “mistresses and concubines (barraganas ) were women who did not or could not marry their lovers or the men who supported them, whether bachelors, widowers, priests, or married men” (1984, 127). The Espéculo (Mirror) suggests that such offspring should be avoided but still gives them protected status.7 The Partidas make a key distinction between noblewomen and lower class women who might degrade the nobility of a royal line:

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Viles ni inconvenientes mujeres el rey no debe traer para hacer linaje, comoquiera que naturalmente debe codiciar tener hijos que permanezcan en su lugar, así como los otros hombres, y de esto se debe guardar por dos razones: la una, porque no envilezca la nobleza de su linaje, y la otra, que no los haga en lugares donde no conviene, pues entonces envilece el rey su linaje cuando usa de viles mujeres o de muchas, porque si hubiere hijos de ellas, no será él por esto tan honrado ni su señorío y además que no los habría derechamente, según la ley manda. (Partida II, 3, 5)8 (The king should not deal with lowly or unsuitable women in order to continue his lineage, however strongly he might desire to have sons to take his place, like other men do. This must be avoided for two reasons: the first is so that he does not degrade the nobility of his line, and the second is to prevent this taking place in unsuitable locations, because the king degrades his line when he uses vile women or many woman, for if he were to have children by them, neither he nor his dominion will be as honourable, and the children would not be created in the right and proper manner, as the law orders.)

Dillard observes that “Not all illegitimate children were barred from inheritance, only those born ‘in adultery’. Aragonese and canonical sources call them children who ‘ought not to have been born’, the ill-starred children ‘of condemned coitus’” (129). The understanding of legitimacy in al-Andalus, which allowed for children of slaves and concubines to inherit, possibly influenced the way it was treated in the Christian kingdoms. Dillard notes the “well-founded anxieties of medieval Spaniards for the safety and chastity of Christian women often taken in the raiding expeditions that characterized peninsular warfare” (134). McDougall describes how in the Umayyad Caliphate “we find designated as heirs the sons born to lower status mothers because of the fear of a high-ranking wife and her relations” (2017, 258). Regardless of religion, there was a shared practice of partible inheritance in medieval Iberia, stemming chiefly from the constantly changing political picture, in which “borders changed with bewildering frequency. Kingdoms grew and shrank” (McDougall 2017, 263). Political flux and the influence of the Muslim kingdoms of Iberia saw the Christian rulers of Iberia adopt inheritance practices that were surprisingly flexible, both with regard to children born of lower status mothers, and children born of incestuous relationships.

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In the later medieval period, prominent cases of illegitimacy secure the impression that, although in many ways flexible, it can also be associated with the hardening of royal power and authority in Spain’s journey to absolutism. Illegitimacy is central, for example, to the long struggle for control of Castile which defined the Trastamaran civil war. Angus Mackay describes how what was initially a civil war between Pedro I and a coalition of nobles led by his illegitimate half-brother Enrique de Trastámara turned Castile into “another theatre of operations in the Hundred Years War” (1977, 121). Enrique would eventually triumph, proclaiming himself king at Calahorra after invading Castile in 1366. Enrique went on to kill his brother and to ascend to the throne as Enrique II (1369– 79) although not without resistance from Castile’s neighbours. As Joseph O’Callaghan observes: “the Trastámara dynasty, an illegitimate branch of the Burgundian house which had ruled Castile since the twelfth century, now took possession of the crown” (427). Mackay describes how Enrique had established “government by collaboration” and won support through traditional principles of government, but “in order to justify his own accession to the throne, Henry was also forced to emphasise the elective nature of monarchy” (1977, 134). Enrique addressed this problem by emphasising that God had taken pity on the people against Pedro’s tyranny and that his ascent was essentially the work of God (Mackay 1977, 135). Although Enrique’s victory checked the unlimited power of a king, and emphasised the collaborative nature of government, the reign of his successor Juan II firmly established the theory of royal absolutism. It is in this context that Isabel succeeded her brother Enrique IV as queen of Castile in 1474. Her legitimacy was challenged on the grounds of her being female, but the archbishops of Toledo and Seville confirmed the principle of female succession, allowing her husband Ferdinand to share royal authority (O’Callaghan 1975, 576). Barbara Weissberger describes an “anxiety of legitimacy” on the part of Isabel and her apologists: “Although not illegitimate of birth like her great-great-grandfather, Isabel is equally a usurper” (2004, 82). Responding to this anxiety, she adopted a strategy of imposing “on her heterogeneous and fractious subjects the patriarchal values of homogeneity, authority, and centralism that she considered essential to building a strong nation-state” (82). The end of the medieval period and beginning of Spain’s Golden Age, coterminous with the reign of the Catholic Monarchs, marks illegitimacy’s close relationship with broader themes of transgression, degeneracy, and pollution. Legitimacy in this period cannot be dissociated from the

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questions of political entitlement and authority discussed above, but it also extends outwards, to the way in which conceptual frameworks of purity and godliness were imposed on the people at large, and upheld by the Holy Office of the Inquisition. The illegitimate body now maps clearly on to the body politic; non sanctioned sexual relations are assessed under the statute of limpieza de sangre (purity of blood) which from the mid-fifteenth century onwards recognised Christian stock without descent from Muslim or Jewish lineage. Roland Greene describes how “such laws, which came to be accepted by Iberian institutions of church and government, explicitly transposed blood from the domains of genealogy and religion into politics and social policy” (2013, 113). Henry Kamen’s assessment illustrates that not even baptism could reverse the infamy and dishonour associated with an impure lineage: Limpieza was seriously limited in its effectiveness, but there can be no doubt of the threat it could represent. Though practised in only a limited number of institutions, these were so significant that a barrier to status mobility was frequently created. In theory canon law limited the extent to which the sins of fathers could be visited on their sons and grandsons. Limpieza adopted no such limits […] from generation to generation whole families should be penalized for the sins of their ancestors. (1997, 242– 43)9

If, in the early period, the church fathers were creatively and mercifully interpreting the biblical notion of the sins of the fathers, in late medieval Spain this was clearly not the case, at least in theory. Blood, genealogy, and lineage are formalised as markers of sociopolitical status and possibility, and so illegitimacy runs the risk of crystallising as a byword for impurity and infamy, a sure route to exclusion. No matter how close the relationship between sexual corruption and political instability might be— and one only has to consider the legend of La Cava, King Roderick, and the fall of Spain to see how powerful this relationship is—it is, however, precisely in the early modern period that illegitimacy takes on new relevance as a means of exposing the fragility of the same political systems and methods of control that seek to own and define it, and it does so through its inherently flexible identity. Legitimacy is not an absolute in the early modern period, nor is it static. As Paul Strohm’s study of the Lancastrian dynasty’s quest for legitimacy (1998) demonstrates, it relies on symbolism, ceremony, creativity,

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and staging. The development of the theatre in this period adds an extra dimension to our understanding of illegitimacy. Not only do bastards feature on the stage itself, but the theatre’s own equivocal space means that “the playhouses were like the bastard: they demonstrated the full imposition of patriarchal authority and they marked the limits of that authority” (Findlay 1994, 214). Michael Neill describes how the outof-jointness, the hybridity of the bastard operates on stage in the case of Hamlet: “To play the bastard, as Hamlet does, is to place oneself doubly outside the order of the ‘natural’, to become at once a counterfeit and a self-conscious anomaly: it is to break ‘the mould of form’” (1993, 272). As the chapter on Lope de Vega demonstrates through its focus on pieces, tokens, and traces, the theatre is continually breaking and reshaping the bastard; he is not just a synecdoche or a double but simultaneously inchoate and complete.

The Literature of Illegitimacy The aim of this book is to explore, through the lens of literary texts, the concept of illegitimacy as it presents itself in the medieval and early modern periods in Spain. This necessarily involves consideration of the very standards and systems by which society defines what is acceptable and/or justified, and what is not, and how these standards may change over the course of time. Each chapter takes account of historical context, but the primary objective is to explore the central literary themes that cluster around illegitimacy and help to define this fluid concept. My aim is to highlight the elasticity of the concept, both in terms of its range of meaning, and its application. To that end, illegitimacy appears in some less obvious contexts, like the Cid narratives, as well as in more prominent places. I cover many of the Iberian heroes who are designated as illegitimate; stand-out characters such as Mudarra, Bernardo del Carpio, the Cid, and Roland.10 I will also be exploring key historical figures, like Enrique de Trastámara as represented in the old ballads, and invented illegitimate figures, such as the fictional characters from Cervantes’s Novelas ejemplares. I am not attempting complete coverage of the many premodern Iberian texts in which illegitimacy appears and I am conscious of many notable absences, like the historiographical tradition and picaresque literature. My choice of material incorporates poetry, prose, and drama, it showcases both the medieval and the early modern canon, it includes

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real and fictional types, and it presents better and lesser-known examples. Above all, it offers exciting examples of the absolutely fundamental premise that illegitimacy is fluid and multifaceted and I hope that many of the conclusions reached in this book extend to, and prompt further discussion of, other literary examples. I will be considering illegitimacy from different social positions, in connection with different geographical areas, and taking into account ethnicity and gender. Studying illegitimacy necessarily involves taking an intersectional view of identity; all of the texts studied here illustrate that the component parts of an identity are always shifting, always unstable, always relative. Illegitimacy must forcibly come up against the notion of legitimacy but even in the arena of what is officially permissible or subject to consensual and normative approval the location of power and authority is not always clear. Illegitimacy, as we shall see, feeds off the broad span of legitimacy itself, which may encompass the defensible, the reasonable, the logical, the pragmatic, the ethical and moral, and the politically expedient. Legitimacy is also about truth. In this apparently “post-truth” age, the question of how we decide what is true, and whether truth is ever a relevant category, has never been more contentious. Understanding illegitimacy is a means of looking at un-truth, or the other side of truth, and realising that it is not an absolute. The truth is made, and it is made by people in positions of power. Illegitimacy is a theme which uncovers the hypocrisy and deceit of value-defining bodies and groups everywhere, always. Time and again in the analysis of these texts I have been struck by the way illegitimacy is a microcosm of the vicissitudes and uncertainties of life itself. As Northrop Frye writes in The Secular Scripture: “the ambiguities of ordinary life, where everything is a mixture of good and bad, and where it is difficult to take sides or believe that people are consistent patterns of virtue and vice” (1976, 50). Definitions of legitimacy and propriety are revealed through these texts to be less a set of legal or normative principles and more a constellation of different codes, customs, and practices, informed to varying degrees by religion, morality, the law, and even myth and folklore. Hard distinctions between right and wrong, inclusion or exclusion are not as strong as we expect them to be, and are easily challenged by nuance, detail, and particularity. From this come valuable lessons for the modern world about the dangers of polarisation: of adopting mentalities of us/them, in/out, right/wrong that can fuel hatred, fear, and ignorance via perceptions of ethical, racial, and gender supremacy. A child that can be child of no one (filius nulius ) and child of

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everyone (filius populi) encourages us to take an open-minded approach to categorisation. A consistent theme of all the chapters is the doubleness of the illegitimate figure and illegitimacy’s connection with selves which replicate and selves which return. A further set of considerations relating to place and quantity emerge as literary texts explore the location and the configuration of the bastard in accordance with their own generic and lexical possibilities. Writing the illegitimate figure will always be an act of situating and constituting in literary form and this process works both ways. Literature shapes and imagines the bastard, but literature is also shaped by them. It is hard to even disentangle literary theme and form in relation to illegitimacy given that much of Iberia’s early literature, not least its epic and ballad corpus, concerns exceptionality, revolt, the outsider, and the underdog. The theatricality of illegitimacy is mimicked in the form of the theatre itself, while Cervantes’s Novelas ejemplares call into question the meaning and nature of exemplarity itself, in the process rendering ironic any claims to ineffable truth that literature, and in particular narrative, might make. A further binding theme of all the chapters is the link between illegitimacy and irony. Like irony, illegitimacy can be something and its opposite, it is a kind of contradiction, riddled with doubt but, at the same time, of multiple possibilities. As William Empson writes: “people, often, cannot have done both of two things, but they must have been in some way prepared to have done either […] they are only to be understood by bearing both possibilities in mind” (1966, 44). In Chapter 2, on the most famous epic poem of medieval Spain, Cantar de Mio Cid (Song of My Cid) and the later epic Mocedades de Rodrigo (The Youthful Deeds of Rodrigo, the Cid) I explore the delicate matter of the Cid’s illegitimacy and argue that it is woven into the Cantar’s exploration of the relationship between social status and identity, birth versus worth.11 In the vocal, oral world of the traditional epic where speech is associated with truth, I demonstrate that illegitimacy is fashioned through the voice. Hearsay, gossip and public opinion are its lifeblood. However, the poem’s proclivity for inverting the axes of thought and experience means that although spoken charges of illegitimacy may affect the Cid, illegitimacy is masterfully drawn into the world of secrecy, darkness, and un-saying that the Infantes of Carrión inhabit and thereby loses its potential to undermine the epic hero. Mocedades de Rodrigo, a later and more diverse epic poem, presents illegitimacy in a context where formal structures of power and political identities are

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being continually tested and reshaped, in tandem with the epic genre itself which many critics think is, at this point, on the wane. However, this chaos of form frees us to see the hard and obsolete contours of a traditional understanding of illegitimacy, as the poem promotes adaptation and self-reliance as means of forging identity and legitimacy. Chapter 3, on the traditional ballads of medieval Spain and their early Golden Age written manifestations, presents the challenge of delimiting illegitimacy in a tradition that is eternally open to reinterpretation and reinvention, yet consists of finite published examples. The chapter looks at illegitimacy in light of cultural hybridity, through the theme of a split identity that is capable of being more than the sum of its parts. Illegitimacy appeals to the collective memory that the ballad tradition depended upon because it has the potential to be a narrative of difference, exceptionality, love pursued at all costs, life created and simultaneously at risk. However, the fluid frameworks with which illegitimacy is evoked, including through rumour and gossip, demonstrate that illegitimacy is also part of the precariousness of experience that the old ballads celebrate. Moreover, the ballads delicately illustrate the effect of illegitimacy upon the self, where it can involve an outward public-facing identity, as well as inwardly interrogative and melancholic one. In Chapter 4, I explore illegitimacy in connection with three of Cervantes’s Novelas ejemplares which explicitly deal with the subject: La fuerza de la sangre, La ilustre fregona and La señora Cornelia. Considering illegitimacy in relation to narrative and its potential, I explore the connection between illegitimacy and truth, including via the axis of fiction and reality, the dichotomy of burlas (jest) and veras (truth), self-fashioning and roleplay, and ethical and normative principles. This chapter illustrates that in early narrative contexts illegitimacy is a way of highlighting the inner workings of the making of meaning itself. Knowing whether someone is legitimate or not is closely tied to how we know anything at all in a world predicated on deceptions, large and small. Quantity and measure come into play; illegitimacy draws on both excess and deficiency. The illegitimate figure can be an uncanny double, a surfeit, a return of the familiar but equally they can be a lost piece of a whole, or they can be adrift, a kind of “elsewhere” figure always gesturing towards an alternative, a longing much like the text itself. Strohm describes something akin to this in quoting Teresa De Lauretis on the “elsewhere” of discourse: “This space is not so much beyond or external to the text as within the text, constituted as the text’s own tacit admission of inability to control its terms” (1987, 153). In Chapter 5, where I examine the

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bastard hero in Lope de Vega’s theatre, themes of absence and presence, part and whole continue to define illegitimacy. Lope’s heroic bastards run counter to the tendencies of the Renaissance stage more widely to invest the bastard with negative associations. The stage versions of Bernardo del Carpio, Roland, and Mudarra reveal many contradictions, and open up broader questions about the relationship between the political centre and the periphery. Legitimacy is linked to political rule and the discourse of rightful succession; here themes such as nobleza and limpieza de sangre come to the fore, especially when Bernardo argues the case for his own legitimacy. However, legacy departs from the official discourse of political expediency and entitlement. We see it linked with the concept of fama and with that comes a reconfiguration of identity based around individual worth and merit, and a more flexible view of time and memory. To leave a trace, or a piece of oneself is a legacy in its own right, as explored through Lope’s version of the Siete infantes de Lara (Seven Infantes of Lara) legend. Things that remain, and are residual, are of particular interest in the context of the stage whose very substance is time and vision-bound. Illegitimacy is both linked to the grand narratives of politics and identity, and explored in the field of secrecy, subjectivity, performance, and disguise. In La mocedad de Roldán, we see this with particular reference to clothing and material, in the way identities can be quite literally woven together, and how that same fashioning can be deceptive. As is the case with Cervantes’s Novelas, Lope’s plays involve illegitimacy in the contemporary discourse of illusion and disillusion, seeming and being. It becomes an ontological category, as much as a political one. In theory, illegitimacy negotiates its identity in relation to categories, limits, and boundaries but I have come to find that middle grounds are the space that it often inhabits. Part of the task of this book is to articulate and explore literature’s middle spaces, both in terms of spatial middles, places in-between, and quantitative middles where identity is understood according to proportion, and calibrated along a scale ranging from lack to excess. My reading of illegitimacy is not really about exclusion or outlying, but being in-between, simultaneously accountable and not accountable, proportionate and disproportionate, famous and secret. One of the most salient questions of this book is: what does it mean to be in-between? I ask this question in relation to literary texts and their necessarily middling identity between imagination and reality but also as a social question, as a way of recognising that identity is forged at points of intersection and

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overlap between categories. In turn, this prompts reflection on what it means to be divided, and where division comes from. One criticism of illegitimacy as a theme might be its relevance to the modern age. The stigma of birth out of wedlock, which is the original nucleus of the entire thing and a historical simplification, no longer exists as it did thousands of years ago. However, as I hope to prove in the chapters that follow, the medieval and early-modern literary understanding of illegitimacy charts ways of thinking about what truth consists of, and how identities are fashioned. Its ability to exist as a form of doubling and of in-betweenness, as both part and whole, as introspective and externally accountable, helps us to see the inexhaustible capacity for self-invention that underpins human identity. Illegitimacy keeps both truth and identity alive, captured in the process of being made. Illegitimacy, like fiction itself, is a means of extending the possibilities of identity while exposing the very machinery by which this is achieved. Wolfgang Iser’s description of literary fictionality rings true: “The advantage of literary fictionality […] is the simultaneous presence of doubled positions, which makes it representative of the nature of doubling itself […] Representing such doubling makes conceivable the genesis of possible worlds -indeed the whole process of generation itself” (1993, 82–83). What starts out as a categorical social distinction becomes a byword for freedom; to remove the power of either/or, in/out, as literary representations of illegitimacy do, and to expose the process of doing so, means that there are no limits to the way the self can be imagined. Lucky bastards indeed.12

Notes 1. See also the threats of the Hebrew prophets in Wisdom 3.16–17; 4.6. 2. McDougall describes how “nothus” was the most important of the Greek terms used in the Middle Ages; “mamzer” derives from the Hebrew Bible, describing children born to a union not recognised as legitimate by Jewish law and was the most rarely used of the ancient terms for illegitimacy. Imperial Roman law uses the two categories of “naturalis” and “spurius”, of which the latter became the recurrent term for less than fully legitimate children, and consistently referred to the children born of adultery and incest. “Naturalis” did at one stage refer to the child of a slavewoman with a free man but the Emperor Constantine conflated “naturalis” and “spurius” into one category (2017, 25–29). 3. All translations into English after citations and titles are mine unless otherwise stated and referenced.

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4. McDougall notes that the etymology of bastardus might come from bastum meaning a packsaddle, from where the idea develops that a bastard is a child born in or of the saddle or, more broadly, in transit. Another possible etymology is that bastardus derives instead from bas, baseborn (2017, 44). 5. This title is also referred to in Burns (2001, 955), Schmidgen (2002, 139). 6. These differences included the divisive medieval problem of “mantle children”, children born out of wedlock (but not in adultery) whose parents subsequently married and who were so called because at the wedding ceremony they were placed under the mantle which was spread over their parents and were henceforth rendered lawful children of the marriage (1984, 44). This legitimacy was recognised in custom for about a century after the Norman Conquest but was never supported by legal theory (44). The other point of variance between canon and common law was on children born to married women who were suspected of having committed adultery (45). 7. “Si el rey oviere fijos en otra mugier que a nonbre de ganancia, de la cual cosa dezimos que se deve el rey guardar por non fazer el yerro nin dar á los otros carrera para fazerlo” (Alfonso X 1836, vol 1., 26) (if a king has children with another woman whom we call a concubine, we say that the king should avoid making this error nor showing others the way to commit it); “Si oviere el rey fijos de ganancia aquel quel matase en guerra o en defendiendose es tanto como si matase al mayor rico ome del regno e debe aver tal pena. E qui de otra manera lo matase muera por ello como traydor. E si lo feriese e lo desonrase aya tal pena como si lo feciese al mayor rico ome del regno” (28) (If a king has sons from a concubine who are killed at war or defending themselves it is just as if the most senior nobleman of the kingdom died and he should feel such grief). The Fuero viejo de Castilla also describes how a “fijo de barragana” (son of a mistress) can inherit: “si cavallero o escudero heredare fijo de barragana e dixiere: “Fágote fijodalgo e heriédote”, deve heredar en aquella heredat en quel herieda el padre, e no más; e, sy diz: “Heriédote en todo quanto que he”, deve heredar en todo quanto ha, fueras en monesterio o en castiello de penna” (González Alonso 1996, 160) (if a knight or noble wishes his son from a mistress to inherit and says to him “I make you a noble and allow you to inherit” he should have part of that inheritance which he receives from his father and no more; and if he says “I allow you to inherit everything I have” he should inherit everything his father owns, whether a monastery or a castle). It also describes how “fijos de barragana” claiming a share in their relatives’ property ought to be granted it: “Et judgaron los alcalles por fuero que, pues dádoles avién a partir en la una heredat,

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8.

9.

10. 11. 12.

que la partiçión yr devié adelante; e asy oviéronles a dar a partir en todo” (160) (and the experts judged by law that since they were able to share in one inheritance, that the share should go forward and so they should be able to share in all). This distinction between an illegitimate child born of a noble woman, and one born of a vile woman is proven by a striking episode in the Estoria de España in which King Loys of France is exposed to terrible rumours that his wife, Helisabet, is not true offspring of the Empress Berenguela, wife of Alfonso VII, but of Alfonso’s dalliance with a lowgrade woman. What follows is a truly extraordinary endeavour to disprove the rumours which sees Loys visit Spain to undertake a pilgrimage to Santiago, and Alfonso VII, his relatives, and his courtiers put on a lavish and unprecedented display of generosity and pomp which persuades Loys that he has been duped. At the end of this narrative, a solemn verbal testimony from Alfonso VII seals Loys’s judgement that his wife is honourably born (Alfonso X 1955, vol. 2, 657). The sheer length, detail, and style of the passage in narrating this exhibition of wealth and honour provides excellent evidence of the weight and potential consequences of this slanderous assertion, and of the lengths a monarch might go to in order to avoid the slightest suspicion of a union with a “mujer vil” (lowly woman). When Helisabet dies she is buried at the monastery of Saint Dionysius and considered a holy woman, “et fue ella tenida por sancta, porque mientre ella uisco amo a Dios et fizo muy buena uida” (658) (and she was considered holy, because while she lived she loved God and lived a very good life). On this point, Witte describes illegitimacy as “an unusual species of vicarious liability, a sort of respondeat inferior doctrine that imposes upon innocent children some of the costs of their parents’ extramarital experimentation” (2009, 7). See Armistead (2000, 145–51) for a comprehensive list of epic heroes of illegitimate birth. See Cantar de Mio Cid (Montaner 2011) and Mocedades de Rodrigo (Bailey 2007). “Bastards always have good luck” (Hand et al. 1981; cited in Armistead 2000, 145).

Works Cited Adair, Richard. 1996. Courtship, Illegitimacy and Marriage in Early Modern England. Manchester: Manchester University Press.

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Alfonso X. 1807. Las Siete Partidas del rey Alfonso el Sabio cotejadas con varios códices antiguos por la Real Academia da la Historia, 3 vols. Madrid: Real Academia de la Historia, vol. 3. ———. 1836. Opúsculos legales del rey Don Alfonso el Sabio: publicados y cotejados con varios códices antiguos por la Real Academia de la Historia, 2 vols. Madrid: Real Academia de la Historia. ———. 1955. Primera crónica general de España que mandó componer Alfonso el Sabio y se continuaba bajo Sancho IV en 1289, ed. Ramón Menéndez Pidal, 2 vols. Madrid: Gredos. Armistead, Samuel G. 2000. La tradición épica de las “Mocedades de Rodrigo”. Salamanca: Universidad. Bailey, Matthew (ed. and trans.). 2007. Las Mocedades de Rodrigo: The Youthful Deeds of Rodrigo, the Cid. Medieval Academy Books, 110. Toronto: Medieval Academy of America and University of Toronto Press. Burns, Robert I. 2001. Las Siete Partidas, trans. Samuel Parsons Scott, 5 vols. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. Davis, Kingsley. 1939. Illegitimacy and the Social Structure. AJS 45: 215–33. de Cervantes, Miguel. 2003. Novelas ejemplares II , ed. Harry Sieber. Letras Hispánicas, 106. Madrid: Cátedra. de Covarrubias, Sebastián. 2006 [1611]. Tesoro de la lengua castellana o española, ed. Ignacio Arellano and Rafael Zafra. Biblioteca Aurea Hispánica, 21. Madrid: Iberoamericana & Universidad de Navarra. De Lauretis, Teresa. 1987. Technologies of Gender. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. de Vega, Lope. 1935. El bastardo Mudarra, ed. S. Griswold Morley. Autógrafos de Lope de Vega Carpio. Berkeley: University of California Press. ———. 1955. El bastardo Mudarra, ed. Federico Carlos Sainz de Robles, 661– 96. Obras escogidas, 3. Madrid: Aguilar. Dillard, Heath. 1984. Daughters of the Reconquest: Women in Castilian Town Society, 1100–1300. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Doubleday, Simon. 2015. The Wise King: A Christian Prince, Muslim Spain, and the Birth of the Renaissance. New York: Basic Books. Ebbott, Mary. 2003. Imagining Illegitimacy in Classical Greek Literature. Lanham: Lexington. Empson, William. 1966. Seven Types of Ambiguity. New York: New Directions. Findlay, Alison. 1994. Illegitimate Power: Bastards in Renaissance Literature. Manchester: Manchester University Press. Finn, Margot, et al. 2010. Legitimacy and Illegitimacy in Nineteenth-Century Law, Literature and History. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Frye, Northrop. 1976. The Secular Scripture: A Study of the Structure of Romance. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

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Given-Wilson, Chris, and Alice Curteis. 1984. The Royal Bastards of Medieval England. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. González Alonso, Benjamín (ed.). 1996. El Fuero viejo de Castilla: Consideraciones sobre la historia del derecho de Castilla (c. 800–1356). Salamanca: Junta de Castilla y León. Greene, Roland. 2013. Five Words: Critical Semantics in the Age of Shakespeare and Cervantes. Chicago: Cambridge University Press. Hand, Wayland D., et al. 1981. Popular Beliefs and Superstitions: A Compendium of American Folklore, 3 vols. Boston: G. K. Hall. Iser, Wolfgang. 1993. The Fictive and the Imaginary. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. Kamen, Henry. 1997. The Spanish Inquisition: An Historical Revision. London: Phoenix Press. Levene, Alysa, et al. 2005. Introduction. In Illegitimacy in Britain, 1700–1920, 1–18. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Macfarlane, Alan. 1980. Illegitimacy and Illegitimates in English History. In Bastardy and Its Comparative History: Studies in the History of Illegitimacy and Marital Nonconformism in Britain, France, Germany, Sweden, North America, Jamaica and Japan, ed. Peter Laslett et al., 71–85. London: Edward Arnold. Mackay, Angus. 1977. Spain in the Middle Ages: From Frontier to Empire, 1000– 1500. Basingstoke: Macmillan. Martínez, H. Salvador. 2003. Alfonso X, el Sabio: una biografía. Crónicas y memorias, 6. Madrid: Ediciones Polifemo. McDougall, Sara. 2017. Royal Bastards: The Birth of Illegitimacy 800–1230. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Montaner, Alberto (ed.). 2011. Cantar de Mio Cid. Madrid: Real Academia Española. Neill, Michael. 1993. “In Everything Illegitimate”: Imagining the Bastard in Renaissance Drama. YES 23: 270–92. O’Callaghan, Joseph F. 1975. A History of Medieval Spain. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Schmidgen, Wolfram. 2002. Illegitimacy and Social Observation: The Bastard in the Eighteenth-Century Novel. ELH 69: 133–66. Strohm, Paul. 1998. England’s Empty Throne: Usurpation and the Language of Legitimation 1399–1422. New Haven and London: Yale University Press. Weissberger, Barbara. 2004. Isabel Rules: Constructing Queenship, Wielding Power. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Witte, John. 2009. The Sins of the Fathers: The Law and Theology of Illegitimacy Reconsidered. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Zunshine, Lisa. 2005. Bastards and Foundlings: Illegitimacy in EighteenthCentury England. Columbus: Ohio State University Press.

CHAPTER 2

Epic Illegitimacy: The Cantar de Mio Cid and Las Mocedades de Rodrigo

Imagined Illegitimacy: The Miller Woman’s Son At the royal court, in the culminating scene of the Cantar de Mio Cid (Song of My Cid) Asur González of the villainous noble faction of Carrión bursts into the palace and insults the Cid by suggesting he go to the river Ubierna, by his home town of Vivar, to file down the millstones and collect his portion of wheat: -¡Ya varones! ¿quién vio nunca tal mal? ¿Quién nos darié nuevas de mio Cid el de Bivar? Fuesse a río d’Ovirna los molinos picar e prender maquilas, commo lo suele far. ¿Quí l’daré con los de Carrión a casar? (3377–81)1

(Now men! Whoever saw such a thing? Who will give us the lowdown on My Cid, of Vivar? Let him go down to the river Ubierna to file the millstones and collect his tolls, as he usually does. Who gave him the right to marry into the Carrión family?)

Asur’s demeanour is insalubrious, perhaps even funny, his face flushed with food and drink and his cloak soiled, but his words carry a sting, and cause us to reflect on the nature of the damage he is trying to inflict upon the Cid at this late stage of the poem. Ian Michael spotted that © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 G. Hazbun, Reading Illegitimacy in Early Iberian Literature, The New Middle Ages, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-59569-2_2

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this might be a reference to illegitimacy in his edition of the Poema de Mio Cid (1975, 292) and Joseph Duggan has argued that Asur’s words carry an innuendo of the most destructive kind, the suggestion that the Cid is descended from a miller, and thus entitled to a miller’s pay (1989, 49). For Duggan, this interpretation is the rationale behind the third, climactic, judicial duel between Asur and Muño Gustioz, in which the insult is avenged “on the same level, and in the same circumstances, as accusations motivated by the assault upon the hero’s daughters” (51). Duggan also argues that it entirely explains the presence of Asur in the poem and affects the Cid’s legal standing: “The insult he offers to the Cid would be purely gratuitous and superfluous within the context of the plot unless his taunt had some relevance to their legal stance” (51). Popular legends about the Cid’s illegitimacy were in circulation during the medieval period, and they surface in the chronicles, where it is stated then immediately denied, such as in the Tercera crónica general (Third General Chronicle), and Crónica geral de Espanha de 1344 (General Chronicle of Spain from 1344).2 The Crónica de Castilla (Chronicle of Castile), an early fourteenth-century source for the Crónica geral and the Livro de linhagens (1343) (Book of Lineages ), describes, for example, how the Cid’s father Diego Laínez raped a peasant woman on Saint James’s day (25th July) and she conceived a son. On the same day she got pregnant with another son, this time by her husband. When she was due to give birth, Diego’s son arrived first, and they had him baptised and called him Ferrand Díaz. Dolores Clavero describes how the incident as narrated by the chronicles carries numinous significance, “mes de julio, calor de los campos cargados de fruto, mujer de la tierra, anónima y prácticamente identificada con ella, constituyen una series de datos que apuntan hacia la idea de un acoplamiento ritual” (1990, 52) (the month of July, the heat of the fields charged with fruit, a woman of the land, anonymous and practically identified with it; these constitute a series of details which point to the idea of a ritual coupling). She also notes that the choice of feast day—Saint James’s day rather than Saint John’s day, the traditional summer solstice—may have “connotaciones guerreras en la cruzada contra el musulmán” (52) (warlike connotations in the crusade against the Muslim). Despite the possibility that a heroic figure is conceived on this day, the chroniclers are reluctant to fully associate this first-born child with the Cid: “Et los que non saben la estoria dizían que éste era mio Çid; mas en esto lo erraron” (And those who do not know the story say that

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this was my Cid, but they are wrong about that).3 The traditional ballad Ese buen Diego Laínez (The Good Fellow Diego Laínez) is nevertheless a firm proponent of the notion that the Cid was the youngest, bastard son of Diego: Ese buen Diego Laínez después que hubo yantado, hablando está sobre mesa con sus hijos todos cuatro. Los tres son de su mujer, pero el otro era bastardo, y aquel que bastardo era, era el buen Cid castellano.4

(The good fellow Diego Laínez after he had dined was talking around the table with all four of his sons. Three are from his wife, but the other was a bastard, and the one that was a bastard, was the good Cid, the Castilian.)

The legend of the Cid as the illegitimate son of a miller woman even circulated in the Golden Age, as recalled in La verdad en el potro (1671) (Truth on the Rack) by Francisco Santos where the Cid actively refutes the accusation: “yo tengo un libro manuescrito en que dize le huvo, y que fue bastardo, avido en una molinera; y en verdad que he leído infinitos libros pero jamás he oído dezir quién fuesse su madre.” “Calla, maldita lengua”, dixo el Cid […] “Si fuera hijo bastardo, no heredara de mi padre el hazienda que dí en arras a mi muger Ximena Díaz, nieta del Rey Don Alonso el Quinto.” (1973, 146–47) (“I have a manuscript in which it says he was the bastard offspring of a miller woman and truthfully I have read numerous books but I have never heard who his mother is.” “Quiet, damned tongue”, said the Cid […] “If I was a bastard son I would not inherit from my father the dwelling that I gave as a dowry to my wife Ximena Díaz, granddaughter of King Alfonso the Fifth.”)

We can see from these examples how legends of the Cid’s bastardy work both ways, as backing for a superhuman identity, but also as a potential problem for a figure who became a national hero and royal ancestor. Colin

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Smith summarises this tension: “Sometimes the bastardy of a legendary ancestor, if sufficiently remote, may be proudly accepted by a great family as a mark of honour […] In other cases, illegitimacy must have seemed utterly unacceptable and efforts had to be made to deny it” (1996, 645). Surveying the evidence from chronicle and ballad, Samuel Armistead wonders whether these legends are connected to Asur’s insult: “ahora nos hace dudar si en la vieja imprecación de Assur González quizá no habría un eco temprano de la misma leyenda del Cid bastardo, hijo de una molinera” (1988, 243) (now it makes us question whether in Assur González’s slur there might be an early echo of the same legend of the bastard Cid, son of a miller woman). Duggan believes that the connection cannot be coincidental (1989, 51). Colin Smith makes a strong challenge, however, to Duggan’s argument that illegitimacy is alluded to in the Cantar de Mio Cid. He gives two chief reasons: firstly, that Duggan states that such a grave charge had to be answered in court, but that Muño Gustioz “simply denounces the accuser Ansur González for having over-indulged himself at lunch and for being generally known as a liar” (1996, 652). Secondly, that “it is surely unthinkable that a poet, or even an illiterate minstrel […] should have put into the mouth of one of the personages any suggestion that the Cid, the direct ancestor of the monarch, was a bastard, even if that personage was at once to be denounced as a liar” (652). He also believes that the rumour about the Cid’s bastardy is “relatively late and probably an unintended consequence of the introduction of the tale of Hercules’ birth into the corpus of Alphonsine materials” (654). Alberto Montaner also objects to the connection between an assertion of illegitimacy by Asur and legends about the Cid’s illegitimacy, on the basis that this legend of the miller woman was not in circulation until the early sixteenth century, and that the Crónica de Castilla only mentions a peasant woman (2011, 1004). Montaner regards Asur’s comment a socioeconomic slight, based on the fact that members of the lower nobility, infanzones , were entitled to collect dues on the use of mills under their jurisdiction: “Asur pretende denigrar al Cid ridiculizando su economía de pequeño infanzón” (2011, 201) (Asur tries to belittle the Cid by ridiculing his status as a member of the lower nobility). He links Asur’s words to those of García Ordónez in the Crónica de Castilla which refer to the Cid going to the River Ovierna from where he originates and preparing the mills there, and allude to the Cid not being equal to him and his clan:

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E tórnese para Molina onde le suelen dar parias aquellos moros vençidos e catiuos, con ellos suele adobar su pro, o váyase para el río de Ovierna, onde es natural, o adobe sus molynos, ca menester los avrá aýna, ca él non es nuestro par nin deue trauar en nós.5 (And let him go to Molina, where the defeated and captured Muslims usually pay him tribute, and help him to repair his assets, or let him go to the River Ovierna, where he comes from, or let him repair his mills, because he is going to need them, because he is not one of us nor should he have any dealings with us.)

While these are valid objections from Smith and Montaner, I wish to offer further evidence for Armistead and Duggan’s initial readings of an allusion to illegitimacy, both in terms of details of that particular episode, and in drawing out how deeply concerned the Cantar de Mio Cid (and the later Mocedades de Rodrigo) are with the notion of illegitimacy itself, how fluid the concept is, and how central it is to their poetic discourse and social vision. Asur’s words go beyond a socio-economic slight to something altogether more improper and personal. Even the evidence from the Crónica de Castilla cannot rule out the fact that a reference to mills may go deeper than García Ordóñez’s barb about the Cid’s status. In the Cantar itself, the lead-up to Asur’s words is important. Firstly, he is the Infantes’ older brother, so a close member of their kin. The attention drawn to his dishevelled and flushed appearance undermines his words, priming us for an insult of the highest order. Moreover, the narrator tells us that Asur speaks with little prudence and discretion, “en lo que fabló avié poco recabdo” (3376). If he is merely restating the fact of the Cid’s lower social status relative to the Infantes, why emphasise this? We might also recall the narrator’s description of him in the second cantar as “bullidor […] largo de lengua, mas en lo ál non es tan pro” (2172–73), in essence a troublemaker of loose tongue, all talk and no action. His intervention is preceded by the interjection “¡Ya varones!” (3377) (Now men!), which captures attention, followed by two rhetorical questions: “¿quién vio nunca tal mal?” (3377) (whoever saw such a thing?) and “¿Quién nos darié nuevas de mio Cid el de Bivar?” (3378) (Who will give us the lowdown on My Cid, of Vivar?). The “mal” referred to in the first must be the marriages between the Cid’s daughters and the Infantes, so the ensuing question

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is targetted at discrediting the Cid in the most extreme terms in connection with those same marriages. The term nuevas which, as Montaner himself states, refers to “noticias” (news) in the poem, gestures towards the realm of shared knowledge, gossip, word of mouth. Asur is effectively connecting the marriages with whatever hearsay the audience at court and of the poem might be able to imagine about the Cid, a connection verified by the assonance at the end of the lines, where “Bivar” (3378) and “casar” (3381) are linked together. Furthermore, it is stated at court, just as it is at the Corpes attack, that the Cid’s daughters are not legitimate wives, but rather varraganas (concubines). García Ordóñez, whom we already know to be one of the Cid’s longstanding “enemigos malos” (9, 1836, 2998) (wicked enemies), states: “no ge las devién querer sus fijas por varraganas | o ¿quién ge las diera por parejas o por veladas?” (3276– 77) (they would not want his daughters as concubines | who gave them to them as legitimate wives?). This cutting comment is described by Michael Harney as “the rhetorical correlative of the Afrenta –the insult, added to injury”. He goes on: “Only a cad, a villain, could think such a thing, given that, since moral performance legitimates, the buena dueña is entitled to legitimate status precisely because she is a good woman” (1993, 217). Are we really to think that in a context in which good noblewomen can be dismissed as mere concubines by a more composed member of the Cid’s rival faction, it is outside of the realm of likelihood that an indiscreet Asur might not issue an even more reckless and personal attack on the Cid? Moreover, Smith’s dismissal of Muño Gustioz’s chastising of Asur González for merely over-indulging and for being a liar (1996, 652) fails to fully account for the ardency and emphasis that is placed on Asur’s falseness by Muño Gustioz, who refers to him as an evil traitor who is incapable of telling one iota of truth, not even to his own God. The focus on his derelict spirituality reinforces the idea that he may just have gone a step too far with his accusations, and that what he says runs fundamentally counter to the world of loyalty and Christian duty that the other characters epitomise. In other words, it is now Asur who is being made into the social and spiritual outlier: ¡Calla, alevoso, malo e traidor! Antes almuerzas que vayas a oración, a los que das paz fártalos aderredor. Non dizes verdad a amigo ni a señor, falso a todos e más al Criador. (3383–87)

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(Be quiet, you perfidious, evil, traitor! You eat your breakfast before you say your prayers, your kiss of peace comes with a belch. You cannot speak the truth to friend nor lord, you are false to them all, and even more so to God.)

Post-dating the rumour of the Cid’s bastardy to after the Cantar de Mio Cid, as Smith and Montaner do, also denies us a wealth of folkloric, literary, and mythical material with which it may be associated, whether loosely or directly. Armistead, responding to Montaner’s reservations, reminds us that popular oral literature does not always leave testimony, and that the absence of reference to something does not always mean that it was not there: “tratándose de la literatura oral, me pregunto qué posible fuerza probatoria podría tener semejante argumentum a silentio” (2000, 151) (when dealing with oral literature, I ask myself what evidential weight a similar argument from silence could have). Can we truly rule out earlier legends when the folk motifs of the bastard hero (L111.5) and the hero born out of wedlock (Z255) from Stith Thompson’s Motif -Index inform a great number of heroic narratives, including in Spain?6 Alan Deyermond describes how “the hero of humble or mysterious origins is a stock folklore figure who appears frequently in medieval literature both in Spain and elsewhere” (1968, 182). Moreover, mills and millers have quite specific folkloric connections, including with procreation (Armistead 2000, 142) and extramarital sex (Armistead and Silverman 1972). For example, Chaucer’s The Miller’s Tale sees the drunken Miller respond to the Knight’s tale with a bawdy story of lust and adultery. The Reeve’s Tale which ensues casts further aspersion on the social status of millers by recounting the way a dishonest miller is ridiculed by two students who end up sleeping with his wife and daughter. Both tales closely associate millers with a level of almost carnivalesque sexual misdemeanour and we can see how the language of illegitimacy is closely tied into the setting of a mill when in The Reeve’s Tale reference is made by the miller’s daughter to a cake she has baked of his own meal which he will find behind the mill door, a veritable “bun in the oven”: Whan that thou wendest homward by the melle, Right at the entree of the dore bihynde Thou shalt a cake of half a busshel fynde That was ymaked of thyn owene mele. (4242–45)7

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What is particularly important to remember about Asur’s insult in the Cantar is not the slur of bastardy per se, but rather the way in which it takes place. Although this is a formal court proceeding to settle the question of the dishonouring of the Cid’s daughters, this is also a scene of astonishing verbal liberty where accusations of dishonour and infamy are exchanged between the Infantes and their kin and the Cid’s men in rapid and unguarded succession. The Cid states the principal matter of his legal plaint, that the Infantes took his daughters from Valencia, brutally beat them and left them for dead in the oak forest at Corpes and issued a formal challenge, a riepto (3254–69). There follows the opportunity for representatives of the Infantes and for the Cid to speak, in turn, to the charges. The content of their interventions is heated, often personal, and consistently draws attention to the dynamics and capacity of speech. For example, after Ferrán Gonçález stands up and asserts the social superiority of the Carrión nobility over the Cid’s daughters, justifying in the process their desertion of the girls, the Cid urges Pero Vermúez to respond on his behalf with a hard-hitting pun: “¡Fabla, Pero mudo, varón que tanto callas!” (3302) (Speak, Pedro the mute, man who is so silent!). Not only do we see Pero overcome his verbal reticence but he duly reveals quite how much verbal bravado has been covering Ferrán’s cowardice, “Delant mio Cid e delante todos ovístete de alabar | que mataras el moro” (3324–25) (In front of the Cid and everyone else you were boasting | that you killed the Muslim). His boasting is now exposed as devoid of substance: “¡Lengua sin manos, cuémo osas fablar!” (3328) (All mouth and no action, how dare you speak!). Even more strikingly, just before Asur’s dramatic entrance, Diego González reiterates that he and his brother are not sorry for leaving the girls and, in fact, revels in the dishonour they have inflicted on the Cid’s daughters: “mientra que bivan pueden aver sospiros” (3357) (let them sigh as long as they live). In response, Martín Antolínez orders him to shut up, using another memorable metonym, this time of a truthless mouth: “¡Calla, alevoso, boca sin verdad!” (3362) (Be quiet, traitor, mouth that speaks no truth!). By the end of their exchanges and, crucially, just after Asur’s contribution to proceedings, and Muño’s response, the king is forced to intervene to stop the verbal contest descending into contempt of court: “¡Calle ya esta razón!” (3390) (Let this case conclude now!). In this context of these increasingly raw outbursts, it seems totally possible that Asur’s words could carry an implication of illegitimacy.

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The court scene foregrounds the act of speech, as well as its limitations. As a setting where grievances are aired, listened to, answered, and assessed in the presence of the king this is to be expected but, even so, the representation of outspokenness is taken to another level here. And yet, in this most open of verbal exchanges, where speech and its relationship with truth is most clearly foregrounded for the audience’s consideration (both the audience at court and that of the poem), Asur does not speak of illegitimacy directly but does so through insinuation and inference, traces of anecdote. The realm of hearsay, gossip, and public opinion, which has dogged the Cid and motivated the Infantes thoughout the poem, is ushered back into play at court. The interesting question is why, when reserve and decorum appear to be abandoned, Asur himself is clearly in a physical state of disarray, and we are directly informed that he speaks with little discretion, Asur does not issue a more direct statement of the Cid’s possible illegitimacy and, by extension, why the poet chooses to include this particular insult, framed in this particular way, at this stage of affairs. My argument is that the representation of illegitimacy here is connected to the poet’s broader affinity for the unsaid, the oblique, the secret, the lack of visibility. This imaginative discourse, which primes the audience for the difference between speech and action, appearance and truth, runs throughout the entire poem and shapes its major characters and themes. It comes to a head in Asur’s comment, a late gesture towards a shadowy yet dangerous arena of truth-making which represents the culminating part of a process started with the Cid’s exile on account of “malos mestureros” (267), court slanderers; spreaders of malicious rumours that poison the king’s ear.8 Much excellent criticism exists on the nature and poetics of speech in the Cantar de Mio Cid. Matthew Bailey has noted the “predominantly oral world” in which characters operate in the poem in which “there can be no doubt that status is reflected in speech and that good speech coupled with high status sustain power and authority” (2010, 47). Thomas Montgomery has also extensively commented on the poetics of speech in the poem, including on the prevalence of hortatory modes which encourage and exhort (1998, 97–107). While it is important to mark the vigorous, verbal nature of this oral poem, and the ready associations it offers between heroism and power and successful speech, it is equally true that speech is not always clear and direct. There are attempts at secrecy on the part of the Infantes, an instance of a murderous plot overheard by a Muslim, portentous allusions, tacit assumptions, contradictions, and ironies. Illegitimacy is part of this alternative discourse which

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reveals a breakdown in unanimity and truth. The obliqueness of Asur’s insult both indicates the powerful charge of illegitimacy, arguably more effective when suggested than when stated, but it also corresponds to the way in which illegitimacy is necessarily connected in the poem to other partly articulated social concepts, such as infamy and reputation. It is somewhere between fact and imagination, precisely where it lies in ballad and chronicle. Asur’s slight is not the first time the hero’s birth is mentioned. The connection between birth and reputation is enshrined in the Cid’s most memorable epithet: “el que en buen ora nació” (he who was born in a fortunate hour) and variants thereof.9 This phrase, referring to auspicious birth, being born in a fortunate hour, occurs in all three cantares. In the first, it is associated primarily with the beginnings of the Cid’s journey into exile and often used to lift his spirits, as well as to emphasise the Cid’s innate goodness at a very turbulent phase of the poem. Martín Antolínez speaks the epithet first, stating “¡Ya Canpeador, en buen ora fuestes nacido!” (71) (Campeador, born in a fortunate hour!) at the point where the Cid is camped on the banks of the river and Martín secures forbidden provisions from Burgos. Here it seems to justify the effort and risk Martín is going to in providing for the Cid, given that he emphasises soon afterwards that he is breaking the royal mandate at a large amount of personal risk, “ca acusado seré por lo que vos he servido | en ira del rey Alfonso yo seré metido” (73–74) (for I will be accused of having helped you | I will incur the wrath of King Alfonso). That Martín has made the right choice is later reaffirmed when he is described as heading for the monastery of San Pedro de Cardeña, “do está el que en buen punto nació” (294) (where the one who was born at a fortunate moment is staying). Ximena also states “¡Merced, Canpeador, en ora buena fuestes nado” (266) (Mercy, Campeador, you were born in a fortunate hour) at an early juncture. This is paired with the line “por malos mestureros de tierra sodes echado” (267) (because of evil meddlers you are exiled from the land), reminding the audience of the fact that although immediate circumstances may be difficult, the Cid’s path, in the longer term, is innately propitious. Minaya’s urgent use of the phrase serves to motivate the Cid in the strongest possible terms when it looks as if his resolve is faltering: “Cid, ¿dó son vuestros esfuerços? ¡en buen ora nasquiestes de madre!” (379) (Cid, where is your courage? You were born to your mother in a fortunate hour!). We might also include the appearance of the angel Gabriel, whose statement “¡Cavalgad, Cid, el buen Campeador, | ca

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nuncua en tan buen punto cavalgó varón!” (407–8) (Ride out, Cid, good Campeador | for never did a man ride out in such a fortunate moment!) validates the motivational use of this epithet by characters to this point. During the rest of this cantar, the narrator adopts the epithet, using it to reinforce the Cid’s growing success at several key moments in the plot: the taking of Alcocer (613, 663), the defeat of Kings Fáriz and Galve (759), the first gift to the king (935) and the clash with Count Remont (1004, 1053). In the second cantar the epithet is again used by the narrator to mark important milestones in the Cid’s progress, such as the siege of Murviedro (1114), the defeat of the king of Seville (1237), the Cid receiving his family in Valencia (1584), the third embassy to the king (1838), and the preparations for the marriage vistas (2008).10 There is a striking use of the epithet by the Infantes themselves at the vistas: “¡Omillámosnos, Cid, en buen ora nasquiestes vós!” (2053) (Humble greetings, Cid, you were born in a fortunate hour!). It is worth noting that this comes after the king’s official pardon of the Cid and is laced with dramatic irony, given that the audience already knows that the Infantes’ primary motivation for the marriages is their own economic benefit and prosperity (1882–83), and that they already feel threatened by the rise of a lesser noble (1861– 62). Shortly after the Infantes say this, the narrator reclaims the epithet by using it to reinforce the king’s love of the Cid, now that he is pardoned: “Mio Cid Ruy Díaz, que en ora buena nació, | en aquel día del rey so huésped fue. | Non se puede fartar d’él, tanto l’querié de coraçón” (2056– 58) (My Cid Ruy Díaz, who was born in a fortunate hour, | that day was guest of the king. | Shown tireless love and favour). We are reminded of the many times the epithet was used in the first cantar in connection with the Cid’s exile, and subtly invited to reflect on the way providence will prevail. The third cantar sees frequent use of the epithet, which is unsurprising given both the sudden changes in the plot and the way the stakes are so high for the Cid and his family’s reputation. The narrator predominantly uses the phrase and it is now always connected to the Infantes’ behaviour, accentuating the Cid’s inherent goodness in comparison with their deficiencies. It occurs twice in the battle against King Búcar, reinforcing the Cid’s appetite for combat while the Infantes are truly terrified (2392, 2484). Just after the terrible events at Corpes, and just before and after the Cid is reunited with his daughters, the narrator employs the epithet twice again to describe how “Al que en buen ora nasco llegava el

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mensaje” (2885) (The message arrived for he who was born in a fortunate hour), and “El que en buen ora nasco non quiso tardar” (2898) (He who was born in a fortunate hour did not tarry). The unfolding of the court scene sees the highest concentration of uses of the epithet. In this phase of the last cantar alone there are six strategic references to the Cid’s fortunate birth, including by the king himself when he convokes the court (2968) and at the start of the court proceedings: “por el amor de mio Cid, el que en buen ora nació” (3132) (out of love for my Cid, who was born in a fortunate hour), harking back here to the connection between the epithet and the amor demonstrated by the king after the pardon earlier. The narrator also uses the phrase when the Cid is travelling to court (3084), when he first enters the court (3107), when he is received honourably at court (3111), and when the Infantes are forced to repay the Cid (3247). Finally, the epithet is used by the narrator three times in close succession to stress the joy and success of the new marriages that are arranged for the Cid’s daughters with the kings of Navarre and Aragon (3710, 3722). The last of these usages is a remarkable summary and celebration of the Cid’s achievements: “a todos alcança ondra por el que en buen ora nació” (3725) (all achieve honour through he who was born in a fortunate hour). Although there is undoubtedly an element of the formulaic about this epithet, the number and nature of references to the Cid’s auspicious birth are hard to ignore in a context in which the social status of the Cid and his family is increasingly pitted against what the Infantes regard as their own superior stock, the Condes de Carrión. It is no overstatement to say that whenever the Cid encounters difficulty, and indeed at his moments of greatest success too, we are transported to the moment of his birth and invited to consider the connection between his biological origins, which remain auspicious but ultimately mysterious, and whatever is happening in the poem’s present time. Although the poem ends with a reference that plots the future lineage of the Cid and his family in fairly pragmatic terms, the “buen ora” of his birth is altogether more elemental. It takes on shades of myth, recalling the relationship between heroism and the first half of life set out by Otto Rank (2004), and by Jan De Vries: “His birth [the hero] is not like that of an ordinary mortal, there is often difficulty in having it legitimised. Gods frequently play a notable part of it” (1963, 210). It might not be too great a leap to connect the references to the fortunate hour with evidence from world folklore that bastards are traditionally associated with good luck, references to which are noted by Armistead (2000, 145).

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The epithet alluding to the fortunate hour of birth also has to be understood in connection with the poem’s broader concern with augury and auspice. Not only is the Cid’s quest explicitly described as a destiny “assí es vuestra ventura” (177), but there are even more concrete allusions to omens throughout the poem, all connected with significant journeys. The first occurs right at the beginning of the poem when the Cid is leaving Vivar and concerns two appearances of a crow and the Cid’s reaction to the sight, shrugging his shoulders and shaking his head: “A la exida de Bivar ovieron la corneja diestra | e entrando a Burgos oviéronla siniestra. | Meció mio Cid los ombros e engrameó la tiesta” (11–13) (On leaving Vivar a crow was on their right | and entering Burgos it was on their left. | My Cid shrugged his shoulders and shook his head). Whether the crow’s appearance left or right is the more propitious has been discussed by critics.11 What is clear, however, is that there is a combination of an ill omen and a good one in close proximity here. The second instance of omens comes when the Cid takes Alcocer and leaves the Jalón Valley: “pasó Salón ayuso, aguijó cabadelant; | al exir de Salón mucho ovo buenas aves” (859) (he spurred on, following the course of the Jalón | on leaving it there were many good signs). As the Cid sets out towards the Levant the birds denote good fortune and herald the beginning of royal clemency towards the Cid. Very shortly after these lines Minaya takes the first gift to Alfonso in Castile and it is accepted and Minaya himself pardoned. The third reference to omens comes in the setting of Valencia, just before the daughters are due to leave with their husbands for Carrion. Here the Cid’s initial misgivings are confirmed by the auguries before the party sets out: Por la huerta de Valencia teniendo salién armas, alegre va mio Cid con todas sus compañas. Violo en los avueros el que en buen ora cinxo espada que estos casamientos non serién sin alguna tacha; nos’ puede repentir que casadas las ha amas. (2613–17)

(Riding across the fertile land of Valencia they displayed their weapons, my Cid and all his men are happy. He who girded the sword in a fortunate hour saw in the auguries that these marriages would not come to pass untarnished; it is too late for regrets for he who agreed to their marriage.)

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What the epithet and the omens create when placed together is a higher mode of time and progress, a master narrative where time is not chronos but kairos, invested with meaning.12 Being born in a fortunate hour recalls Paul Strohm’s description of prophecy as “a source of alternative social representations within which a utopian or resistant stance toward an unwanted state of affairs might find a place of attachment and propagation” (1998, 18). This is all perfectly consistent with the imaginative discourse of the poem I alluded to earlier as one piqued by “half-talk” like gossip, hearsay, and rumour and indicative of the difference between speech and action, appearance and truth. What is happening in the poem’s “now” happens on two levels—the surface level of often disruptive events and the deeper level of providence. Such is the power of the epithet that it taps into the second of these levels. By contrast, the Infantes have no such auspicious epithet, in fact they have no epithets at all.13 In the world of the epic this robs them of substance, longevity, and even colour and visibility. As I shall now go on to explain, this is an important means of tapping into the poem’s discourse of legitimacy and illegitimacy.

Inverse Illegitimacy The poem’s understanding of what is legitimate and what does not go beyond the nature of the hero’s birth. While the Cid’s lower status as an infanzón and the possibility of his bastardy inform the abiding tension in the work between birth and worth, honour and ancestry, the Cantar makes clear that legitimacy is a much broader question and is unavoidably defined in accordance with moral, legal, and social norms. On all these fronts, the Infantes’ behaviour is found wanting, to the extent that the poem operates a kind of inverse illegitimacy where the Cid’s ancestral shortcomings are legitimised by his outstanding personal qualities, while the Infantes’ ancestral advantage is degraded by their behaviour. The chief statement of this comes from Minaya at court: “De natura sodes de los de Vanigómez, | onde salién condes de prez e de valor, | mas bien sabemos las mañas que ellos han oy” (3443–45) (You are descended from the BeniGómez line, | which used to produce worthy and courageous counts, | but we know the ways of their descendants only too well). This dynamic exists at subtler levels of the poem too, most notably in the contrasting associations between the Cid and light, and the Infantes and darkness. The Cid’s quest is connected from the outset with light. At the monastery of San Pedro de Cardeña, where he arrives at dawn before

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setting out for exile, the Cid is welcomed with a magnificent array of lights and candles (244). In Ximena’s commendatory prayer she also connects the Cid’s situation of needing help with God’s creation of “estrellas e luna, e el sol para escalentar” (332) (the stars and moon, and the sun for warmth) and with the miraculous restoration of Longinos’ sight (352). There are also frequent references to dawn and the sun in connection with the Cid’s early travails, such as when he besieges Castejón: “Ya quiebran los albores e vinié la mañana, | ixié el sol, ¡Dios, qué fermoso apuntava!” (456–57) (the dawn was breaking and morning arrived, | the sun came up, Lord, how beautifully it rose!), and Alcocer: “Otro día mañana el sol querié apuntar” (682) (The following day the sun was rising). In the second cantar, there is much emphasis on the Cid turning his attention to the Muslim territories on the Eastern Mediterranean coast: “contra la mar salada conpeçó de guerrear, | a orient exe el sol e tornós’ a essa part” (1090–91) (he rode towards the sea to start fighting there, | the sun rises in the East and he turned in that direction). The association between the sun, the dawn, and the east infuses this cantar with a feeling of optimism about the Cid’s prospects in this rich territory, heralding the conquest of Valencia.14 In this cantar, the sun is also mentioned in connection with the marriages, for example on the day of the vistas we are told that it shines clearly (2062) and at the end of that same day they refer to leaving at the following sunrise (2111–12). Similarly, on the morning of the wedding itself the Infantes’ sight of their bridesto-be is framed by a reference to sunrise: “Cuando viniere la mañana, que apuntare el sol, | verán a sus esposas” (2180–81) (When morning comes, and the sun rises, | they will see their wives). These references serve as important markers of time, calibrating the different stages of the marriage process but they also serve a similar function to the “buen ora” (fortunate hour) epithet, reminding the audience that higher forces are on the Cid’s side at moments of misgiving and hardship. References to light in the third cantar take on an even more forceful complexion. The afrenta de Corpes (dishonouring at Corpes) sees the Cid’s daughters, one of whom is of course named Sol (Sun), associated with light, but the Infantes’ abuse of them equates daybreak with disappointment, “¡mal ge lo cunplieron cuando salié el sol” (2705) (it was badly shown [their love] when day broke). The most striking association, however, comes in the descriptions of the Cid and his men’s pure white clothing at court. The men all wear “lorigas tan blancas commo el sol” (3074) (coats of mail dazzling like the sun), and the Cid dons “camisa de rançal, tan blanca

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commo el sol” (3087) (a linen shirt, as white as the sun) and “la cofia de rançal, que blanca era commo el sol” (3493) (a linen coif as white as the sun). The gleaming sword used by Martín Antolínez in the judicial duels also lights up the field: “relumbra tod el campo, tanto es linpia e clara” (3649). These sure signs of the Cid’s moral legitimacy at the moment when right and wrong is formally tested are supported by the much subtler references to formal duel beginning “cuando saliere el sol” (3465) (at sunrise) in which the men share the conditions of light to make it equitable, “Sorteávanles el campo, ya les partién el sol” (3610) (They drew lots for their position on the field, they allotted turns to have the sun in their eyes). In stark contrast, the Infantes and their kin operate in the shadows. The first time we meet the Infantes they are talking in an aside about the growing reputation of the Cid and how marriage to his daughters will be to their financial advantage (1373–74). The narrator stresses the closed nature of their speech: “Non lo dizen a nadi e fincó esta razón” (1375) (They tell nobody and the matter is closed). This is a consistent feature of their portrayal, together with García Ordóñez who is described after the Cid’s third embassy to the king as withdrawing with his kin: “con diez de sos parientes aparte davan salto” (1860) (with ten of his relatives he withdrew). There are numerous examples of the Infantes in secret parleys, “fablando en su consejo, aviendo su poridad” (1880) (consulting with one another, doing so in secret)—the term poridad (secrecy) is closely associated with them—and they are often contrasted with the growing publicity of the Cid’s achievements, “Las nuevas del Cid mucho van adelant” (1881) (The Cid’s reputation grows apace). This underhand tendency is suspected by the Cid when he asks Pero Vermúez and Muño Gustioz to watch over the Infantes and get to know their ways, or “mañas” (2168–71). During the third cantar, the association between the Infantes and the unseen is skilfully developed. It starts with the lion episode, where the Cid’s lion escapes at court. The immediate instinct of the Cid’s men is to protect their lord but Ferrán hides under a seat, terrified (2287), while Diego runs out of a door and hides behind a wine press, “Tras una viga lagar metiós’ con grant pavor” (2290) (behind a wine press he hid in great terror). Their cowardice will later be recalled at court by the Cid’s men (3332–33, 3364–67). Their physically absenting themselves from the scene of danger here is recalled in their fear at the prospect of battle against the Muslims in defence of Valencia. Although they appear to acquit themselves well at the time, and are warmly praised

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for doing so by the Cid, we discover later in the court scene, courtesy of Pero Vermúez, that Fernán fled before facing the opposition, “antes fuxiste que a él te allegasses” (3318) and that Pero was forced to give him his horse, and has kept all this secret until now. Such are the “mañas” that the Cid asked him to look out for earlier: “Las tus mañas yo te las sabré contar” (3315) (I could tell you all about your ways). Absenteeism and evasion at key moments of the action build conscious difference between the Infantes and the Cid’s men and build a picture of literal and metaphorical darkness. While the vassals laugh and joke after the fight against Búcar, the Infantes are nowhere to be found: “mas non fallavan ý a Diego ni a Ferrando” (2534) (but they could find neither Diego nor Fernando); “Amos salieron apart, ¡veramientre son hermanos!” (2538) (Both of them snuck off, truly they are brothers!). The separation in which they speak to one another then amounts to a more serious form of physical distancing, the decision to return to Carrión and to take the daughters with them. The description of their plans, “Sacarlas hemos de Valencia, de poder del Campeador; | después en la carrera feremos nuestro sabor” (2546–47) (We will take them from Valencia, away from the Campeador’s power; | then on the road we will do what we like) emphasises the extraction and the isolation of the girls to come. When they put this proposal to the Cid, they use the gentler expression, “levarlas hemos a nuestras tierras de Carrión” (2563) (we will take them to our lands in Carrión) and allude to security and legacy, “meterlas hemos en las villas” (2564) (we will settle them in their properties), “los fijos que oviéremos en qué avrán partición” (2567) (the inheritance any children we have will share in). Before we even get to this, there is a dark antecedent to their treatment of the girls in their plot to kill Avengalvón, again described in the most secretive of terms: “entramos hermanos consejaron traición” (2660) (both brothers plotted betrayal); “Yo sirviéndovos sin art e vós, pora mí, muert consejastes” (2676) (I have served you loyally, and you have plotted my murder). The journey to the oak forest at Corpes underscores the association between the Infantes and darkness and evasion. Having led the girls through imposing mountainous terrain, “A siniestro dexan Atienza, una peña muy fuert” (2691) (on the left they pass Atienza, a formidable cliff), “la sierra de Miedes passáronla estonz” (2692) (then they pass the Sierra de Miedes), they enter the forest, where associations between height and a lack of visibility are now made even clearer in an unusual description of the branches seeming to reach to the clouds, “los montes son altos, las ramas pujan con las núes” (2698) (the mountains

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are high, the branches seem to reach up to the clouds). In this secluded space they commit their atrocious beating of the girls and then revel in the idea of leaving them there: “oy nos partiremos e dexadas seredes de nós” (2716) (now we will leave you and you will be abandoned by us). This is neatly coupled with them detaching themselves from the obligation to share their lands in Carrión with their wives: “non abredes part en tierras de Carrión” (2717) (you will have no share in the lands of Carrión). When Félez Muñoz comes to their rescue we discover further evidence of the forbidding and isolated landscape—he hides in a “monte espesso” (2769) (dense mountain)—and the detail that night is looming (2788). Being devoured by wild beasts is a real concern throughout the episode (2751, 2789). When we next encounter the Infantes they are being summoned to court. Even in this public setting they are characterised as clannish and secretive. The very news of the court taking place provokes a now-familiar family counsel (2988, 2996), with the additional help of García Ordóñez (2999). Unsurprisingly, each time the Infantes are faced with a request or an accusation in the setting of the court they revert to this separate family grouping. When the Cid asks for the swords to be returned, for example, we discover “Essora salién aparte infantes de Carrión | con todos sus parientes e el vando que ý son” (3161–62) (The Infantes of Carrión then go to one side | with all of their relatives and kinsmen who are there). Similarly, when the Cid asks for his wealth to be returned, “Essora salién aparte ifantes de Carrión, | non acuerdan en consejo, ca los haveres grandes son” (3217–18) (Then the Infantes de Carrión go to one side, | they cannot agree to this, because the sums are great). The final evidence of this type of elusive behaviour comes just before the judicial duels. While the Cid’s men await the arrival of the Infantes we are informed that they have been plotting again, this time to separate the vassals from the battlefield and kill them to dishonour the Cid (3540–41). They do not follow through with this for fear of King Alfonso (3542). Nevertheless, the tendency to plot in secret is still there, illustrating that until the very end of the poem, and even in a legal context, they are capable of astonishing levels of evasiveness. The dynamic of inverse illegitimacy thus strengthens. The Cid, his family, and his vassals are further legitimised by their close association with the rule of law while the Infantes’ ancestry, despite the show of strength implied by the presence of kinsmen, is associated not just with the legal charge of menosvaler, dishonour, heaped upon it but with deceit of the highest order, epitomised by this plot to take justice into their own hands

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as the very procedures of the court are unfolding. It is of further interest to recall Mary Ebbott’s discussion of the relationship between bastards and darkness in the context of Ancient Greece, where skotios means dark, or shadowy, and is associated with women’s space and distance from the world of men (2003, 20). This fits the Infantes: cowering and invisible in the world of men represented by the court and the battlefield; colourless without their epithets. Despite their attempts to delegitimise the Cid, it is they who succeed in attracting the illegitimate to their own name and lineage. They may hide but they are seen for what they truly are in a context in which shame “is associated with seeing and being seen” (Ebbott 2003, 62). In the final part of this section on the Cantar, I will explore further the way in which illegitimacy operates on a dynamic of seeing and being, starting with how the poem’s sense of the public eye informs the representation of the Cid and the Infantes’ respective legitimacy.

“Nuevas” and Notoriety Rumour and reputation inform the very earliest presentation of the Cid in the poem. As early as line 9 comes a reference to the “enemigos malos” (wicked enemies) who spread calumny at court, followed by an allusion to false accusations against the Cid for apparently having kept tribute from the king of Seville (112), as well as a further reference to the “malos mestureros” (267) (evil meddlers). The first cantar thus evokes a background of false rumours to the Cid’s exile, making him seem a rather helpless victim of forces against him, but this quickly changes. Once the Cid achieves successful early conquests and travels towards the Muslim taifa kingdoms in the East he establishes a formidable reputation based on territorial gains, as we see clearly when news of him troubles the Muslims of Zaragoza (905–6) and Monçon (939–40). This reputation reaches the Count of Barcelona, a point at which the Cid’s fame is emphasised: Fueron los mandados a todas partes que el salido de Castiella así los trae tan mal; los mandados son idos a todas partes, llegaron las nuevas al conde de Barcilona. (954–57)

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(The news spread far and wide that the exile from Castile was inflicting such harm; the news travelled far and wide, word reached the Count of Barcelona.)

The reference to the Cid as “el salido”, the exiled one, retains a connection to the ignominious circumstances of his departure from Castile and the Count himself uses this expression in his indignation, “¡sabrá el salido a quién vino desondrar!” (981) (the exile from Castile will find out precisely who he is dishonouring!). It is not until the Cid’s campaign for Valencia in the second cantar that he manages to shake off the link between reputation and exile as his nuevas are associated with growing numbers rather than isolation: “Sonando van sus nuevas todas a todas partes; | más le vienen a mio Cid, sabet, que nos le van” (1207) (News travels far and wide; | let it be known that more people join my Cid than leave him). The Cid’s fame is now being contested on an impressive geographical stage. The narrator stresses how news of his feats travels across the sea to North Africa: “Sonando van sus nuevas allent parte del mar” (1156) and revels in how far his reputation extends: “¡Las nuevas del cavallero ya vedes dó llegavan!” (1235) (News of this knight, you should see how far it travels!). With this comes the detail that the Cid is also a recipient of news and information about the imposing troops in Morocco, creating a sense of parity insofar as the Cid is not just the subject of news now but sufficiently powerful and charismatic to require to be abreast of it. For example, the narrator anticipates “nuevas de allent partes del mar, | de aquel rey Yúcef que en Marruecos está” (1620–21) (news from across the sea, | of King Yusuf who is in Morocco) which then reach the Cid (1632). The Cid’s military fame informs another side to his reputation, his reinstatement into the king’s favour, and it is here that the matter of the Cid’s growing reputation garners radically contrasting responses. King Alfonso is pleased with what he hears about the Cid; after the second gift, he declares “plázem’ de las nuevas que faze el Campeador” (1343) (I am pleased with news of the Campeador’s deeds) and he connects the Cid’s reputation with greater favour to come, “todas estas nuevas a bien abran de venir” (1876) (all this good news will yield greater reward). Yet as the Cid’s nuevas help to atone for his state of ira regia (the king’s wrath), the Infantes see them as a threat to their own status in terms which are inversely proportional and often expressed through the axis of pleasure and sorrow, plazer and pesar: “Maguer plogo al rey mucho

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pesó a Garcí Ordóñez” (1345) (Although this pleased the king it greatly annoyed Garcí Ordóñez).15 The Infantes seek material advantage through the hero’s fame—“Mucho crecen las nuevas de mio Cid el Campeador, | bien casariemos con sus fijas pora huebos de pro” (1373–74) (The Cid, the Champion’s reputation grows rapidly, | we would do well to marry his daughters to take advantage of it)—but it soon becomes apparent that the Cid’s reputation is regarded as more than just an opportunity. It is directly harmful to them since they anticipate a lessening in their own honour on the basis of an increase in his: “¡Maravilla es del Cid, que su ondra crece tanto! | En la ondra que él ha nós seremos abiltados” (1861–62) (What a wonder it is, that the Cid’s honour grows so much! | As his honour increases, we will come off worse). The term “abiltados”, meaning dishonoured by virtue of being worthless, expresses a type of moral and social degradation, an insult to their honour, and reputational damage, and will remerge during the court scene. Reputation, it seems, is closely connected in the second cantar to the two forms of worth: más valer in the sense of material capital, and the sense of honour. Once the Infantes are married to the Cid’s daughters their newfound proximity to the Cid means that they are placed in the spotlight and subject to public opinion about their credibility as warriors. Muño Gustioz comes to the Cid with news of their fear (2325–26) but the Cid’s determination to think well of his sons-in-law, together with the way his vassals compensate for their shortcomings, means that the third cantar starts with the prospect of good news travelling to Carrión about the Infantes’ conduct in the fight against King Búcar: “a Carrión de vós irán buenos mandados | cómmo al rey Bucar avemos arrancado” (2445– 46; also 2480, 2526) (good reports of you will go back to Carrión | of how we all defeated King Bucar). The Infantes are nevertheless ill at ease in this vocal realm. The publicity associated with the battle, including the way the vassals replay it orally among themselves, joking about each other’s performance, particularly that of the Infantes, encourages Diego and Ferrán to plot in secret, reverting to the clandestine world of speech with which they are associated (2531–39). The plan to take the girls back to Carrión sees the Infantes also attempt to take back control of nuevas. We hear that “Grandes son las nuevas por Valencia la mayor […] porque escurren sus fijas del Cid a tierras de Carrión” (2588–90) (Great is the excitement in Valencia the Great […] because the girls are being escorted to the lands of Carrión), while the Cid asks Félez Muñoz to report back to him on what the girls are actually inheriting,

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betraying slight uncertainty: “verás las heredades que a mis fijas dadas son. | Con aquestas nuevas vernás al Campeador” (2621–22) (go and see the estates that have been given to my daughters. | Come back to the Campeador with this information). Avengalvón realises what they are doing and nearly exposes their reputation for what it is. When the plot to kill him is uncovered by a listening Muslim he threatens to make a worldfamous example out of them, “tal cosa vos faría que por el mundo sonás” (2678) (I will do such things to you that ring out around the world), and he roundly dismisses their reputation: “poco precio las nuevas de los de Carrión” (2683) (I hold in ill esteem the Carrión reputation). Before the attack on the daughters, the Infantes parade their control over the girls, and by extension the Cid’s, reputation. In perhaps an ironic echo of earlier references to their good fame reaching Carrión, they delight in the idea of the news of the assaults reaching their father, “Irán aquestos mandados al Cid Campeador” (2718) (This news will travel to the Cid Campeador). It does so but, in stark contrast to the way in which the Infantes regard nuevas as threat, the Cid thanks God for the honour they have bestowed upon him, because he can now marry his daughters even more respectably, thereby refusing to let the Infantes take any satisfaction from this atrocity (2830–34). The court scene sees nuevas and its correlatives firmly back under the Cid’s control. Even the pregones, the formal announcement of the court that is spread across the kingdom (2962), instils pesar in the Infantes (2985). In fact, pesar is the substance of their manner and reputation here. Correcting the earlier promise of good news spreading about the Infantes, we discover that “grandes son los pesares por tierras de Carrión” (3697) (there is great sorrow throughout the lands of Carrión). Even more discreditably, the narrator announces: “Grant es la biltança de ifantes de Carrión” (3705) (The Infantes de Carrión are in deep disgrace), in contrast to which the poem ends with the joyous proclamation that “Éstas son las nuevas de mio Cid el Canpeador” (3729) (These are the feats of my Cid the Campeador). The pronouncement of biltança cannot be underestimated in the context of reputation. As Montaner points out, it is more than just social humiliation on the basis of a damaged reputation, it is also the legal concept of infamy, menosvaler, following the defeat of the Infantes in the judicial duels (2011, 216). It is also served up to them as a moral lesson, a rare feature in the poem: “qui buena dueña escarnece e la dexa después | atal le contesca o siquier peor” (3706–7) (anyone who dishonours a noble woman and then abandons her | may such a fate or even

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worse befall him). The portrayal of reputation in the Cantar, that starts with ill-founded rumours, and then substantially becomes nuevas and mandados, now takes on a cast-iron morality, becoming a firm statement of the illegitimate behaviour of the Infantes, and legitimising that of the Cid. Biltança is a label which negates the vicissitudes of public opinion. Duggan’s suggestion that Asur González’s comment about the mills is a “serious and legally debilitating charge” (1989, 52) is worth recalling here. It is, at its most serious, a potential means of ruling him out of the legal process altogether: “If one is to take the Partidas into account, he would be enfamado and subject to all the legal restrictions specified for the infamous, including the prohibitions against holding offices, giving testimony or bringing accusations in court, and taking part in judicial combats” (53). Militating against this possibility, despite the gravity of Asur’s remark, is the discourse of news and notoriety that runs right through the poem. Even though his innuendo risks encouraging a cynical imagination to think of the Cid at this crucial stage of the poem, and even detracting from his achievements to this point, Asur’s words fail to make a mark in a context in which we have been long conditioned to appreciate the difference between rumour and fame, and in which we realise that there is such a thing as “fake news”. The poet’s careful presentation of the reach and the limit of words in the Cantar primes the audience to understand the gaps between what is said and what is left to the imagination, and to make judicious decisions about the missing pieces. Above all, we discover that legitimacy and illegitimacy in the poem are less about birth and lineage than they are about the difference between truth and appearance, seeming and being. In such terms, notoriety is not the exclusive domain of the nothus, the illegitimate child, it is the undoing of the ostensibly noble Infantes de Carrión, the real bastards of the poem.16

“Mocedades de Rodrigo”: Epic and the Alternative If the Cantar de Mio Cid presents us with a satisfying picture of a wise and measured hero who emerges triumphant in moral, social, and legal terms, an altogether less orderly scenario meets us in Las Mocedades de Rodrigo (The Youthful Deeds of Rodrigo, the Cid).17 This epic poem, written in the mid-fourteenth century, recounts the youthful exploits of the Cid, Rodrigo Díaz, during the reign of Fernando I of Leon (1037–65).18 In it can be detected the presence of new fewer than five other epic narratives—Cantar de Mio Cid, Cantar de Sancho II , Cantar de los Infantes

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de Lara, La Condesa traidora y Poema de Fernán González (Álvar and Álvar 1997, 103)—and it has suffered from some rather damning critical assessments of its quality. Ramón Menéndez Pidal thought the work belonged to a period of decline or decadence in the Castilian popular epic, where a movement away from historical fact towards fictionalisation of material was evidence of degeneration (1959, 109). Marcelino Menéndez Pelayo described it as antihistorical (vol. 1, 139; vol. 6, 298; cited in Deyermond 1968, 41) and remarked memorably on its clumsy assembly of source materials (vol. 1, 139; vol. 6, 293): “es un centón históricopoético de tradiciones orales confusas y mal aprendidas, de fragmentos de antiguos cantares, y de glosas […] Parece el cuaderno de apuntaciones de un juglar degenerado” (vol. 6, 293) (it is a historical-poetic patchwork of confused and badly mastered oral traditions, of fragments of old songs, and of glosses […] It is is the notebook of a degenerate minstrel). For Thomas Montgomery, its merits are few and far between: “It is crudely written and sometimes incoherent. Its hero is an arrogant upstart, first rebellious and then overbearing toward his king. Characters and scenes are scarcely developed […] Mocedades is a string of often preposterous fabrications” (1987, 544). The obvious deviation of the work from the traditional epic style embodied by the Cantar de Mio Cid is not necessarily a bad thing. Armistead, for example, describes it as “a profoundly anti-traditional work” in which “its author seems to have delighted in wilfully altering the epic heritage on which his narrative rests” (1963, 345). Alan Deyermond has used the term “decadent epic” to describe “its emphasis on sexual scandal and on rebellion, and in the general character of its hero” (1968, 22). Eukene Lacarra Lanz also suggests that “attention has been directed toward questions of sources, versions, and authorship, rather than toward analyzing plot development and the representation of characters, dismissed as incoherent” (1999, 476). Mercedes Vaquero illustrates how Las Mocedades de Rodrigo fits into the so-called “epic of revolt” that characterises Castilian epic narratives. Vaquero describes their common theme as “the struggles of feudal lords against the king, disputes which result in the unfair monarch imposing a severe punishment —that of banishment or imprisonment— on the good vassal” (1994, 147).19 Irene Zaderenko concurs that Rodrigo is “un joven rebelde que desafía a la autoridad […] pero que, sin embargo, nunca traiciona a su rey” (2003, 270) (a rebellious youth who defies authority […] but who never betrays his king) and suggests that he represents “la intransigencia de los aguerridos castellanos que llevaron adelante la Reconquista y el engrandecimiento de Castilla, en la tradición de las hazañas de Fernán González”

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(279) (the intransigence of the valiant Castilians who furthered the Reconquest and the expansion of Castile, in the tradition of the deeds of Fernán González).20 Bailey gives arguably the most positive outlook on the poem, describing it as part of “a vibrant narrative tradition, in constant flux and transformation” (2007, 18), and as our “last chance” to catch the Cid at his epic best (19). Instead of adhering to Menéndez Pidal’s evolutionary view of the epic in which Las Mocedades de Rodrigo is consigned to the category of “decadencia” (decadence/decline), it is, as Leonardo Funes suggests, better to see the development of a text as governed by two factors: internal rules of textual production, and external forces of history and culture (2004, xvii). A later epic would, seen in this way, be better assessed by both an internal and formal analysis, and a historical and sociopolitical one to allow us to judge how and why it evolved in its time (2004, xvii). Dating the poem in the fourteenth century potentially relates it to a number of political crises, most notably the uprising of Alfonso X’s kingdoms against him led by his son Sancho IV (1282), the minority rules of Fernando IV (1295–1312) and Alfonso XI (1312–50), and the ensuing Trastamaran civil wars (1350–69).21 Clearly, there was particular concern throughout this period with the legitimacy of governance and with the nature of royal authority.22 The poem opens with a long and striking focus on genealogy in the early history of Castile. For Lacarra Lanz, “The genealogies have been treated as peripheral to the main narrative, but they are crucial for exposing the ideological underpinnings of the text” (1999, 476). It is immediately apparent that it resembles a chronicle in its sequential presentation of individuals and events: E remaneçió la tierra sin señor quando morió el rey Pelayo. Este rey Pelayo avía una fija de ganançia, e fue cassada con el conde don Suero de Casso, e fizo en ella el conde don Suero un fijo que dixieron don Alfonso, e a este don Alfón fizieron rey de León. (1–5)23

(And the land was left without a lord when King Pelayo died. And this King Pelayo had an illegitimate daughter, and she was married to Count Don Suero de Casso, and she bore Count Don Suero a son they called Don Alfonso, and this Don Alfonso was made king of León.)

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The vertical ordering of the lines, successive and lacking in clear subdivisions, is very striking on the page, reinforcing a close connection between descent and narrative progression. The extensive use of the conjunction “e” links together coherent statements and clear syntax but the outstanding impression is of a joined-up narrative style where individuals and events seem almost too close together, bordering on the chaotic.24 C. M. Bowra suggests that genealogical history was a principal feature of oral chant, a means of preserving ancestries in non-literate societies (1952, 369). Menéndez Pidal notes that the author of Las Mocedades de Rodrigo is following an old juglaresque practice, also evident in the Poema de Fernán González, in which juglares would try, through long historical prologues, to situate their poem within received historical traditions, at the same time as showing their knowledge of a vast repertoire of legends (1957, 317). Montgomery, however, suggests that the chronistic introduction is not the work of an unskilled juglar but rather a later intervention on the basis that its lengthened lines are too regular and patterned (1984, 13). Funes thinks that the introduction bears close resemblance to genealogical texts, such as the Portuguese Livro de linhagens by don Pedro de Barcelos, and also attributes some of the genealogical material to the copyist of ms. P (2004, xxxiii, xxxix) and some to folk tradition and parallelistic poetic structures, such as the model of three generations, two judges, two heroes, a bastard son (xxxiii). He adds that the Gesta could have included a genealogical or historical introduction about the origins of Castile and the antecedents of Rodrigo and Fernando in order to refute any concerns about the Cid’s bastardy which would support the notion that these rumours were circulating in the earlier centuries (2004, xxxviii). Illegitimacy in the obvious form of bastard children and illicit relations will be discussed in detail below, but I want to linger first on the way in which the genealogical sections marry order and disorder and to suggest that Las Mocedades de Rodrigo is a narrative primed to allow for alternatives. On the surface all is connected, but closer reading reveals that the portrait of continuation the poem provides is beset with interruptions and mutations. The genealogical section contains substantial focus on conflict, violence, and disobedience. And these can emerge seemingly out of nowhere, for example: “Asosegada estava la tierra, que non avía guerra de ningún cabo. | El conde don Gómez de Gormaz a Diego Laínez fizo daño” (346–47) (The land was at peace, there was no war on any side. | Count Don Gómez de Gormaz did harm to Diego Laínez). Peace is also

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the brink of war: to quote Hayden White on another historical narrative, “Everywhere it is the forces of disorder, natural and human, the forces of violence and destruction, that occupy the forefront of attention” (1987, 10). However, the picture is not necessarily bleak. With conflict comes opportunity for creativity, change, and difference. For example, the very first line of the poem speaks of absence, lack of governance, death: “E remaneçió la tierra sin señor quando morió el rey Pelayo” (1) (And the land was left without a lord when King Pelayo died). Yet this is followed by the news that Pelayo had “una fija de ganançia” (2), an illegitimate daughter to a long-term concubine. As discussed in the introduction, law codes like the Espéculo and Siete Partidas did not endorse the practice but if the concubine was a noblewoman it made a difference to the status and prospects of the child. The mother of Pelayo’s daughter is never named here for us to make that distinction; we only discover that the daughter marries Count Suero de Casso and their son is King Alfonso of Leon. History, however, suggests that Pelayo’s daughter Ermisenda married Alfonso, the son of the Duke of Cantabria who became Alfonso I of Leon. Bailey thinks that “Mocedades takes special pains here to emphasise the illegitimacy and waywardness of the offspring of the Castilian ancestry” (2007, 105). There is surely an attempt to discredit the Leonese king, Alfonso VI, here but in a more positive, and perhaps symbolic, light this is a fine example of the narrative’s use of alternatives to express and define its own legitimacy. We see this creative flux in the initial portrait of a Castile threatened by hostile neighbours, both Muslim and Christian. The Castilians are described as living in “premia”, a description familiar from the Poema de Fernán González of an ongoing state of political oppression, sustained and immovable: E los castellanos bevían en premia, e avían guerra con Navarra e con Aragón, e con los moros de Sant Estevan de Gormaz e de León e de Sepúlveda. E era Olmedo de moros. (6–9)25

(And the Castilians lived under duress, and they were at war with Navarre and with Aragon, and with the Muslims of San Esteban de Gormaz and of León and of Sepúlveda. And Olmedo was Muslim territory.)

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Out of this state of subservience to Leon and near-universal opposition comes the decision to elect two alcaldes Nuño Rasura and Laín Calvo (12–13).26 The election of these men represents an attempt to create stability via an alternative form of governance, self-governance, which Bailey identifies as the main theme of the narrative: “Castilian nobles are portrayed as aggressive defenders of their birthright to self-governance” (2007, 15). Similarly, the death of Garçí Fernández, Fernán González’s son, is associated with the brutal tale of the murder of the Siete Infantes de Lara: “Quando a los siete años los infantes de Salas mataron, | morió el conde Garçí Fernández, cortés infançón castellano” (110–11) (When seven years passed and they killed the Infantes of Salas, | Count Garcí Fernández, a courtly Castilian nobleman, died). In the epic tale, the count is not killed along with the Infantes and really has nothing to do with them. The temporal and grammatical connection in Las Mocedades de Rodrigo invites tacit comparison between the deaths of these illustrious young Castilian men showing how genealogy can create the impression that political figures come and go, and often quite suddenly. However, the cycle continues and the genealogical line renews itself, evident here in the ensuing reference to “El buen conde don Sancho” (The Good Count Don Sancho), Garcí’s son, Sancho García. Sancho García has a son named Sancho Aborta (also called Sancho Abarca in the manuscript) who becomes the first king of Castile, and is instrumental in the foundation of the diocese of Palencia, but whose narrative continues the impression of mutability.27 This begins with his very identity. He is a fictitious character, a created presence whose changeable agnomen makes him hard to pin down, despite his foundational enterprises. Deyermond notes that the choice of the name Abarca is strange, given that an abarca is a leather sandal, and connects it to the Estoria de España’s description of Sancho making leather sandals in order to reach the Roncesvalles pass in the snow and fight off the Muslims (1968, 95). It could also refer to his strength, given his love of hunting (116), or perhaps his “wild youth” (Bailey 2007, 109). As for Aborta, it too may indicate a disruption of some sort; Deyermond thinks that it “may reflect an awareness of the curious tradition of Sancho’s premature birth through the lance-wound in his dead mother’s belly” (1968, 97).28 Even when Sancho inherits all his father’s lands, “E fincaron en el rey don Sancho Avarca todos los reinos en su mano” (194) (amd all the kingdoms were left in the hands of King Sancho Abarca), stability is shortlived as Muslim threat looms again. This time the Muslims capture Toledo and

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Archbishop Miro escapes and flees to Palencia, asking Sancho Abarca for permission to live as a hermit in the cave there. Miro takes the deed to the Pope who ratifies and grants the privilege. The formalities of succession and privilege operate in a context of uncertainty and conflict. This is never more clear than when, after the king has granted Palencia his seal, there is an uprising against him, on the basis that as king of Leon he has abandoned the Castilians. The narrative then returns to the alcaldes de Castilla, and renews its focus on genealogy: Alçáronssele los otros linajes d’onde venían los fijos dalgo. ¿D’ónde son estos linajes? Del otro alcalde Laín Calvo. D’ónde fue este Laín Calvo? Natural de Monte de Oca. E vino a Sant Pedro de Cardeña a poblar, este Laín Calvo. (256–60) (The other lineages from which the noblemen came rose against him. Where are these lineages from? From the other judge Laín Calvo. Where was this Laín Calvo from? He was born in Monte de Oca. And he came and settled in San Pedro de Cardeña, this Laín Calvo.)

The deeds of the sons of Laín Calvo, which include defending Castile against the Muslims and Leon, adds weight to a belligerent and powerful ancestry leading up to Rodrigo Díaz. References to the sons of Laín Calvo are numerous in this section of the narrative, standing almost as a motif for rebellion against the wrong kind of royal authority, and an alternative, legitimate political order. For example, when Sancho Abarca dies and his three sons are left to contest their inheritance, the Castilians back Fernando, the youngest son: “la mano le bessaron castellanos, commo fijos de Laín Calvo” (279) (the Castilians kissed his hand, like sons of Laín Calvo). This very Fernando kills his brother Alfonso to assure conquest of Leon, but still manages to stand for an exemplum of legitimate rule, as indicated when courts are assembled in Zamora and the land assuaged (295). There is a reference in this section to an illegitimate son of Sancho, “el infante don Ramiro, mas non era de velada” (292) (the Infante Don Ramiro, but he was not from a legitimate wife) who is granted the kingdom of Navarre by Fernando, despite claims by his sister Sancha and the governor of Navarre. This is further evidence that the poem’s understanding of legitimacy operates in a context in which conflict yields creative alternatives and engages the audience creatively in questions of what is acceptable or not in the realm of governance. I wish

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to turn now to the more concrete examples of legitimacy in the poem, both legitimacy related to birth and in terms of political and religious institutions, in order to illustrate how the creative backdrop of alternatives afforded by the genealogical introduction conditions us to understand legitimacy and illegitimacy in ways which are not necessarily limiting, in keeping with this more rebellious and indepedent epic mode. Illegitimacy both begins and ends the narrative of Las Mocedades de Rodrigo.29 In the same way in which violent conflicts interrupt the genealogical order so too do episodes of unconventional sexual relations, starting with the fija de ganançia at the very outset of the poem and ending with the birth of an illegitimate son by the Infanta of Savoy. Similarly, these episodes yield fruitful outcomes, often for the benefit of the collective; Georges Martin refers to the illegitimate daughter of Pelayo, for example, as continuing the extinguished stock of Neo-Gothic royalty, “quien perpetúa la estirpe extinguida de la realeza neogótica” (2002, 256). The example of Fernán González’s mother is equally positive. Daughter of King Sancho Ramírez of Navarre, she is described as living as a sinful woman with the Muslims: “andava mala mugier con los moros” (26). Gonçalo Núñez, son of the alcalde Nuño Rasura, marries her and brings her to Castile where she bears him three sons, the youngest of which is the Castilian hero Fernán. This astonishing information about Fernán González’s mother’s situation was described by Menéndez Pidal as “una desdichada invención de este juglar tardío” (1992, 420) (an unfortunate invention by this late minstrel) and by Deyermond as a “scandalous story, which appears in no other text” and serves the purpose of whetting the audience’s appetite “by including a sensational and scurrilous detail at the very beginning” (1968, 19) since the rest of the work is quite favourable to Fernán.30 Lacarra Lanz sees it in a more favourable light as illustrative of “one of the noble women who, according to legend, Christian kings had to give Arabs as tribute” (1999, 481). She suggests that the poet conceived Aldara Sánchez as precisely one of these unfortunate women and goes on to suggest that Gonçalo’s marriage to her “exonerates him from his youthful peccadilloes and allows him to return to Castile. The marriage also makes him a blood relation of the royal house of Navarre” (481). Juan Victorio sees it rather as a means of establishing a hierarchy among the different genealogies in order that Rodrigo can eclipse Fernán as a hero (1982, xxv). The details of Fernán González’s life certainly err on the juglaresque side; the scurrilous episode of the Archpriest trying to get the Infanta Costança to make love to

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him, another example of sexual deviancy (43–44), is foregrounded. There is also emphasis upon Fernán’s refusal to obey King Alfonso of Leon. However, Fernán is an effective antidote to the oppression of Castile to the Muslims and Leon cited at the beginning: “Assí sacó a Castilla el buen conde don Fernando, | aviendo guerra con moros e con cristianos” (103) (In this way the good Count Don Fernando liberated Castile, | through war with Muslims and with Christians). It is more likely to be the case that Fernán’s heroic trait of rebelliousness is rooted in his genealogy via these historical scandals and that rather than undermining Fernán, they serve to emphasise his distinctiveness as part of a heroic Castilian stock: “Los héroes rebeldes épicos descienden de rebeldes legendarios y/o están relacionados sanguíneamente con otros personajes rebeldes” (Vaquero 1999, 123) (The rebellious epic heroes are descended from legendary rebels and/or are blood relations of other rebellious characters). As Bailey suggests, Fernán is also part of a broader heroic genealogy: “Mocedades does not focus exclusively on one hero, but instead plots a genealogy of heroic Castilians driven by a desire for independence and equipped with the tenacity to fight for it” (2007, 14). When King García of Navarre, one of the three sons of Sancho Abarca, is killed by his youngest brother Fernando, it raises the question of who will inherit the Navarrese throne (289). It is granted by Fernando to Ramiro, the illegitimate son of Sancho, and Fernando does so to avoid alienating the kingdom: e fabló el infante don Ramiro, mas non era de velada. Mas por quanto era fijo d’este rey don Sancho, e que non se enagenasse el reino, diógelo don Fernando. Assí assosegó su tierra. (292–95) (and the Infante Ramiro spoke, but he was not of a legitimate wife. But because he was the son of this King Sancho, and so that the kingdom was not isolated, Don Fernando gave it to him. In this way he brought peace to his land.)

Las Mocedades de Rodrigo emphasises how the land is pacified by a bastard inheriting the throne. These lines of the poem correspond to a section which Deyermond thought was a echo of a lost cantar de gesta on the sons of Sancho el Mayor (1968, 176). Funes stresses how important it is that in this narrative the youngest son (Fernando) has dominion over

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the kingdoms of Spain and how a bastard claims the throne to stabilise the kingdom of Navarre (and Aragón). He refers to these as “dos indicios más de la importancia de la cuestión de la legitimidad dinástica para esta ideología señorial” (2004, 161) (two further indications of the importance of the question of dynastic legitimacy for this ideology of governance). Martin also comments on the positive effects of Ramiro’s inheritance: “Navarra, cuya realeza […] se perpetúa gracias a su hijo, el (también bastardo) infante Ramiro” (2002, 259) (Navarre, whose royal line is perpetuated thanks to his son, the [also bastard] Infante Ramiro). A further example of positive illegitimacy comes with the appearance of Pero Mudo towards the end of the work. Pero is already familiar to us from the Cantar de Mio Cid as the brave, but rather reserved, standard-bearer and nephew of the Cid who steps up to speak about the Infantes’ cowardice at court. In Las Mocedades de Rodrigo, he emerges as the son of an illegitimate brother of Rodrigo, after Rodrigo’s father had a liaison with a peasant woman: “fijo eres de mi hermano, | el que fizo mi padre en una labradora quando andava cazando” (940–41) (you are the son of my brother, | the one my father made with a peasant woman when he was out hunting). That the Cid’s father’s stock comes under scrutiny in Las Mocedades de Rodrigo may also be seen in the Count of Gormaz’s description of Diego as “fijo del alcalde çibdadano” (358) (son of the town judge).31 We return to the legend of Diego Laínez described earlier in connection with the Cantar but here the Cid’s possibly bastardy is deflected onto an illegitimate brother providing what could be a rival legend (Armistead 1988, 244). There is, however, some uncertainty among critics as to whether it is Pero himself or his father (the Cid’s brother) who is the bastard. Zaderenko appears to opt for the former: “El joven es hijo ilegítimo de un hermano de Rodrigo y una labradora” (2003, 268) (the young man is the illegitimate son of a brother of Rodrigo and a peasant woman). Martin notes both options but stresses how strongly the weight of bastardy falls on Pero, noting that this is also a social bastardy, in the sense that in his veins noble and ignoble blood are mixed (1992, 517). Martin goes on to suggest that Pero himself is illegitimate: “Même à considérer le demi-frère de Rodrigue comme une hyperbole poétique de la bâtardise —engendré par un aristocrate dans une vilaine et fruit d’une relation entre toutes passagères” (552) (Even to the point of considering Rodrigo’s half-brother as a poetic hyperbole of bastardy—engendered by an aristocrat in a commoner and the fruit of a relationship that was, among all others, fleeting).32 Armistead, who

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admits this part of the text is “confuso” (1988, 224), links the brother of Rodrigo referred to here to Fernán Díaz from the chronicles, described in the Crónica de 1344 and some manuscripts of the Crónica de Castilla as the father of Pero Vermúdez (225). The confusion about which of the male descendants of Diego Laínez is a bastard is important because, as Armistead observes, it does not mean that the shadow of illegitimacy disappears from the Cid in the longer term. In fact, quite the opposite occurs: Ante el predominio del Cid legítimo y de noble abolengo y de su hermano bastardo, Fernán Díaz […] parecería que el motivo del Cid bastardo, aludido y negado por las crónicas de Castilla y de 1344, se habría extinguido en las tradiciones ulteriores relativas al nacimiento del Campeador. Sin embargo, tal no es el caso y resulta perfectamente posible seguir la vida tradicional del motivo –latente y tenue, por cierto, pero, con todo, innegable— a través de varios documentos tardíos. (229) (In light of the predominance of the legitimate Cid of noble ancestry and of his bastard brother Fernán Díaz […] it would seem that the motif of the bastard Cid, alluded to and denied by the Chronicle of Castile and of 1344, would be extinguished in the ensuing traditions relating to the birth of the Campeador. Nevertheless, this is not the case and it is perfectly possible to follow the traditional life of the motif —latent and tenuous, certainly, but, when all is said and done, undeniable— through various late documents.)

I think that it is clearly Pero’s father who is established as a bastard in Las Mocedades de Rodrigo but Pero still suffers the effects of his father’s actions. His lineage is mentioned repeatedly but it is decidedly insecure. First he is described by the narrator as “un sobrino, fijo de su hermano” (938) (a nephew, son of my brother), then by Rodrigo himself as “mi sobrino, fijo eres de mi hermano” (my nephew, you are the son of my brother) before he asks him to hold his standard (938). Pero then admits “Conosco que só vuestro sobrino, fijo de vuestro hermano” (944) (I know that I am your nephew, the son of your brother) before complaining that despite this connection Rodrigo has ignored him (945–46) and that he suffers from cold and hunger (947). Pero’s mixture of obedience— he willingly takes the standard—and self-pity about his poor treatment prompts Rodrigo to launch into a rousing speech about how Pero needs to be able to take care of himself, to face up to difficulties and to embrace hardship:

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Allí dixo Rodrigo: “Calla, traidor provado, todo omne de buen logar que quiere sobir a buen estado, conviene que de lo suyo sea abidado, que atiende mal e bien sepa el mundo passarlo.” (950–54) (Then Rodrigo spoke: “Be quiet, proven traitor, any man of good standing who wants to improve his social station, should be able to take care of his affairs, so that he can face up to harm and know how to navigate the world”.)

This manifesto for self-improvement and resilience highlights again how much the poem values independence of spirit. As Clavero notes, Rodrigo’s words reflect “un oportuno apuntalamiento de la ideología que permea el poema y que opone a una sociedad basada en los privilegios cortesanos de la alta nobleza, el mérito basado en el poder militar de la pequeña nobleza” (1990, 57) (a timely underpinning of the ideology that permeates the poem and seeks to replace a society based on the courtly privileges of the high nobility with one based on merit achieved by the military power of the lower nobility). Pero is urged ostensibly to be master of his own condition and there is also an implicit sense in which the poem is ignoring his ignominious origins and focussing on the fact that he comes from a “buen logar”, and so is well born. Pero is from inherently good stock, although his lineage may be dubious, but he risks letting it down by focussing on what he sees as owed to him by others, namely Rodrigo. This inward focus is a betrayal of his world-embracing lineage, hence Rodrigo accusing him of being a traitor. It is only after he has demonstrated his bravery and obedience to Rodrigo that the latter states: “Agora te conosco, que eres fijo de mi hermano” (961) (Now I recognise you as the son of my brother).33 What does Rodrigo mean? That he has now earned the right to be recognised as one of Rodrigo’s own kin? Or is there a sense in which Rodrigo recognises and applauds the bravery that one associates with illegitimate origins? In either or both cases, he is an excellent example of the positive associations of illegitimacy and the way in which Las Mocedades de Rodrigo values sexual disruptions as part of its chaotic but constructive vision of Castilian identity. The most obvious example of illegitimacy in the work, the birth of a son to the Infanta of Savoy, will be reserved for the final section. First I wish to consider the relationship between the poem’s construction of legitimacy and illegitimacy and its presentation of the paternal, as it applies to the social, political, and religious domains.

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Fathers, Sons, and the Patriarchy The logical thing to say about fathers and sons in Las Mocedades de Rodrigo is that the latter tend to imitate the former in their character and behaviour. Vaquero regards the fact that rebelliousness tends to be passed down the male family line as an integral part of the so-called epic of revolt: “en las Mocedades de Rodrigo, como en otras historias de vasallos rebeldes, los padres prefiguran a los hijos” (1999, 125) (In Mocedades de Rodrigo, as in other stories of rebellious vassals, fathers prefigure sons). This is difficult to deny, but there are nuances to the father–son connection in the poem that deserves closer inspection. Rebelliousness may serve to distinguish and differentiate the conduct of Castilian leaders and to redefine social and political values but rebelliousness takes different forms. It is easy to standardise it and to thereby partly neutralise it by making it a shared, monolithic characteristic of Castilian male kin. In this most volatile of poems, it ought to remain dangerous, surprising, and indicative of what Mary Douglas calls “the system at war with itself”, built on contradiction (2002, 173). As Robert K. Merton puts it “rebellion occurs when emancipation from the reigning standards, due to frustration or to marginalist perspectives, leads to the attempt to introduce a “new social order” (1938, 678). The example of Gonçalo Núñez right at the start of the poem is a case in point. Gonçalo, son of Nuño Rasura, one of the two alcaldes de Castilla, is described as “malo e traviesso” (evil and wayward) and because of this his father wishes to kill him “quíssolo el padre matar” (22). Nuño himself is a dutiful character, described as giving portions of wheat to Saint James as an offering for help against the Muslims, so his rejection of his son seems extreme. We are not privy to what Gonçalo does, only that he then defects to the Muslim King Guibén in whose territory he finds Aldara Sánchez and brings her back to Castile as his wife. She bears him two literally worthless sons “los mayores non valieron nada” (30) (the older ones were worth nothing) and Fernán González, the youngest. The description of Gonçalo as “malo e traviesso” may well refer to a form of rebelliousness which later comes to heroic fruition in his son Fernán but the threat of infanticide lends it a menacing air which is only increased when we consider that Gonçalo defects to the very opponents his father is invoking divine assistance to defeat. The impression is one of imminence of conflict and violence insofar as father–son relationships have the capacity to shorten the perceived distance between

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harmony and conflict. There are also serious shortcomings associated with that relationship: a father wishing to kill a son, the birth of sons who mean nothing at all. Once Fernán González is born, disruptiveness takes on a more political complexion as we see adjoining references to mantenençia (defence) and contienda (conflict) by which the safeguarding of Castile is inextricably connected to conflict: “que mantovo a Castilla muy grant tiempo. | E ovo de aver contienda con el rey don Sancho Ordóñez de Navarra” (32–33) (who defended Castile for a very long time. | And entered into conflict with King Sancho Ordóñez of Navarre). Rebelliousness as a genealogical trait appears to preserve the aesthetic of contraries espoused by Las Mocedades de Rodrigo. There are examples of a direct passage of positive characteristics from fathers to sons but even here inferences are crucial. Garçi Fernández, the son of Fernán González, is created in the warriorly image of his father: “Si el padre fue buen guerrero, el fijo fue atamaño” (107) (If the father was a good warrior, so too was the son). His son, Sancho, described as a “buen conde” (112) (good count) also fits this positive mode. His own son, Sancho Avorta, also replicates warrior characteristics but this time as a prolific “cazador al monte” (116) (hunter in the mountains) whose name reflects his “amor de destroir” (117) (appetite for destruction). While he inherits combative tendencies, he is a singular character, and in many ways extreme, as indicated by his isolating passion for hunting and lack of ability to settle in a town (116). His father’s attempt to make his son’s claim to the Castilian throne as a count turned king sees him stress not only the deeds of his male predecessors—“El conde Fernand Gonçález, mi avuelo, sacóvos de tributario, | el conde Garçi Fernández, mi padre, | e yo divos fueros e privilegios confirmados con mi mano” (123–25) (Count Fernán González, my grandfather, freed you for having to pay tribute, | Count Garçi Fernández, my father, | and I gave you laws and privileges confirmed by my hand)—but also the respectability of his claim to the throne based on his royal connections as maternal grandson of the king of Leon: “Nieto es del rey de León, non ha quel’ diga ome nado” (128) (He is the grandson of the King of León, no man alive can say a word to him). Although the Castilians readily accept their new king, his identity as son of Count Sancho is repeatedly recalled (148, 230) as if to bolster his legitimacy as king, which is especially important when his grandfather dies and he inherits Leon and Galicia (194). This stunning transformation from antisocial hunter to king of all kingdoms sees rebellious traits tamed

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by virtue of the association with fathers and grandfathers, rather than a simple continuation of such traits. The relationship between fathers and sons is further accentuated in the descriptions of the sons of Laín Calvo. Laín is the second alcalde de Castilla and from him flows a complementary, and perhaps calmer, strand of paternal connection leading to the protagonist Rodrigo, his grandson. If Nuño Rasura’s genealogy is marked by instances of quite extreme rebelliousness and non-conformity, culminating in the hero of Castilian independence Fernán González, Laín’s is headed by a reference to a more equanimous “quatro fijos que llegaron a buen stado” (261) (four men who rose to good standing), loyal defenders of Castile. The two strands intersect when King Sancho Avorta/Abarca dies and the poet announces that his youngest son Fernando takes the throne of Castile, “la mano le bessaron castellanos, como fijos de Laín Calvo” (279) (the Castilians kissed his hand, like sons of Laín Calvo), before going on to become ruler of all Spain. All four of the sons of Laín Calvo attend court and support their new king. Fernando describes them as “buenos fijos dalgo, | del más onrado alcalde que en Castilla fue nado” (317–18) (good noblemen, | of the most honourable judge ever born in Castile) and places a surprising amount of trust and power in their hands: Vós sodes ançianos e yo del mundo non sé tanto. Mi cuerpo e mi poder métolo en vuestras manos, que vós me consejedes sin arte e sin engaño. (321–23) (You are old and I know less of the world. My body and my power I place in your hands, so that you advise me without trickery and without deceit.)

Fernando’s relative youth and naivety strengthens the paternalistic associations of Laín Calvo and his descendents. This guiding role will come to fruition later when Rodrigo is instrumental in thwarting the attempt by the King of France and German Emperor to make Spain pay tribute to France. At this juncture, Fernando decries the foreign monarchs’ view of him as a mere thoughtless child, “a mí veenme niño e sin sesso e vanme soberviando” (822) (they see me as a child without wisdom and they keep belittling me) and it falls to Rodrigo to demonstrate authority and organise the response.

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Being a descendant of Laín Calvo consistently informs the presentation of Rodrigo but certainly does not constrict him. When he first appears in the narrative, at the age of twelve, his impressive family background is emphasised: “fijo de don Diego e nieto de Laín Calvo, | e nieto del conde Nuño Alvarez de Amaya, | e visnieto del rey de León” (368– 70) (son of Don Diego and grandson of Laín Calvo, | and grandson of Count Nuño Alvarez de Amaya, | and great grandson of the King of León). This acts as a prelude to his killing of the Conde de Gormáz in response to the count’s attack on his father’s livestock and shepherds, which escalates into serious conflict. Rodrigo and his father thereafter act as a close unit, but it is clear that Rodrigo corrects shortcomings in his father’s conduct, emerging as a stronger and shrewder individual. When Diego initially hesitates in releasing the sons of the Conde de Gormáz at their sisters’ request. Rodrigo tells his father “yo seré vuestro fijo e seré de mi madre” (400) (I will be your son and my mother’s son). By affirming blood connections and characteristics his father has temporarily overlooked he succeeds in making his father grant the request. His father also displays some hesitation when summoned to see the king, fearing betrayal and death “d’esto los reyes muy malas costumbres han” (447) (in such matters kings have very wicked ways). Rodrigo refuses to leave his side: “por lo que vós passaredes, por esso quiero yo passar” (455) (whatever you go through, I want to go through too). Rodrigo also takes on an advisory role and stands up for the values of loyalty and truth in the potentially treacherous court setting, “Aguardat vuestro señor sin engaño e sin arte” (465) (Protect your lord without deceit and without trickery). He is extremely defensive of his father. When described at court as a “count killer” (473), Rodrigo claims that any punitive action against his father would amount to greater treachery and so refuses to kiss the king’s hand and is even disgusted when his father does so: “Querría más un clavo, | que vós seades mi señor, nin yo vuestro vassallo. | Porque la besó mi padre, soy yo mal amanzellado” (481–83) (I would rather a nail, | than for you to be my lord or I your vassal. | Because my father kissed it, I am badly humiliated). The king reacts by describing him as a sinful figure, a non legitimate character—“Non es éste omne, mas figura ha de pecado” (497) (This is not a man, he takes the shape of the devil)—but the double bind, as the narrative emphasises, is that Rodrigo is also related to the king, and of illustrious line himself. The king himself acknowledges this when he wishes to have Rodrigo’s help in protecting Calahorra from the king of Aragon: “Rodrigo, mi pariente e mi vassallo, | fijo eres de

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Diego Laínez e nieto de Laín Calvo” (608–9) (Rodrigo, my relative and my vassal, | you are the son of Diego Laínez and grandson of Laín Calvo). Rodrigo’s illustrious Castilian genealogy does not make him an outlying, rebellious figure in the manner of Fernán González in the Poema de Fernán González. His branch of the alcaldes de Castilla has a history of loyalty to the monarchy, albeit tested on many occasions, and in Rodrigo’s case the motif of rebellion is closer to independence. Rodrigo has a worldly wisdom that governs his behaviour and shapes this independence of spirit. We see this when he tells his father to consider the ways of the world, “Parat mientes al mundo, señor, por caridat” (401) (Stop and think about the ways of the word, lord, for pity’s sake). Moreover, before Rodrigo fights at Calahorra he undertakes a pilgrimage to the shrine of Santa María de Rocamadour where he comes across a leper who turns out to be Saint Lazarus, and who gives him the blessing: “quantas cossas comenzares, arrematarl’ás con tu mano” (651) (whatever you undertake, you will be able to achieve with your own hand). The notion that Rodrigo is capable of finishing anything he undertakes with his own hand is a clear statement of his self-sufficiency. Although Rodrigo acts on the king and on Castile’s behalf, after he wins Calahorra back for Fernando he requires the king to engage in some of the same self-construction by asking him to dub himself a knight before he will be his vassal. He emphasises how this must be done with the king’s own hand, “non esperas palmada de moro nin de cristiano […] ármate con tu mano” (706) (do not expect a dubbing from Muslim or Christians […] arm yourself with your own hand). This reflects the fact that there is no higher earthly authority than the king. However, it also reminds us that successful rulers must display a degree of self-sufficiency, a tamer version of the rebelliousness that is rooted in Castilian genealogies. To confirm this emphasis on independence, we see Rodrigo reject his genealogy when the time comes. When the sons of Laín Calvo, Rodrigo’s father and uncles, are killed in battle against the Muslims, Rodrigo’s reaction is a business-like focus on the task in hand, “por tornar los cristianos, del padre non ovo cuidado” (737) (to rally the Christians, he was not concerned with his father). The narrative reaches for an alternative genealogy in the face of the deceased Castilian dynasty, this time the assistance of “Santiago, fijo del Zebedeo” (740) (Saint James, son of Zebedee). More strikingly still, Rodrigo is perfectly happy to deny his family connections. He informs the Count of Saboya’s men that he is not a rich or powerful nobleman, nor a knight, but a mere squire, son of a merchant, and grandson of a townsman:

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e dezilde que non só rico nin poderoso fidalgo. Mas só un escudero, non cavallero armado, fijo de un mercadero, nieto de un çibdadano. Mi padre moró en rúa e siempre vendió su paño. (971–74) (and tell him that I am not rich nor a powerful noble. But I am a squire, not an armed knight, son of a merchant, grandson of a townsman. My father lived in town and always sold his cloth.)

This mocking genealogy and pretence at humble origins is an ironic attempt to degrade the count’s attempt to overcome Rodrigo. To fight such a lowly figure would be demeaning in itself, to lose in such combat would make the count the object of ridicule. Rodrigo engages in an extended reference to his father’s cloth selling, using it as a motif for the count getting his comeuppance by telling him when he is captured: “d’esta guisa vende paño aqueste çibdadano […] quien ge los conprava, assí les costava caro” (999–1000) (this is how the townsman sells his cloth […] whoever bought it from him it surely cost him dearly). The contrast when his true identity is revealed is all the more striking, judging from the count’s reaction: Cuidé que lidiava con omne e lidié con un pecado, que dentro poco ha que fueste nonbrado, que non te atiende rey moro nin cristiano en el campo, ca de muerto o de presso non te saldría de la mano. Oílo contar al rey de Françia e al papa romano, que nunca te prendiesse omne nado. (1009–13) (I thought I was fighting with a man and I fought with a devil, it was just a little while ago since you were named, they say that no Muslim nor Christian king awaits you on the field, because dead or captured they won’t escape from your hand. I heard it said by the King of France and the Pope in Rome, that no man alive every captured you.)

By sporting with the count in this way, Rodrigo shows how flexibly he uses his lineage. He is not so proud as to underplay or deny his own origins since his actions will always speak for themselves. They have now, in any case, surpassed the expectations of his genealogy to achieve reputation in their own right.

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If biological father–son relationships are another example of the way Las Mocedades de Rodrigo leaves room for creative differences and alternatives in even the most formal structures, what of the symbolic language of fatherhood that infuses the poem? To what degree does it stamp a kind of overarching and hard legitimacy on the work? Such references come in the form of allusions to God as father, “padre apoderado” (210) (all-powerful father) and to Saint James as a kind of godfather/patron, “padrón de Santiago” (707, 712) but more numerous are those references which concern the higher ecclesiastical orders and the Holy Roman Empire. The representation of the Pope is of primary interest. When he first appears, it is in connection with the foundation narrative of the diocese of Palencia and he is depicted as officially granting the privileges and rights of the diocese. Archbishop Miro’s deference, kissing his feet and stating “Merçed […] señor que sodes en lugar de Sant Pedro e Sant Pablo” (227) (Your Mercy […] you are lord in the place of Saint Peter and Saint Paul) upholds his supreme authority. Indeed, in the Palencia section there is no suggestion that he is anything other than a supremely authoritative presence. Critics have described the poem as an overt attempt to legitimise ecclesiastical affairs and serve monastic interests (Deyermond 1968, 207), particularly the movement of ecclesiastical authority from Toledo to Palencia (Funes 2004, 159). That said, the Pope’s appearances later in the poem are quite different and concern his involvement in attempts to get Spain to pay tribute to France, together with the king of France and the German emperor. The combination of the words “patriarcha” (patriarch) and “papa” (pope) is frequent in these stages of the poem (806, 1068, 1176) reflecting the close connection between papacy and patriarchy, religion and governance. Refusing to pay tribute, Rodrigo and Fernando gather forces to fight and the Pope’s response is quite surprisingly tactical. He advises the king of France and German Emperor to try to capture the Spanish king and take his kingdom before appearing to backtrack and advise the German Emperor to treat Fernando as his equal. All the while, the Cid associates the audience with the Pope with possible deception: “ellos son muy leídos e andarvos han engañando” (1145) (they are very well-read and they will be attempting to deceive you). When the Pope makes his offer to Fernando to be Emperor of Spain the Cid rejects it in the strongest of terms, in fact cursing it, “¡Dévos Dios malas graçias, ay, papa romano!” (1164) (May God give you bad grace, Oh Pope in Rome!), before stating that the king already rules over the five kingdoms of Spain and seeks the German Empire too (1167). This

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direct undermining of the Pope’s authority stands in stark contrast to his depiction during the Palencia episode and reflects how even the Pope is subject to the poem’s own standards of legitimacy. The highest ecclesiastical authority is not beyond challenge. Interestingly, it is in the context of Rodrigo announcing that they will fight the French that Fernando recalls his lineage, “Fijo eres de Diego Laínez e nieto de Laín Calvo, | cabdiella bien los reinos” (1187–88) (You are son of Diego Laínez and grandson of Laín Calvo, | lead all the kingdoms well). The paternal genealogy of Rodrigo, which the protagonist was so quick to forget and use mockingly earlier, is invoked at a moment when that of the ecclesiastical patriarchy is weakened, effectively privileging biological fatherhood over the symbolic fatherhood that is embedded in political and religious structures.

La Saboyana: Betwixt and Between The very end of the poem sees biology and patriarchy firmly united in the narrative about the Infanta of Savoy and her illegitimate child. When the Count of Savoy offers Rodrigo his only daughter in marriage, Rodrigo states that she is too good for him, and ought to marry King Fernando instead. However, Rodrigo then proposes to the king that she be taken as a concubine rather than a wife, in an obvious attempt to humiliate the French: “Señor, fazedlo privado. | ¡Enbarraganad a Francia!, si a Dios ayades pagado” (1044–45) (Lord, do it quickly | Make France your mistress, if it please God!). The king agrees. Critics have argued that the Infanta becomes a vehicle for illustrating the superiority of Rodrigo (Lacarra 1988, 17), especially since the French campaign was supposed to be about inaugurating the king’s military career (Castro Lingl 1999, 86). However, I am not persuaded that Rodrigo is trying to undermine the king’s military endeavours. It seems far more likely that making a mistress out of France is a way of making the punishment fit the crime, so to speak. Zaderenko describes this as a “justo castigo” (fitting punishment) for those who wanted Spain to send an annual tribute of fifteen virgins (2003, 269). It is yet another example of how legitimacy is used flexibly, as Lacarra Lanz confirms: “seduction or even rape is not condemned in and of itself, because moral evaluation is made to depend on the agents rather than on their acts or their victims. If the victimisers are Castilians they are applauded; their acts are portrayed as rational politics” (1999, 479).

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At the very end of the poem, just as the calls for battle against the French go out, the Infanta goes into labour and gives birth to an illegitimate son. No sooner is he born then the Pope takes him and makes him a Christian, with a speed that is clearly emphasised: “el papa fue tomarlo, | ante que el rey lo sopiesse, fue el infante cristiano” (1200–1) (the Pope took him, | before the king knew it, the Infante was a Christian). Not only is the child baptised, but it is firmly ensconced in a set of patriarchal relationships: Padrino fue el rey de Françia e el enperador alemano, padrino fue un patriarcha e un cardenal onrado. En las manos del papa el infante fue cristiano. (1202–4) (The King of France was godfather and so was the German Emperor, a patriarch was godfather and so was an honourable cardinal. At the hands of the pope the Infante became a Christian.)

With godfathers from the highest echelons of politics and religion, the child is a supreme emblem of the power and legitimacy of patriarchal structures, even that of the Deity: “¡Dios, qué fijo te ha dado! | Miraglo fue de Cristus, el Señor apoderado” (1209–10) (What a son God has given you! | It was a miracle of Christ, the all-powerful Lord). Any potential slurs emanating from illegitimate birth are annulled by both the patriarchal relationships surrounding the child, and the Pope’s proclamation of a miracle. Whether the Pope truly believes this is a miracle, or is cannily legitimising a sexual misdemeanour in order to further the interests of peace between the Christian kingdoms, is not entirely clear. However, the speed with which he baptises and pronounces the child a miracle is certainly suspicious. Legitimacy is subject to challenge even in this context, as evident by the Cid’s refusal to accept a truce between the French and Spanish, only surrender, leading to the establishment of grace period, a plazo, of four years in which the French might do so. Moreover, the last lines of the poem, spoken by King Fernando as he pronounces this plazo create an air of familiar uncertainty: “E por amor del patriarcha dóvos otro quatro años, | e por amor del cardenal” (1224– 25) (And out of love of the patriarch I give you another four years, | and out of love of the cardinal). Zaderenko believes that the king is portrayed as weak here, conceding to demands and using the phrase “por amor de” repeatedly (2003, 270). However, Bailey notes that King Fernando

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is content with this long delay because if the Holy Roman Emperor dies before the surrender is complete, he will succeed him (2007, 123). Unfinished at it is, the poem’s last words providing a fitting reflection on the curious combination of biological illegitimacy and political legitimisation embodied in this child. He is the point of cohesion between the two parties but there is something deeply unsatisfactory about this very fact, in part because of the political insufficiency of the king in proceeding to war, and because of the distinctly “in-between” status of the child which, despite the hasty actions of the Pope, is not effaced in a poem in which we are conditioned to think deeply about what constitutes true and right action. This distinctive epic poem, despite its engagement with linear genealogies, does not present its matter in strictly coherent and sequential terms. Its textual history is no doubt responsible for its at times erratic movement between individuals and events, but this ought not to limit our appreciation of a fluctuant political picture and what this might mean. Teetering at times on the verge of chaos, Las Mocedades de Rodrigo nevertheless uses conflict and change to shape new political identities and to illustrate that the only reaction in the face of such flux is adaptation and self-reliance. Those sections of the poem in which an individual’s own capabilities are acknowledged, such as Rodrigo’s words to Pero Mudo (950–54), or the words of Saint Lazarus to Rodrigo (651), ought not to be underestimated for in them lies part of the key to understanding what the poem has to say about legitimacy. Not a single one of the official sources or sponsors of legitimacy—genealogy, the church, the law, the monarchy—is without challenge in Las Mocedades de Rodrigo. Even the ending, in which an illegitimate child is hastily sanctified by the Pope, discourages absolute trust in the systems by which legitimacy is conferred. Rather than a legitimate miracle we would be better off regarding the child as a resistance of closure, as the poem wends into an indeterminate conversation about an ever-extending grace period. As the narrative ends in displacement, it literally displaces its own ending into an uncertain future, prompting reflection on its titular substance, Las Mocedades de Rodrigo, which is, after all, concerned with time and identity. We might venture, in conclusion, that mocedades means not only youth, but also the capacity for change and adaptation which legitimises not only the Castilians’ mode of governance, but also rightfully instates this poem in the wider epic tradition.

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Notes 1. Line numbers pertain to the edition by Montaner (2011). 2. See Armistead (1988) for a full discussion of chronicles which allude to the Cid’s illegitimacy. 3. “I. Fernando I el Magno”. See edition by Rochwert-Zuili (2010). 4. See Menéndez Pelayo (vol. 8, 1955, 125). There is also a version of the ballad Tres cortes armara el rey (The King Called Three Courts ) from the Cancionero de romances (1550) that alludes to the Cid’s daughters as “hijas de un labrador” (daughters of a labourer) and a traditional ballad Búcar sobre Valencia (Búcar Threatening Valencia) which in some Andalusian versions alludes to the Cid as a miller. Both are discussed in Armistead (1988, 243–44). 5. “III. Alfonso VI”. In Rochwert-Zuili (2010). Montaner further describes how the interventions at court from both the Infantes’ faction and the Cid’s work in tandem with one another, and denies a sense of climax in Asur’s comment (2011, 1004). 6. See Armistead (2000, 145) for further bibliography on the hero of illegitimate birth. 7. See Chaucer (2008, 83). 8. As Strohm notes “such talk can solidify to make itself, like prophecy, “come true”” (1998, 25). 9. The epithet referring to the Cid being knighted in a fortunate hour, “el que en buen ora çinxo espada”, is also worth noting. See, for example, C1: 41, 58, 78, 175, 439, 507, 559, 875, 899; C2: 1595, 1603, 1706, 1961, 2185. 10. Vistas are a formal meeting; in the context of the marriages this is part of the formal negotiations and preparatory process. 11. See, for example, García Montoro (1974). 12. Frank Kermode defines chronos and kairos like this: “chronos is ‘passing time’ or ‘waiting time’—that which, according to Revelation, ‘shall be no more’—and kairos is the season, a point in time filled with significance, charged with a meaning derived from its relation to the end” (2000, 46–47). 13. On this matter, Thomas Hart notes that permanence and predictability, which are the qualities epithets draw out, cannot be claimed for the Infantes (2006, 41). 14. See also the association between springtime and “allent partes del mar” (1619–20). 15. See also lines 1837, 1858–60. 16. The Siete Partidas mention the nothus or “noto” in the following terms: “Otra manera hi ha de fijos que son llamados notos, et estos son los que nascen de adulterio; et son llamados notos, porque semeja que son fijos

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17.

18.

19.

20.

21.

conoscidos del marido que la tiene en casa, et non lo son” (IV, 15, 1; 1807, 87) (There are also children called notos and these are born from adultery; and they are called this because it seems that they are recognised by the husband who has them in his household and this is not the case). For a discussion of the nothus, see also Ebbott (2003, 1) and McDougall (2017, 25–48). Las Mocedades de Rodrigo is sometimes known as the Refundición de las Mocedades de Rodrigo (Reworking of the Youthful Deeds of Rodrigo), Rodrigo y el rey Fernando (Rodrigo and King Fernando) and Crónica rimada del Cid (Rhymed Chronicle of the Cid) (Álvar and Álvar 1997, 99). On alternative names for the work, see also Funes (2004, x). It is possible that the lost epic cantar on which Las Mocedades de Rodrigo is based, a Gesta de las Mocedades, dates earlier than this, to the late thirteenth century/turn of the fourteenth century. The nature of this juglaresque version is, however, speculative. We can assume that juglares took part in the development of what we know as Las Mocedades de Rodrigo, but to what degree is difficult to specify. On the possible nature of the juglaresque narrative, including its relationship to other epic tales, see Armistead (2000, 37). Vaquero develops this discussion in a later chapter, explicitly linking Las Mocedades de Rodrigo with the other epic cantar closely associated with rebelliousness, that of Bernardo del Carpio (1999). Other critics who emphasise the rebellious nature of the hero in Las Mocedades de Rodrigo include Zaderenko (2003, 270), and Funes (2004, xlix, lviii). Lacarra Lanz observes that Rodrigo is ultimately loyal to the king: “Rodrigo’s central presence in MR, however, never actually threatens Fernando’s royal authority” (1999, 471, see also 473). Joseph O’Callaghan describes how, after the death of María de Molina, Alfonso XI’s grandmother, in 1321, “Disorder became general as the self-proclaimed regents effectively divided the realm amongst themselves” (1975, 2003–4). Lacarra Lanz describes how “the high nobility took the opportunity to forcefully expand their economic, judicial, and political power base at the expense of royal authority and the lower nobility, especially during the minorities of Fernando IV and Alfonso XI” (1999, 472). Juan Victorio suggests that Las Mocedades de Rodrigo is influenced by the Trastamaran wars, and that the author supported Pedro: “los enemigos del rey y de Rodrigo son los mismos que tuvo el rey Pedro I: el reino de Aragón, el monarca francés y el Papa. Por otra parte, las regiones petristas aparecen en el poema como amigas: Galicia (“onde los cavalleros son”, v. 792), Portugal (“essa tierra jenzor”, v. 793) y Zamora, en donde el autor sitúa continuamente la corte real, y de donde era probablemente originario. Algunos lugares citados como reinos de los moros (Olmedo, Sepúlveda, etc.) eran, a su vez, focos antipetristas” (1982, xii)

2

22. 23. 24.

25. 26. 27.

28.

29.

30.

31.

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(the enemies of the king and Rodrigo are the same as those of Pedro I: the kingdom of Aragon, the French monarch, and the Pope. Moreover, the regions that supported Pedro appear in the poem as allies: Galicia [“where the knights are”], Portugal [“that noble land”] and Zamora, where the author continually situates the royal court, and from where he probably originated. Some places cited as Muslim kingdoms (Olmedo, Sepúlveda, etc.) were, correspondingly, nuclei of anti-Pedro sentiment). Deyermond in his revision of his 1968 book also confirms that the author was a supported of Pedro and the poem redacted during the Trastamaran wars or c.1300 (in Bailey 1999, 14). On the weakening of the monarchy in this period, see Lacarra Lanz (1999, 472–73). Line numbers pertain to the edition by Bailey (2007). Webber notes that “the MR abounds in genealogical formulas, fijo de, nieto de, etc., familiar not only from the ballads but also from chronicle prose” (1980, 204). For the Poema de Fernán González, see editions by Victorio (1988) and López Guil (2001). The alcaldes, also widely referred to in medieval texts as the jueces de Castilla, serve as official judges or administrators. He seems to correspond to the historical Sancho II Garcés, king of Navarre (970–74) who played no role in the history of Castile. See Deyermond (1968, 94–95) for clarification of possible historical counterparts. Deyermond is, admittedly, tentative on this point but describes the difficulties associated with this reading as “not, however, insurmountable” (1968, 97). Martin confirms: “le thème du bâtard: c’est, dès le début de l”introduction historique” (1992, 517) (the theme of the bastard: it is there, from the beginning of the historical introduction). On the point Funes suggests that “no hay que perder de vista que el autor de la Gesta está utilizando no el poema de clerecía, sino el cantar juglaresco sobre Fernán González en una versión tardía: por lo tanto, la búsqueda de un efecto chocante en el público bien puede provenir de la fuente inspiradora de este episodio” (2004, 154) (one must not lose sight of the fact that the author of the epic is using not the clerical poem but the juglaresque song about Fernán González in a late version: as a result, the search for a shock effect in the audience could come from the source that inspired this episode). Lacarra Lanz notes, however, that “The poet of MR stresses Rodrigo’s lineage, making his family line parallel King Fernando’s, since both proceed from the first two judges of Castile and their families have allied themselves by marriage with the best lineages in Spain. Furthermore,

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Rodrigo is made to be a descendant of a king of Leon, and thus of royal blood himself, in striking contrast to the hero in the PMC ” (1999, 472). 32. With thanks to Patrick McGuinness for translating the French. 33. Zaderenko notes his bravery (2003, 268–69).

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Douglas, Mary. 2002. Purity and Danger: An Analysis of the Concept of Pollution and Taboo. London and New York: Routledge. Duggan, Joseph. 1989. The “Cantar de Mio Cid”: Poetic Creation in Its Economic and Social Contexts. Cambridge Studies in Medieval Literature, 6. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Ebbott, Mary. 2003. Imagining Illegitimacy in Classical Greek Literature. Lanham: Lexington. Funes, Leonardo. 2004. Mocedades de Rodrigo: estudio y edición de los tres estados del texto. Woodbridge: Tamesis. García Montoro, Adrián. 1974. Good or Bad Fortune on Entering Burgos? A Note on Bird-Omens in the Cantar de Mio Cid. MLN 89: 131–45. Harney, Michael. 1993. Kinship and Polity in the “Poema de Mio Cid”. West Lafayette, IN: Purdue University Press. Hart, Thomas. 2006. Studies on the “Cantar de Mio Cid”, PMHRS, 54 . London: Department of Hispanic Studies, Queen Mary, University of London. Kermode, Frank. 2000. The Sense of an Ending: Studies in the Theory of Fiction with a New Epilogue. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Lacarra, María Eugenia. 1988. La mujer ejemplar en tres textos castellanos. CIF 14: 5–20. Lacarra Lanz, Eukene. 1999. Political Discourse and the Construction and Representation of Gender in Mocedades de Rodrigo. HR 67 (4): 467–91. López Guil, Itzíar (ed.). 2001. Libro de Fernán Gonçález. Clásicos de Biblioteca Nueva, 29. Madrid: Biblioteca Nueva. Martin, Georges. 1992. Les juges de Castille: mentalités et discours historique dans l’Espagne médiévale. Annexes des Cahiers de linguistique hispanique médiévale, 6. Paris: Klinckseick. ———. 2002. El Cid de la Mocedades. In El Cid: de la materia épica a las crónicas caballerescas. Actas del Congreso Internacional “IX Centenario de la muerte del Cid” celebrado en la Univ. de Alcalá de Henares los días 19 y 20 de noviembre de 1999, ed. Carlos Alvar et al., 255–67. Alcalá de Henares: Universidad. McDougall, Sara. 2017. Royal Bastards: The Birth of Illegitimacy 800–1230. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Menéndez Pelayo, Marcelino. 1955. Antología de poetas líricos castellanos, 14 vols. Madrid: Viuda de Hernando. Menéndez Pidal, Ramón. 1957. Poesía juglaresca y orígenes de las literaturas románicas: problemas de historia literaria y cultural. Madrid: Instituto de Estudios Políticos. ———. 1959. La epopeya castellana a través de la literatura española. Madrid: Espasa-Calpe.

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———. 1992. La épica española: desde sus orígenes hasta su disolución en el romancero, ed. Diego Catalán and María del Mar de Bustos. Madrid: Espasa-Calpe. Merton, Robert K. 1938. Social Structure and Anomie. ASR 3: 672–82. Michael, Ian (ed.). 1975. Poema de Mio Cid. Madrid: Castalia. Montaner, Alberto (ed.). 2011. Cantar de Mio Cid. Madrid: Real Academia Española. Montgomery, Thomas. 1984–85. The Lengthened Lines of the Mocedades de Rodrigo. RPh 38: 1–14. ———. 1987. Horatius, Cúchulainn, Rodrigo de Vivar. RCEH 11: 541–47. ———. 1998. Medieval Spanish Epic: Mythic Roots and Ritual Language. University Park, PA: The Pennsylvania State University Press. O’Callaghan, Joseph F. 1975. A History of Medieval Spain. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Rank, Otto. 2004. The Myth of the Birth of the Hero: A Psychological Exploration of Myth, trans. Gregory C. Richter and E. James Lieberman. Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins University Press. Rochwert-Zuili, Patricia (ed.). 2010. Crónica de Castilla: Édition et présentation. New edition [online]. Paris: e-Spania Books. http://books.openedition.org/ esb/63. Santos, Francisco. 1973. El no importa de España y la Verdad en el potro, ed. Julio Rodríguez Puértolas. Woodbridge: Tamesis. Smith, Colin. 1996. On the Bastardy of the Literary Cid. In Nunca fue pena mayor (Estudios de Literatura Española en homenaje a Brian Dutton), ed. Ana Menéndez Collera and Victoriano Roncero López, 645–55. Cuenca: Ediciones de la Universidad de Castilla-La Mancha. Strohm, Paul. 1998. England’s Empty Throne: Usurpation and the Language of Legitimation 1399–1422. New Haven and London: Yale University Press. Thompson, Stith. 1955–58. Motif-Index of Folk-Literature: A Classification of Narrative Elements in Folktales, Ballads, Myths, Fables, Medieval Romances, Exempla, Fabliaux, Jest-Books, and Local Legends, 2nd edn, 6 vols. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Vaquero, Mercedes. 1994. Spanish Epic of Revolt. In Epic and Epoch: Essays on the Interpretation and History of a Genre, ed. Stephen Oberhelman et al., 146–63. Lubbock, TX: Texas Tech University Press. ———. 1999. Las Mocedades de Rodrigo en el marco de la épica de revuelta española. In Las “Mocedades de Rodrigo”: Estudios críticos, manuscrito y edición, ed. Matthew Bailey, 99–136. London: King’s College Centre for Late Antique and Medieval Studies. Victorio, Juan (ed.). 1982. Mocedades de Rodrigo. Madrid: Espasa-Calpe. ———. 1988. Poema de Fernán González. Letras Hispánicas, 151. Madrid: Cátedra.

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Webber, Ruth House. 1980. Formulaic Language in the Mocedades de Rodrigo. HR 48: 195–211. White, Hayden. 1987. The Content of the Form: Narrative Discourse and Historical Representation. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. Zaderenko, Irene. 2003. Rodrigo en las Mocedades: ¿Vasallo leal o joven rebelde? RFE 83 (3–4): 261–79.

CHAPTER 3

Split Identity: Illegitimacy in the Romancero

This is a chapter about parts and wholes, and it starts with the very essence of the old ballad tradition. Establishing what is legitimate and what is not in an art form whose very substance is hard to pin down is not an easy task. Spain’s old ballad tradition sits between two schools of thought: the first, a traditionalist view, championed by Ramón Menéndez Pidal, which declares the ballads the work of a host of anonymous singers, who cannot be named because their only name is “Legión” (Legion) or “Ninguno” (Nobody) (Menéndez Pidal 1953, 49–50); the second, an individualist perspective which prioritises the idea of definitive ballad versions created by individuals at stages in the tradition when political or social conditions rendered it apposite to do so. In the former, there is no master text, but numerous diachronic ballad variants and even a dark side of the moon, the “estado latente” (latent state) in which ballads exist unseen.1 In the latter, a definitive version can be recognised. The inscrutability of the tradition comes down to this matter: to what extent, when we talk about the ballads, must we acknowledge the blurred boundaries of each single one, its connections in every direction with other examples of its kind and, with that, its vague dating; or must we focus on the versions that reach us through print, and study them as specific examples of their kind, with all the historical, social, and cultural information that a more precise dating might bring with it? The stance which I adopt in this chapter allows for both those possibilities but also regards them as not necessarily worlds

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apart, in the sense that even in the case of ballads authored by individuals in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, the moment the ballad is printed or sung it meets an audience and, when it does so, its meaning is contingent on the varied backgrounds and understandings of its recipients. It is never one-way traffic. As I have argued so far, illegitimacy is not a hard and fast concept and within the ballad tradition it shows its variegated colours to the full. This chapter explores how illegitimacy does in miniature what the ballads themselves do at an operative level, which is to be appropriated, and notionally defined, by the rules and impositions of hierarchies, powerful figures, propaganda and gossip; to partly admit those things into their world, but to do so in such a way that they are roundly questioned. Illegitimacy is pervasive in the ballads, in keeping with their wider concern with human relationships and with the interface between individuals and their social and political worlds. It is explored in ballads derived from the frontier between the Christian kingdoms and the Muslim kingdom of Granada; it is present in Carolingian ballads related to France, in historical-epic ballads, and also in the novelesque ballads which explore the chicaneries of love and its associated effects.2 The prominence of illegitimacy in ballads from the modern oral tradition proves that this theme is at the heart of the ballad tradition throughout its impressive time span.3 Although I discuss many illegitimate characters in the examples that follow, illegitimacy in the ballads is not just their subject matter, it is part of their identity.4 The ability of illegitimacy, and of the ballad tradition, to simultaneously absorb and question power makes it a fitting arena in which to explore hybridity. My understanding of hybridity is informed by cultural studies, specifically Homi Bhaba’s definition of hybridity as the “reimplication of identities in strategies of subversion that turn the gaze of the discriminated back upon the eye of power” (1994, 160), which could be understood as “an active moment of challenge and resistance against a dominant cultural power” (Young 1995, 21). I explore ballads relating to the epic tales of the Siete Infantes de Lara and Bernardo del Carpio, in which illegitimacy is closely bound up with the questions of lineage, kinship, and entitlement that pitch fluctuating identities against forms of institutional power. The security of identities based on clan and family ties is questioned in a series of personal incidents, injuries, and covert practices. I then discuss ballads about King Pedro I in which illegitimacy is configured in the context of the spoken word and public opinion, and the flexibility and relativity of truth is thereby showcased, illustrating how

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“transparency is the action of the distribution and arrangement of differential spaces, positions, knowledges, in relation to one another” (Bhaba 1994, 155). Lastly, I explore two ballads, Abenámar and Espinelo, in which illegitimacy becomes a space of imagination and possibility, based on the way the eponymous characters illustrate that apparently contrasting or split elements of an identity are more than the sum of their parts.

Revenge and Reputation: The Siete Infantes de Lara The relationship between epic and ballad in medieval Iberia has been a longstanding critical question. One of the tenets of Menéndez Pidal’s neo-traditionalist theory is that the epic lives on in variants and reworkings throughout the centuries that can cross genres, including to balladry. He describes how the epics effectively turned into ballads, “todas las gestas se hicieron romances; es que la epopeya se hizo romancero” (1953, 193) (all of the epic songs became ballads; the epic turned into balladry). Not all critics have been convinced that this is true but his theory has endured.5 The legacy of the epic is difficult to accurately assess, not least because of the high proportion of lost poems, but it has long been assumed reasonable to look to chronicles and ballads for evidence of extant epic texts (Deyermond 1996, 28). It is also sensible to acknowledge that the fragmentation of epics into ballads is one of a number of possible connections between the two genres, as Samuel Armistead observed when suggesting that the Romancero’s relationship with the epic was “complex and diversified -a variety of contacts of which fragmentation was only one possible modality” (1981, 384). The genre-crossing that Menéndez Pidal posits also risks us seeing the ballads as derivative. On this point, Stephen Gilman argues that a ballad needs to be understood on its own poetic terms and as an “organic unity […] unique unto itself” (1972, 154). Here we move into individualist ground, akin to Alan Deyermond’s reasoning that the each version of the epic should be treated independently, as “an artistically coherent realization of an epic tradition” (1976, 282). Menéndez Pidal does, admittedly, in his more detailed hypothesis of fragmentation, suggest that the resulting ballad becomes an independent poetic creation: listeners repeated the most appealing passage sung to them by a minstrel, they learnt it by heart and sung it themselves, rendering it popular but also giving it an independent poetic life: “al cantarlo ellos a su vez, lo popularizaban, formando con esos pocos versos

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un canto aparte, independiente del conjunto: un romance” (1945, 139) (while singing them they popularised them at the same time, creating with these few verses a separate song, independent of the rest: a ballad). Neither possibility can be outrightly rejected, and it requires case by case treatment in valuing the ballads as independent creative units, and recognising the traditional, oral processes that informed their content. The legend of the Siete Infantes de Lara (Seven Infantes of Lara) was composed around the year 1000 (Deyermond 1987, 75) and is considered the oldest of Spain’s cantares de gesta.6 A text of an epic song does not survive but the content of what might have been the epic narrative can be found in chronicles, notably Alfonso X’s Estoria de España (1252– 84) (History of Spain) the first written source of the legend. The legend reappears in the Crónica de 1344 (Chronicle of 1344) in greater detail, especially in its concluding stages, where the importance of the illegitimate character Mudarra is brought to the fore.7 Pártese el moro Alicante (The Muslim leaves Alicante) was published in the 1550 Silva de varios romances (Miscellany of Various Ballads ). According to John Cummins it is “not a surviving epic fragment, but a poem created by a deliberate process of selective reorganisation on the part of a man inspired by an old and possibly dying epic legend” (1970, 381).8 The ballad presents illegitimacy as its finale, reserving until its very last line the appearance of a child born through a relationship between the sister of Almanzor, the Muslim ruler of Córdoba, and the Christian noble Gonzalo Gustos to avenge the brutal murder of his half-brothers, the seven Infantes. This is fitting because illegitimacy is notionally “after the event” in this ballad, a continuation of lineages and reputations forged long ago. But yet it relies on a kind of temporal elasticity by which it is both past and future at the same time. Time looms large at the start of the ballad, which describes a Muslim setting out from Alicante on the eve of Saint Cyprian’s day. He takes eight severed heads of noblemen to Almanzor who initially assesses them, in the crude economics of battle, as compensation for his own fallen men: Pártese el moro Alicante víspera de sant Cebrián; ocho cabezas llevaba, todas de hombres de alta sangre. Sábelo el rey Almanzor, a recibírselo sale; aunque perdió muchos moros, piensa en esto bien ganar. (ll. 1–4)9

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(The Muslim leaves Alicante on St Cyprian’s Eve; he was carrying eight heads, all men of noble blood. King Almanzor sees it, he comes out to greet him; although he lost many Muslim men, he sees opportunity for gain.)10

This day, September 16, has particular resonance since Cyprian was an early Christian bishop who endured martyrdom. The ballad is setting us up tacitly for a narrative in which death is synonymous with violence, the slaughter of the good. Two central impressions arise from this ballad in relation to illegitimacy and they are closely connected. The first is how strongly the ballad emphasises visual dynamics, particularly seeing and recognition, and so presents illegitimacy in a notably demonstrative, even theatrical, setting. The second is that the substance of the ballad is a fluid presentation of the murder of the Infantes as a deed which calls a halt to their greatness in this world, yet at the same time reinforces and continues that greatness in perpetuity. Illegitimacy is paradoxically vital to this temporal fluidity and to ensuring the continuation of the Infantes’ reputations after death. To begin with the visual field, the first thing Almanzor does when the eight heads arrive is to mount a tablado, a kind of platform or scaffold, in order to better inspect the heads of still anonymous Christian knights: “Manda traer un tablado para mejor las mirar” (l. 5). The Estoria de España’s version of the legend of the Siete Infantes describes how at the wedding feast of Ruy Velásquez and Doña Lambra, amidst all the games and festivities a tablado, a mock castle, becomes a focus for knightly competition, and family rivalry, as the noblemen of the kingdom try to outdo each other in striking it: “mando Roy Blasquez parar un tablado muy alto en la glera cercal rio, et fizo pregonar que quienquier quel crebantasse quel darie ell un don muy bueno” (Alfonso X 1955, vol. 2, 431) (Ruy Blasquez ordered a very tall mock castle to be erected at the sandbank beside the river and proclaimed that he would give a very fine gift to whoever knocked it down).11 The tablado marks a movement from a “real” world of into one of conscious staging, akin to those objects which are “practically constitutive of the mise en scène itself” (Biet and Triau 2019, 239). It highlights the performative nature of knightly identity and becomes a synecdoche around which questions of manhood are customarily resolved. This visible structure is also literally a stage insofar as it positions the heads in full view and invites the look, at the same time

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as more implicitly reminding us that these identities are both constructed and now effaced, existing in a virtual space of the collective imagination called reputation.12 In Pártese el moro Alicante, Almanzor wants to see the heads better and, in the emphasis on the verb mirar (to see), identity seems externally determined. However, the process of revealing who the heads belong to illustrates that public perception warrants a more intrinsic form of recognition, one which crystallises in the verb conoscer (to recognise, to know) as used by Gonzalo Gustos when he is brought out from prison to identify the heads of his seven sons and their tutor. Conoscer is both seeing and seeing the truth: Respondió Gonzalo Gustos: —Presto os diré la verdad. Y limpiándoles la sangre, asaz se fuera a turbar; dijo llorando agramente: ¡Conóscolas por mi mal! (ll. 11–13)

(Gonzalo Gustos responded: soon I will tell you the truth. And cleaning the blood from them, he was moved; crying bitterly he said: I recognise them, woe is me.)

The lament, in which Gustos takes each head in turn and addresses it, acknowledging who it is, and what their salient qualities were, is a curious combination of the disembodied and the unified. From the severed heads he starts to construct a narrative of what makes a good and honourable man from the visual correlative upwards. Disconnected body parts start to shape an increasingly coherent set of qualities, including proficiency on the battlefield “animoso, buen guerrero, muy gran feridor de espada” (l. 42) (energetic, a good warrior, a great wielder of the sword), loyalty, and being a trustworthy individual, “hombre de fiar” (l. 19). The concrete, the evidence-based and the tangible all serve their purpose in the ballad. References to genuine blood and tears render concrete what could otherwise be regarded as an extreme and inconceivable situation, “limpiándoles la sangre […] dijo llorando agramente” (ll. 12–13). Even emotional pain is presented as a physical experience that can fold a body, “el dolor se le doblara” (l. 44) (the pain bent him double). These concrete points of reference nevertheless provide a springboard to the more abstract realm of fame and memory where paradoxically the dead can be both lost and preserved. We see this in the address Gustos makes to his son Fernán González, who is named after the Castilian epic hero of the same name:

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¡Oh hijo Fernán González, —(nombre del mejor de España, del buen conde de Castilla, aquel que vos baptizara) (ll. 35–6)

(Oh my son Fernán González [name of the best of Spain, of the good count of Castile, that with which you were baptised!])

This reference and others—like the description of Martin Gómez as “jugador era de tablas, el mejor de toda España” (l. 27) (player of games, the best in all of Spain), or Suero Gustos, “todo el mundo os estimaba” (l. 30) (the whole world held you in esteem)—illustrate that renown is already built into the identities of the Infantes but that their reputation is, at the same time, precarious, theatrical, and contingent on the values of a world in constant flux. This realm of fame and reputation, insecure as it is, requires the support of the illegitimate child in this drama, whose role is on the surface to avenge the loss of his kin, but who more subtly subtends the framework by which they might be remembered. The triumphant mood of Almanzor at the outset of the ballad gradually shifts to one of empathy, and with that comes increasing proximity between the Muslim ruler and his Christian captive Gustos. Worlds close in and worlds collide as the Almenar battlefield, initially associated with Almanzor’s sweeping victory, becomes known as the site of the murder of innocents by members of their own kin. A prison space also frames the ballad, in reverse order. At the outset, Gustos is released to identify the heads and at the end returns to prison, but Almanzor gives him his beautiful sister for company and consolation. The decision to do so is prompted by a crescendo of sorrow, in which Gustos wishes he were dead, but the decision is also made in connection with Gustos’s private sorrow being publically endorsed: “Al duelo que el viejo hace, toda Córdoba lloraba” (l. 50) (at the sorrow which the old man expressed, all of Córdoba cried). Gustos’s feelings are validated by being shared and echoed in the public domain, adding further lustre to the shining reputations of the Infantes, but Almanzor’s concern and taking of Gustos under his wing (back to prison) may also hint at the threat of wholescale public disorder Gustos’s sorrow presents, a threat mollified by his own sister: “El rey Almanzor cuidoso consigo se lo llevaba” (l. 51) (King Almanzor carefully took her with him). Almanzor’s sister, who remains unnamed, enables Gustos to shed his rage, “con ésta […] vino a perder su saña” (l. 55) (with her […] he lost his

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wrath). A child is born but never named: “que de ella le nació un hijo que a los hermanos vengara” (l. 56) (and from her was born a son to avenge the brothers). The anonymity with which both the child and the mother are treated in this conclusion contrasts with the process of naming that takes place throughout the lament. The formalities of fame and legacy, the testimonies of word and reputation that form the substance of Gustos’s lament, give way to the unspoken potential and potency of this new blood relative of the Infantes. The child is a hybrid figure of mixed religion and ethnicity, born in a crucible of pain and passion and destined to convert anger into action. The endnote of the ballad, and hence the inaugural action associated with the child is vengeance. The stress of the last line “que a los hermanos vengara” (l. 56), typical of the elasticity of tenses in the ballad, may either denote the incidence of the child going on to avenge, or suggest that the child is born to avenge, in deterministic fashion. The phrase “vino a perder su saña” (l. 55) is also vague, leaving it unclear as to whether or not the child is deliberately conceived to appease the rage Gustos feels at the loss of his sons. Julio Hernando argues that in the ballad “the son is revenge. The ‘morica’ acts as a container for Gonzalo’s saña, for the mental state resulting from unsatisfied revenge, and it is that saña that, imaginatively, generates the son” (2010, 67). In that case, I would go further and suggest that the child has an epic stature, reminiscent of Achilles and Ulysses in the Iliad and Odyssey, by taking on the mantle of the wrath, “saña”, of Gustos. The ending of the ballad also underlines the theatricality of revenge as Giovanna Summerfield observes, “every revenge is like the staging of a play, with the avenger in need of an audience, for his self-reinstatement” (2010, vii). Here the word “vengara” is left dramatically hanging, poised at the entrance of the still anonymous actor. Nested in this chilling ending is an emphasis not just on vengeance, however, but on sibling bonds. The child is the new life that comes from death, and the blood link to the dead Infantes is important. Sibling bonds are doubly emphasised insofar as Almanzor orders his sister to attend to Gustos, and the child born from this relationship is set to avenge his half-brothers. Revenge becomes an act of loyalty, cohesion, and restoration as much as one of violent cleavage. The child is positioned as an outsider, of illegitimate birth, but is also named as a brother. Stepping into the void created by their death, he is paradoxically multiple, both a brother to the Infantes, and a replacement for the Infantes themselves,

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enacting the revenge that they themselves can not take, ensuring their future legacy. He can even be a kind of double, a direct fulfilment of their loss.13 Hernando refers to his social appeal: “He appeals to the nobility by describing the process of dynastic re-creation, but also to the nonnoble ‘caballeros’ by presenting them a narrative of social mobility, an example of how birth outside the ranks of strictly legitimate nobility is not an invincible obstacle to access into that class” (2010, 68). However, “access to that class” clearly carries high expectations here, assuming that it comes at the price of committing murder. The act of vengeance is reminiscent of the obligation of pietas, “the typical Roman attitude of dutiful respect towards gods, fatherland, and parents and other kinsmen” (Hornblower et al. 2012, 258).14 This could extend to siblings, as Beryl Rawson outlines with reference to the classical period: Children owe pietas to parents because they owe them life and all sorts of benefits. Siblings receive such benefits together, which helps form the next closest bond […] They have parents in common […] This bond antedates all those who come later -wife, children, friends, relations- and cannot be displaced by these. (2003, 244)

Classical literature, notably the final episode of the Aeneid and Ovid’s Metamorphoses, confirms that pietas can be revenge (Prince 2010, 3). It is not, I think, far-fetched to suggest that the attitude and mode of pietas even extends to Almanzor himself in his offering his own sister to console Gustos. The sibling bond could be seen to link the two families and the two ethnicities, knitting them together in a spirit of common reparation of a murderous offence. The maternal blood connection of the child is particularly important; the ballad stresses the act of birth with the line “de ella le nació” (l. 56) stamping the audience’s memory with the fact that he is the son of Almanzor’s sister. Caroline Walker Bynum emphasises the power of the maternal connection “the new life that is born is flesh formed from the mother’s blood; her blood literally continues in—is —the child’s body. And the blood in that body is its life” (161). However, as Peggy McCracken explains, maternal blood was also seen as dangerous and polluting, “The blood that a child shares with its mother is the blood of parturition, a polluting blood” (2003, 61). Here the ritual of revenge seems destined nevertheless to keep that possibility at bay, to restore purity through the shedding of a far more tainted blood. Blood may be linked to parents and to kin but the child’s mixed blood reminds

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us, ultimately, that blood also represents individuality and difference. In the end, the child’s blood is his own. Using the example of Catherine of Siena, Walker Bynum illustrates that “the son who sees his father’s blood shed and feels impelled to avenge it recognises himself as the enemy” (158). The heterogeneous nature of the child’s identity does not detract from it being a unique identity, as reflected in form of the ballad’s ending where the child’s identity and action are ultimately left to the imagination. In a ballad all about the visual apparatus of identity and the embodiment and endurance of public reputation it is striking how the ending retreats into an unseen, private, and temporally fluid space of possibility. In contrast with the esoteric finale of Pártese el moro Alicante, A cazar va don Rodrigo (A-Hunting goes Rodrigo) shouts the name of the illegitimate child—Mudarra González—from the proverbial rooftops, calling attention to the role of a name in the process of establishing identity and reputation. This ballad was published in the Cancionero de romances sin año (Songbook of ballads without date) and Silva (Miscellany) and Cancionero (Songbook) of 1550 and centres around a bitter man-toman confrontation between Rodrigo de Lara and Mudarra. Vengeance continues to be a central focus for the many contradictions that illegitimacy entails. In fact, it introduces one more: the rationale for vengeance, treachery, is presented as a more intrinsic type of illegitimacy than unusual circumstances of birth. The contrary nature of the ballad is announced in its spatial setting; Rodrigo is off hunting and decides to seek relief beneath a beech tree but in what ought to be a moment of peaceful repose Rodrigo is fuming, cursing Mudarra, and wishing he had him right there in person so he could rip out his soul: A cazar va don Rodrigo, y aun don Rodrigo de Lara, con la grande siesta que hace arrimádose ha a una haya, maldiciendo a Mudarillo, hijo de la renegada, que si a las manos le hubiese que le sacaría el alma. (ll. 1–4)

(A-Hunting goes Don Rodrigo, and there goes Rodrigo de Lara, for a long siesta he lies out under a beech tree, cursing little Mudarra, son of the renegade woman, for if he had him in his hands he would tear out his soul.)

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The contrast between the tranquil setting and Rodrigo’s fiery temper strikes an unsettling note from the outset, one that fits the ballad’s wider narrative: a contest for authoritative identity. When Mudarra appears and the two men introduce themselves to one another, they invoke a wider context of kinship ties. Rodrigo starts by stating: A mí me dicen don Rodrigo, y aun don Rodrigo de Lara, cuñado de Gonzalo Gustos, hermano de doña Sancha; por sobrinos me los hube los siete infantes de Salas. (ll. 9–11)

(They call me Don Rodrigo and Don Rodrigo de Lara, brother-in-law of Gonzalo Gustos, brother of Doña Sancha; my nephews were the seven Infantes of Salas.)

The lines so far repeating Rodrigo’s name—“don Rodrigo, y aun don Rodrigo de Lara”—may sound a confident note, but the response is devastating. Mudarra answers back with his own claim to an illustrious identity: Si a tí dicen don Rodrigo, y aun don Rodrigo de Lara, a mí Mudarra González, hijo de la renegada, de Gonzalo Gustos hijo y anado de doña Sancha por hermanos me los hube los siete infantes de Salas. (ll. 14–17)

(If they call you Don Rodrigo, and Don Rodrigo de Lara, they call me Mudarra González, son of the renegade woman, son of Gonzalo Gustos and step-son of Doña Sancha they were my brothers, the seven Infantes of Salas.)

This retort underscores quite how entangled the relationships and the grievances are in this complicated tale and, crucially, how it is not really family background which defines the respective characters of Rodrigo and Mudarra, but their individual actions. Mudarra’s response not only matches Rodrigo’s but demonstrates even closer ties to the Lara clan. While Rodrigo is the brother-in-law of Gonzalo, brother of Sancha, and uncle of the Infantes, Mudarra is son of Gonzalo, step-son of Sancha, and brother to the Infantes. Mudarra’s proximity to the key players in the legend is nevertheless subject to several attempts in the ballad to distance and alienate him.

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His name is first given in the diminutive form, the potentially belittling Mudarrillo (l. 3) and here seems to coincide with Rodrigo’s opinion of him, since he uses the term directly (l. 13). The narrator also refers to him as Mudarrillo, “El señor estando en esto, Mudarrillo que asomaba” (l. 5) (while the man was doing this, little Mudarra was looming). In this instance, however, Mudarra is not at all to be underestimated, literally looming large over Rodrigo, so the diminutive takes on ironic dimensions. Mudarra refers to himself as Mudarra González, suggestive again of the denigratory associations of the diminutive form but also revealing a name with both Arabic and Christian components. Interestingly, this mixture is explicitly highlighted in the Refundición toledana de la crónica de 1344 (Toledan Reworking of the Chronicle of 1344) when Almanzor wishes to give him a Muslim name and his sister refuses, so Mudarra ends up with a mixed name: fabló Almançor a su hermana sy çircunçidarían & porrnían nonbre de moro. Et la ynfanta le dixo & pidió por merçed que de aquello non curase, pero por ende, Almançor non dexó de le faser muy grand & onrrada fiesta en aquel dia, & pusiéronle por nonbre al niño don Mudarra Gonçales. (Lathrop 1971, 134) (Almanzor spoke to his sister about circumcising him and giving him a Muslim name. And the princess spoke to him and told him please do not consider it but, in the end, Almanzor went ahead with a great and honourable feast that day and they gave the child the name Mudarra Gonzalez.)

Emilio García Gómez proposes that Mudarra comes from the Arabic mudarra “whose meaning is the zoological one of mule, offspring of a mare and an ass, and which came by extension to mean someone whose mother was Arabic and whose father was not, or someone whose mother was nobler than their father” (1951, 96).15 García Gómez sees in this a clear pride and sense of superiority in Arabic blood: “supone una exaltación de la sangre árabe con mengua de la cristiana” (1951, 93) (it implies an exaltation of Arabic blood and a lessening of the Christian element). Menéndez Pidal’s only real objection to this theory is the prevalence of the proper name Mutarra, Mutarraf (meaning craggy, or rocky) in the tenth, eleventh, and twelfth centuries by Muslims and even

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Christians (1951, 90, 94). He describes how the two terms might have become confused: el nombre propio Mutárraf , aplicado a un cristiano así nacido, bien pudo confundirse e intercambiarse con el nombre apelativo mudarra, “mulo, mulato, bastardo”, primero despectivamente, en boca de musulmanes, después, como suele ocurrir, el insultado acepta el término deprimente con resignación o con orgullo. (96) (the proper name Mutárraf , applied to a Christian born in these circumstances could easily be confused or interchanged with the common noun mudarra, “mule, mulatto, bastard”, in the first instance pejoratively, in the mouth of Muslims, later, as usually happens, the insulted individual takes on the humiliating name with resignation or with pride.)

García Gómez’s theory provides compelling evidence for Mudarra’s pride in his mixed identity and a means of bringing into the ballad some recognition of his mother who, aside from being described as a renegade, is absent. Mudarra’s stated proximity to the Lara clan takes centre stage and he is repeatedly referred to as “hijo de la renegada” (ll. 3, 12, 15), literally the son of one who has renounced their faith. Is this intended as an aspersion cast against his mother for her liaisons with a Christian man, or are we to assume that she is already not a practising Muslim? Mudarra’s mother is never named but her presence is irrepressible nonetheless in the contest of names and labels. Illegitimacy, via the lens of Rodrigo, exists in the ballad as birth out of wedlock, with the added slur of renunciation of a religious faith. It is easy to see how a Christian noble like Rodrigo might use Mudarra’s hybrid identity as political and social capital. However, Mudarra’s words cause a seismic shift in the definition of illegitimacy: por hermanos me los hube los siete infantes de Salas. Tú los vendiste, traidor, en el val de Arabiana. (ll. 17–18)

(They were my brothers, the seven infantes of Salas. You sold them, traitor, in the Arabiana Valley.)

Mudarra is not only defined socially and politically by his relationship to his brothers, but speaks a language of brotherhood that breathes a whole

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new meaning into the definition of family bonds. Speaking Rodrigo’s betrayal, Mudarra takes us to the dramatic and emotional heart of the ballad. This horrifying statement has obvious biblical connotations, reminiscent of Christ being handed over by Judas for thirty pieces of silver (Mt. 27: 3–10, Mark 14: 10–11). The Arabiana valley could even be compared to the Garden of Gethsemane where the betrayal by Judas is accomplished. Biblical connections notwithstanding, the dreadful deed is inextricably connected in the collective memory with the place of its perpetration. Arabiana is both the verifiable, tangible place of true illegitimacy, and a place which catapults the betrayal into cultural and religious narratives of enormous magnitude. The placement of the term traidor after the verb simple past tense verb vendiste provides a seamless equation between action and identity, defusing, and rendering ironic in the process, Rodrigo’s choice of insult for Mudarra’s mother, renegada. If this were not enough proof of Rodrigo’s empty understanding of family bonds, in the final line of the ballad Mudarra calls him a traitor again: “Aquí morirás, traidor, enemigo de doña Sancha” (l. 22) (Here you will die, traitor, enemy of Doña Sancha). Rodrigo loses his name and acquires a label, a traitor, an enemy to his own kin. The symmetry emphasised in the ballad’s representation of the conversation between Rodrigo and Mudarra is found conclusively unequal by the end. The genteel comparison of names and identities with which the ballad begins is totally derailed by the end of it. Mudarra appears to enjoy matching Rodrigo’s claims and threats like for like, and then destroying them. For example, Rodrigo’s initial mission of vengeance, to take Mudarra’s soul out, “que le sacaría el alma” (l. 4), is thrown back at him by Mudarra in the end, “si Dios a mí me ayuda, aquí dejarás el alma” (l. 19) (if God so helps me, here you will leave your soul behind). In Mudarra’s terms, this is no longer simply about physical revenge, it is about a higher order of judgement and retribution reached through the simple advocacy of loyalty in a world of broken trust. This is not a position exclusively governed by any single religious group. Another example of this final demolition of symmetry comes in Mudarra’s response when Rodrigo asks him to wait while he goes to fetch his arms. Mudarra pithily answers that he will give him the “wait” that he gave to the Infantes: “El espera que tú diste a los infantes de Lara” (l. 21). Revenge is served up in the language Rodrigo chose; it is actually cut from the same cloth as betrayal; extracting its lethal consequences from within itself. And when we leave symmetry behind, having come a long way from the charade of

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social graces with which the ballad starts, we arrive at death as a certain future for Rodrigo, but we also meet Doña Sancha, the mother of the Infantes, the woman most closely affected by the murders: “Aquí morirás, traidor, enemigo de doña Sancha” (l. 22). In this allusion to a mother bereaved, the ballad chooses a political language over one of sentimentality. Rodrigo goes down in the collective memory as a traitor and an “enemy” to his own sister, and it has taken an illegitimate character to put him there, using the words of the political world from which Rodrigo would see him excluded.

Court(ing) Secrets: Bernardo del Carpio The heroic figure of Bernardo del Carpio features widely in Iberian ballad and chronicle tradition and his tale, set in the ninth century, was possibly inspired by a patriotic impulse to create an Iberian counterpart to the great French hero Roland.16 Each printed ballad is an autonomous narrative in its own right, and will be treated as such, but it is important to acknowledge that this is a story with an already heterogeneous content and two distinct traditions: one in which Bernardo is the son of Jimena, the sister of the King of Asturias-León, Alfonso “el Casto” (the Chaste) and the Count of Saldaña, San Díaz; the other in which he is the illegitimate son of Charlemagne’s sister and a Spanish count (Álvar and Álvar 1997, 381). I will be concentrating on the former, and particularly on ballad interpretations of Bernardo’s relationship with his biological father as seen through the lens of his father’s imprisonment. The ballads I have selected were printed in the mid to late sixteenth century and provide a compelling insight into the relationship between illegitimacy and secrecy, the effect this has on Bernardo’s identity, and on the audience’s understanding of whether the king is justified in punishing Bernardo’s father, and jeopardising his relationship with a military hero who is, after all, of half-royal blood. Is he right to consign San Díaz to oblivion or is he throwing out the proverbial baby with the bathwater? Bound up in the representation of Bernardo’s illegitimacy is the paradox of secrecy. Secrecy “implies its own revelation” (Lochrie 1999, 1) and by attempting to cover over illegitimacy it has the counter-intuitive effect of rendering the secret the least significant element in the process, and shining a light instead on the powers-that-be which impose secrecy, and the ways they do so. It also demonstrates effects which far outweigh the potential damage of illegitimacy itself. The ballads about Bernardo explore the poignant, personal

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consequences of secrecy as well as the way it jeopardises dynastic rights, allowing rightful inheritance to be passed over by a political world which moves on. The circumstances of Bernardo’s birth are explored in the ballad En los reinos de León (In the Kingdoms of León) which was published in the Cancionero de 1550. It describes the love affair between King Alfonso’s beautiful sister Jimena and the Count of Saldaña and is concise enough to cite in full: En los reinos de León el casto Alfonso reinaba; hermosa hermana tenía, doña Jimena se llama, enamorárase de ella ese conde de Saldaña, mas non vivía engañado, porque la infanta lo amaba. Muchas veces fueron juntos, que nadie lo sospechaba; de las veces que se vieron la infanta quedó preñada. La infanta parió a Bernardo, y luego monja se entraba. Mandó el rey prender al conde y ponerle muy gran guarda. (ll. 1–8)17

(In the kingdoms of León the chaste Alfonso reigned; he had a beautiful sister, Doña Jimena was her name, the Count of Saldaña fell in love with her, but he was not a fool, because her love was returned. They were together many times, without anyone suspecting; from the times they met each other the princess was expecting. The princess gave birth to Bernardo, and in the convent made her entry. The king had the count arrested and placed him under sentry.)

Royal power looms large in the opening to the ballad, but is quickly overshadowed by the activities of the king’s beautiful sister. The comfortable tautology of “reinos” and “reinar” is replaced by the equally natural elision between “hermosa” and “hermana”, which we come to realise is typical of a ballad which uses almost synonymous terms and embedded words like stepping stones to a conclusion which cannot be forestalled. Thus, we witness the movement from “enamorárase” to its validation with “amaba” (ll. 3–4); so too the fateful verbal sequencing of “preñada”, “parió”, “prender”, and “ponerle” (ll. 6–8). The narrative may be linear in that respect but the nucleus of the ballad is a space for lingering on the meaning of duplicity, and warming to a pair of lovers who pull of

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the near-impossible by managing not to fool one another, and to do the fooling. The count and Jimena are cast-iron lovers not victims of engaño (l. 4) in their dealings with one another and they are very good at not being suspected in their frequent rendez-vous (l. 5). It is only the physical evidence of a child that gives away their secret, forcing Jimena—perhaps evident in the concessive tone of “luego monja se entraba”—to become a nun, to pass into a socially sanctioned version of a secret life, cloistered away from the world and the hard evidence of her love affair. Similarly, the count is held under guard, his worldly actions suspended in what could be read as an object lesson in how even the most committed and discreet of lovers will meet justice. However, the ballad teaches a broader lesson about the impossibility of containment. This is evident not only in the frequency of their intercourse but in the fact that the offspring of that affair is unaccounted for in the narrative, and so exists beyond it, powerful in a way the king might have underestimated.18 Numerous modern variants of the ballad exist, many of which were collected in Morocco, and in them love is not hidden away as it is here. In a version from Tetuán, Mañanita era, mañana (It was Morning, Morning ) the Granadan plain is a veritable carnival of love: Mañanita era, mañana, al tiempo que alboreaba, gran fiesta hacen los moros por la bella de Granada. Arrevuelven sus caballos, jugando iban a la danza, aquel que amigas tenía, allí se le señalaban, aquel que no las tenía, procuraba de ganarlas. (ll. 1–5)19

(It was morning, morning, when the day is breaking, in beautiful Granada, the Muslims are merrymaking. Their horses stir, they are playing at dancing, he who had lovers found them there waiting, he would had none tried to win them.)

Moreover, almost all modern variants recorded develop the narrative in such a way that the queen overhears Jimena weeping and asks how she can help. Jimena tells the queen that her son is asking for his father, who is in prison, and the queen either intervenes successfully to secure the count’s release, immediately followed by the marriage of the lovers, or promises faithfully to do so. Here are two such endings:

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“¿Cuál es la tuya, la reina, y cuál es la tu demanda?” “Que me saques a ese conde de las prisiones de Italia, y le cases con Ximena, Ximena la mi cuñada.” […] Otro día a la mañana las ricas bodas se arman. (ll. 34–40)20

(“What do you wish, my queen, what is your demand?” “That you release that count from prison in Italy and marry him with Ximena, Ximena my sister-in-law.” […] The following day lavish weddings take place.)

“Por Dios te juro, Ximena, Ximena la mi cuñada, que ni pan coma en manteles, ni ponga mi cabeza en almohada, hasta que salga ese Conde, ese conde de Sandaya.” (ll. 26–28)21

(I swear to God, Ximena, Ximena my sister-in-law, that I will neither break bread, nor lay my head down until that count is released, that Count of Sandaya.)

The modern oral tradition also converts the Count of Saldaña from a prisoner to a highly visible knight on a white horse, with a golden saddle or beard, depending on the version: “aquel del caballo blanco, el déla silla dorada” (l. 8) (he of the white horse, he of the golden saddle)22 ; “Ese del caballo blanco, el de la barba dorada” (l. 8) (he of the white horse, he of the golden beard).23 These adaptations represent a move away from the theme of a secret marriage which persisted in the sixteenth-century printed versions. Secret marriage was a grey area; Alfonso X’s Siete Partidas describes how it did take place, “celadamiente et en ascondido se casan algunos et facen fijos” (in secret and in hiding some people marry and have children) but suggests that any child born to a marriage that is not in accordance with the rules of the holy church will be illegitimate: “Otrosi non son legítimos ningunos de quantos fijos nascen de padre et de madre que non son casados segunt manda santa eglesia” (Alfonso X 1807, 88) (Also none of the children born to a father and mother who are not married in accordance with the holy church are legitimate).24 Secret marriages

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evidently happened, but the definition and the nature of church marriage was subject to interpretation. Witte describes how medieval theologians and canonists “changed and deepened the understanding of what a ‘lawful marriage’ entailed and what other unions, besides adultery and incest, were ‘prohibited’ and thus yielded illegitimates” (2009, 75). By the early modern period, Richard Adair notes how: Clandestine marriages […] were genuine, valid, and binding marriages under canon law. However, they did not take place under the set of circumstances deemed necessary to stamp a ceremony as regular. Usually this was because no banns were read, and sometimes no licence was obtained either. They may have taken place outside the diocese of the parties concerned, out of canonical hours or in a forbidden season of the year. (1996, 140)

Adair explains that the children of such clandestine marriages were still regarded as the fruit of marriage, although couples may have been encouraged in some cases to go through another, more regular, ceremony (142) and that, in any case, post marital sex, no matter the nature of the marriage, was preferable: “bearing in mind the necessary simplifications involved, a general presumption that post-betrothal sex was regarded as less risky and sinful seems a reasonable attitude to adopt” (148). Sara McDougall’s recent study also highlights the diversity of canon law of marriage before the thirteenth century, and the fact that “What constituted a legitimate marriage […] remained quite unclear until the thirteenth century, and questions remained long after” (2017, 191). McDougall suggests that having prestigious lineage and ancestry was of far greater importance than whether parents had legally married or not (15). The secret marriage of Bernardo’s parents is closely detailed in the long ballad Reinando el rey don Alfonso from 1573.25 This ballad describes how seventeen years into Alfonso el Casto’s reign, his sister, whom he loved as dearly as himself, secretly married the count of Saldaña: Reinando el rey don Alfonso, el que Casto se dezía, andados diez y siete años del reinado que tenía, cuéntase dél en su historia, que este noble rey havía una muy hermosa hermana, que como a sí la quería, llamada doña Ximena, la cual, mientras él hazía mil bienes y sanctas obras con que mucho a Dios servía,

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dizen que se casó a hurto con el conde Sancho Díaz, que era conde de Saldaña, de gran linage y valía. Huvieron ambos un hijo que Bernaldo se dezía; (ll. 1–9)

(When King Alfonso reigned, The Chaste as he was known, seventeen years of his reign were gone, this noble king had, so the story goes, a very beautiful sister, whom he loved as his very own, she was called Doña Ximena, and she, while he was engaged in a thousand good and holy works whereby God he greatly served, secretly, they say, with Count Sancho Díaz was married, he was the Count of Saldaña, of great lineage and prestige. Together they had a son, Bernardo he was called.)

The detail that the marriage takes place while Alfonso is otherwise engaged in charitable works and the service of God, lends a degree of support to the king’s disappointment. The count, when later seized at court, appears genuinely confused about what he has done wrong, “¿En qué erré, rey y señor, o qué culpa fue la mía?” (l. 37) (What have I done wrong, my king and lord, what fault is mine?) only for the king to set him straight: Assaz hezistes, el conde, que ya el hecho se sabía de vos y doña Ximena, que encobrir no se podía”. (ll. 39–40)

(You did enough, count, and this you already know what you and Doña Ximena did, cannot fail to show.)

The secrecy of the marriage is clearly emphasised but the count is puzzlingly obedient, acquiescing when the king orders his imprisonment. Bernardo is not a rebellious figure either. In fact, the ballad heaps praise on his personal qualities including bravery, wisdom, loyalty, humility, and knightly prowess: Dava muy buenos consejos a quien menester lo havía: hombre de buena palabra, humilde sin fantasía. Pagávanse muchos dél, amávanle en demasía; todos los hombres del mundo le acatavan cortesía. Sobre estas buenas costumbres otras dos gracias tenía:

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muy buen hombre de a cavallo, si en todo el reino le havía; gran lançador de tablados con esfuerço y gallardía. Tenía muy buenas armas, obrava caballería. (ll. 58–65)

(He gave excellent advice to whoever was in need: he was a man of good word, humble in thought and deed. Many were pleased with him, they loved him a great deal; all men throughout the world paid him courtesy. In addition to these good ways he had two other graces: he was a very fine horseman, the kingdom knew his paces; a great striker of mock castles, with courage and so gallant. He was a very fine warrior, a horseman most proficient.)

Despite what appears to be a harmonious outcome to the secret marriage, the ending of the ballad carries a sting. The assembly of Bernardo’s personal qualities culminates in the arresting statement that despite his great fortune and happiness, a misfortune, a source of sorrow, lies hidden: en todo fue muy dichoso, sólo tuvo por desdicha la larga prisión del padre, que della nada sabía. (ll. 68–69)

(in all things he was fortunate, there was just one misfortune the long imprisonment of his father, of which he knew nothing.)

Secrets breed more secrets. The parents’ secret marriage is eclipsed by the concealing of Bernardo’s father’s imprisonment, which seems a less salubrious version of secrecy. The insecure foundations on which Bernardo’s happiness stands reminds us that the act of secrecy can be more damaging than the thing it is attempting to hide: “the consequences of secrecy never abate. They live on, indistinctly, mysteriously, powerfully resurfacing to test and stretch family ties, sometimes to breaking point” (Ellerby 2015, 183). The happy-ever-after is endlessly postponed.26 Secrecy is just one part of the shifting domain of lies, labels, and appearances in which Bernardo’s illegitimacy is articulated. The ballads continually demonstrate that illegitimacy is not concrete but is policed as if it were by those with an interest in keeping Bernardo from power, principally the king. In Por las riberas de Arlanza (1573) (Along the Banks

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of the Arlanza) Bernardo is an imposing but inscrutable military figure riding along the banks of the river Arlanza.27 The riverbank, a liminal space, is a fitting location for a character whose identity is disputed and he is defined primarily as a vision of military might: Por las riberas de Arlanza Bernardo del Carpio cabalga con un caballo morcillo enjaezado de grana, gruesa lanza en la su mano, armado de todas armas. Toda la gente de Burgos le mira como espantada, porque no se suele armar sino a cosa señalada. Tambien lo miraba el rey, que fuera vuela una garza; diciendo estaba a los suyos: Esta es una buena lanza: si no es Bernardo del Carpio, este es Muza él de Granada. (ll. 1–8)

(Along the banks of the Arlanza rides Bernardo del Carpio on a reddish-black horse adorned in scarlet a thick lance in his hand, armed with full armour. All the people of Burgos look at him startled, because only a certain cause demands such arms. The king was watching him too, as a heron flies out; saying: This is a fine warrior without a doubt: if it is not Bernardo del Carpio, this is Muza of Granada.)

The king’s uncertainty as to whether the figure is Bernardo or King Muza of Granada is phrased with slightly more likelihood that he is the former but certainly allows for a reading in which the Christian king could mistake his own knight for a Muslim king. What is interesting is the way the king has two principal military exemplars in mind, one Christian, one Muslim and there is apparently not a great difference between them, at least visually, and perhaps also in terms of the threat they pose to the king. The formidable Musa ibn Nusayr was governor of North Africa at the time of the 711 Islamic conquest and the association thus aligns Bernardo with a different cultural and geographical identity. However in both options, he is a “buena lanza”, allowing us to envisage him as an impressive military figure regardless of his identity.28 The king’s ability to accurately pinpoint Bernardo’s identity becomes a theme, as we discover that the king and his court have been responsible for labelling him a bastard:

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Bastardo me llaman, rey, siendo hijo de tu hermana y del noble Sancho Díaz, ese conde de Saldaña dicen que ha sido traidor, y mala mujer tu hermana. Tú y los tuyos lo habéis dicho, que otro ninguno no osara: mas quien quiera que lo ha dicho miente por medio la barba; mi padre no fue traidor, ni mi madre mujer mala, porque cuando fui engendrado ya mi madre era casada. (ll. 12–18)

(They call me a bastard, king, because I am your sister’s son and son of Sancho Díaz, Count of Saldaña, nobleman they say he has been a traitor, and your sister a bad woman You and your own men have said things nobody else has done: but whoever has said this is lying through their beard; my father was not a traitor, nor my mother a woman flawed, because when I was conceived my mother was already married.)

The aspersions cast on Bernardo and his parents—“bastardo” for himself, “traidor” for his father, “mala mujer” for his mother—are presented as underhand accusations levelled by the king and his men. The insults are spoken, and Bernardo levels one back, that whoever said this is lying through their beard. A king’s beard can stand as a symbol of wisdom and power, as the Cantar de Mio Cid makes abundantly clear, so his accusation strikes deeply at the mismatch between the king’s behaviour and the regal standard he is failing to meet. Moreover, Bernardo counters the lies with hard evidence that his mother was married when he was conceived. It becomes clear that the king is attempting to deny Bernardo his rights and entitlements, clearly illustrating that illegitimacy is not the moral shortcoming the king is trying to present, but a political problem for him “por que no herede yo quieres dar tu reino a Francia” (l. 20) (so that I do not inherit you wish to give your kingdom to France). Bernardo’s innate military capability, the front-facing presentation of his identity in the ballad, suggests from the outset that he is a deserving member of the royal court, of true knightly pedigree. This is confirmed by popular consensus: “Morirán los castellanos antes de ver tal jornada” (l. 21) (The Castilians will die before they see such a day). Edged out by lies, Bernardo is forced into undertaking extreme measures, which see him operate along some conceptual borderlines like good and evil, life and death29 :

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si buena me saliere, será el bien de toda España; si mala, por la república moriré yo en tal demanda. (ll. 25–26)

(if it turns out well for me, it will be to the good of all Spain; if bad, I will die for the republic through a demand in vain)

A language of opposites—good and bad, benefit and demise—invites the audience to readjust its moral compass. Who is enforcing good standards here: the king for his rejection of illegitimacy, or Bernardo in inviting the king to see that his lineage is respectable and his rejection from court will cause widespread political damage? By the end of the ballad, our sense of what constitutes legitimacy has entirely shifted, as encapsulated in the last lines of this version where Bernardo asks for his father’s release either through the king’s word, or Bernardo resorting to fighting for it on the battlefield: Mi padre mando que sueltes pues me diste la palabra; si no, en campo, como quiera te será bien demandada. (ll. 27–28)

(I order you to release my father since you gave me your word; if not, on the battlefield, the demand will soon be heard.)

Legitimacy splits into the categories of word and deed and, from there, into the respective arena of truth and falsehood. This is explored more fully in Con cartas y mensajeros (With Letters and Messengers ) one of the older ballads of the Bernardo del Carpio group, and possibly a genuine fragment of the lost epic gesta de Bernardo (Díaz Roig 2003, 154). The first line suggests that communication is all important in this ballad, which it is, but it is set in a background of betrayal, where anything that is said or written cannot be taken as truth. We see this in the summons for Bernardo to attend the royal court, one which immediately has him fearing betrayal, colouring the entire ballad with suspicion: Con cartas y mensajeros el rey al Carpio envió: Bernardo, como es discreto, de traición se receló. (ll. 1–2)

(With letters and messengers the king for El Carpio sent: Bernardo, being clever, betrayal he knew this meant.)

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However, Bernardo is also being accused of being a traitor; illegitimacy has moved into condemnatory ground. This is apparent in an insult dealt with Bernardo by the king which accuses him, like in the previous ballad, of being a treacherous bastard, of taking el Carpio in perpetuity rather than a temporary donation. Offended, Bernardo reminds the king of the help he lent him when he was on the verge of being killed at el Encinal, and questions how a supposed traitor can be the one to rescue his king from peril: Mal vengades vos, Bernardo, traidor, hijo de mal padre, dite yo el Carpio en tenencia, tú tómaslo en heredad. Mentides, el rey, mentides, que no dices la verdad, que si yo fuese traidor, a vos os cabría en parte, acordárseos debía de aquella del Encinal, cuando gentes extranjeras allí os trataron tan mal, que os mataron el caballo y aun vos querían matar; Bernardo, como traidor, de entre ellos os fue a sacar. (ll. 16–23)

(Your coming here is wrong, Bernardo, traitor, son of a bad father, I gave you Carpio temporarily, you are taking it as yours for ever. You lie, king, you lie, you are not speaking the truth, for if I were a traitor, it would partly fall to you, you ought to recall what happened at Encinal when foreign peoples treated you so ill, that they slayed your horse and even went in for the kill; Bernardo, traitor as he is, went to remove you from this throng.)

Heroic actions mark Bernardo out as supremely loyal and justify his invoking of veracity and legitimacy in connection with his father, who remains in prison: “prometístesme a mi padre, no me guardaste verdad” (l. 25) (you promised me my father, but you did not keep your word). In response, however, the king steers the division between truth and falsehood into one between burlas (jest) and veras (earnest), pretending that Bernardo has taken him too seriously: “¿Lo que hombre dice de burla de veras vas a tomar?” (l. 31) (Are you really going to take seriously what a man says in jest?). The king’s attempt to substitute mentiras (lies) for burlas is called out for the linguistic showmanship that it is: “Aquesas burlas, el rey, no son burlas de burlar” (l. 33) (these jests, king, are not intended for fun). At the end of the ballad, Bernardo restores the firmer

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division between words and deeds by stating that if he wants the fortress he will win it any time: llamásteme de traidor, traidor, hijo de mal padre; el Carpio yo no lo quiero, bien lo podéis vos guardar, que cuando yo lo quisiere, muy bien lo sabré ganar. (ll. 34–36)

(you called me a traitor, a traitor, son of a bad father I do not want El Carpio, you are welcome to keep it for good, for when I want to win it, I know very well that I could.)

The pitting of llamar and ganar, to call and to win, suggests that while Alfonso’s understanding of illegitimacy—the rationale for seeing Bernardo’s actions as treachery—, exists in the spoken domain, it can be absolutely undermined by action. A number of ballads explore the pain and suffering undergone by Bernardo and his father on account of his father’s imprisonment. They illustrate the human effects of the slur of illegitimacy, its capacity to sever bonds and relationships, its ability to condemn a single act to consequences that reach into future generations. Bernardo’s bastardy is often expressed here as incompleteness whereby his absent father is a missing piece of a bigger political picture, but also a missing piece of himself. At other times, Bernardo’s responses to his father’s incarceration explore the no man’s land in which this leaves him, a devastating in-between. In En corte del casto Alfonso (At the Court of Chaste Alfonso) published in the Silva and Cancionero of 1550, Bernardo exists initially in blissful ignorance of his father’s confinement. His happiness and the secrecy of the imprisonment is, conversely, the source of sorrow at court, particularly in the case of two relatives of Bernardo, Vasco Meléndez and Suero Velásquez, who know the truth: En corte del casto Alfonso Bernaldo a placer vivía, sin saber de la prisión en que su padre yacía. A muchos pesaba de ella, mas nadie gelo decía. Non osaba ninguno, que el rey gelo defendía, y sobre todos pesaba a dos deudos que tenía; uno era Vasco Meléndez, a quien la prisión dolía, y el otro Suero Velásquez, que en el alma lo sentia. (ll. 1–7)

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(At the court of Chaste Alfonso, Bernardo was happily living, without knowing of the prison in which his father was lying. Many felt bad about this, but nobody told him a thing. Nobody dared to do so, as by the king it was forbidden, and those who felt worst of all were two men related to him; one was Vasco Meléndez, who felt sorrow at the prison, the other was Suero Velásquez, who felt it deep within.)

These opposing feelings of placer (happiness) and pesar (sadness) establish a context in which appearances are distinct from the truth, but also one in which blood features prominently. Not only are Bernardo’s male relatives named, but they act as catalysts to the outing of truth by asking two noblewomen to inform Bernardo of his father’s whereabouts. In so doing, they also prompt the stirring of Bernardo’s physical blood within him: “dentro en el cuerpo la sangre se le volvía” (l. 20). This image of bodily turmoil is an important illustration of blood as a living life force and appears to signal a physicality which might successfully hasten the release of Bernardo’s father. However, the ending of the ballad is surprising. Bernardo approaches the king, admits his despair, and asks for his father’s freedom but the king angrily responds that this will never happen: ca yo vos juro y prometo que en cuantos días yo viva que de la prisión no veades fuera a vuestro padre un día. (ll. 31–32)

(for I swear to you and promise that for the rest of my days you will never see you father outside of prison for a single day.)

Bernardo simply asks him to keep it in his heart to do so, and states his loyal vassalage. Such an acquiescent response from Bernardo, especially after such a display of sadness, is quite disappointing, at least until we realise that a clever form of political ascent may be taking place. The more loyal Bernardo is, the more the king comes to love him: Mas el rey con todo esto amábale en demasía y ansí se pagaba d’él tanto cuanto más le vía, por lo cual siempre Bernaldo ser fijo del rey creía. (ll. 38–40)

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(But despite all this the king loved him to excess and the more he saw of him, the more he felt happiness, and so Bernardo always believed himself to be the king’s son.)

Bernardo comes to regard himself as the king’s son, so favoured is he in court, thereby effacing the stigma of his illegitimacy through his proven loyalty. The final verb creer (to believe), however, leaves room for interpretation; does it refer to Bernardo thinking he might as well be the king’s son, on account of his treatment at court being so good, or is there a more integral substitution in his loyalty between Sancho Díaz and the king? Could it, moreover, refer to a public conception that Bernardo is a perfect fit in this role? In all cases, the placer experienced by Bernardo initially at court is mirrored in the king’s pleasure, pagarse, at the end. His proven illegitimacy does little to trouble his place at the heart of the royal court. Peace and calm may be the watchwords of Estando en paz y sossiego (1547–49) (In Peace and Harmony) but the ballad soon reveals violent swings between placer and pesar.30 Fighting for his king and uncle, who is keen to rest after prolonged military action, Bernardo kills Don Bueso, thereby warding off French attack. However, he is still refused his father’s release. In utter sorrow, Bernardo shuts himself off physically and mentally, no longer attending court, nor riding out on his horse, and showing no interest in anything at all: Bernaldo con gran pesar no quiso ir más a palacio, antes sin servir al rey gran tiempo estuvo encerrado, que a ningún cabo salía ni cavalgava a cavallo, ni más de cosa del mundo mostrava tener cuidado. (ll. 21–24)

(Bernardo with deep sadness no longer went to the palace, but remained a long time shut away without serving the king, for no purpose would he leave nor ride out on his horse, nor was he concerned for anything in the world any more.)

A topsy-turvy world unfolds: pleasure gives him pain, and sadness gives him pleasure, and all sadness and suffering is a form of relief:

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Pena le da el plazer, de lo triste era pagado, ya no curava de fiestas a que él era aficionado; todo pesar y tristeza le era a él gran descanso. (ll. 25–27)

(Suffering gave him pleasure, with sadness he was content he longer cared for festivities he used to frequent; every trial and tribulation was restful time spent.)

The paz and sossiego which open the ballad are twisted into a more sinister version of descanso (rest, respite) wherein Bernardo revels in misery, perhaps even a melancholy state, following Sigmund Freud’s definition: “the distinguishing mental features of melancholia are a profoundly painful dejection, cessation of interest in the outside world, loss of the capacity to love, inhibition of all activity, and a lower of the self-regarding feelings” (1917, 244). An anonymous collective of courtiers acts as a disapproving chorus to the king’s decision, but to no avail: de aquesto pesava mucho a todos los hijosdalgo, que bien quisieran que el rey le uviera a su padre dado, pues tantas vezes por él era de muerte escapado, sin perder jamás batalla do con él oviesse entrado. (ll. 28–31)

(by this all the noblemen were troubled in their hearts, for they sincerely wished the king had given him his father, because with his help the king has escaped death many times without every losing a battle in which Bernardo had taken part.)

On paper, Bernardo has everything: military success, an assured place at court, popular esteem, knightly qualities in abundance. However, his absent father turns his world upside down, illustrating that despite the lustre and activity of the court this biological bond is his anchor, his order, his reason for being. In some ballad versions Bernardo’s father is released but is already dead. These ballads are all about missing the moment, they root illegitimacy in a framework of time that represents it as too late. In Los altos omnes del reino (1568–71) (The Noblemen of the Kingdom) the king, Alfonso el Magno, is persuaded by high-ranking nobles to free Bernardo’s father, since Bernardo is causing untold harm to the kingdom.31

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Bernardo agrees to exchange his father’s freedom for El Carpio castle, the stronghold that bears his toponymic surname; blood ties trump property. When the nobles go to Luna to release the count and find him dead the king simply orders him to be washed, finely dressed, and brought out on a horse as if he were alive, and so it occurs: El conde entonces venía como si estubiera sano vestido, y de cada parte de cavalleros cercado. (ll. 40–41)

(The count then appeared as if in good health dressed, and surrounded by knights on all sides.)

Bernardo’s joy is immense; he refers to his father as much desired, “el conde, de mí tanto desseado” (l. 44) and, rather astonishingly, is encouraged by the king to behold the spectacle: “llegadvos, veislo, ay está” (l. 46) (come over, look at him, there he is). Convincing as initial appearances are, Bernardo goes to kiss his father’s hand and finds it cold. The king’s charade comes to an end when the two bodies make physical contact; no lie can go beyond this point. This triggers an inevitable state of despair, pesar, in which Bernardo laments his circumstances: ¡Ay, buen conde don Sandíaz, en mal hora fui engendrado, que nunca fue home perdido como por vos yo e finado, ca pues que vos sodes muerto y el castillo e ya entregado, no sé consejo en el mundo que me aproveche en tal caso! (ll. 52–55)

(Oh, good count Sandíaz, I was conceived in an unfortunate hour, for never was a man so lost as I am on your behalf now, for since you are dead and I have already handed the castle over, I know not of any advice that might help me in this matter!)

Bernardo’s allusion to being conceived in an unfortunate hour strikes a clear contrast with the epic epithets associated with the Cid’s being born in a fortunate hour, as explored in the previous chapter, but also with those many ballads where auspicious birth is a feature, such as Abenámar and Espinelo. Bernardo laments the hour that he was born; he has missed his window and been allotted despair. Illegitimacy is not a narrative of heroic exceptionality here but a fast track to loss and renunciation. Bernardo’s narrative becomes anti-epic in the sense that he loses his acquisitional

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spirit and accepts the problem of his birth but does nothing about it. Bernardo is also strikingly alone, without a source of advice in the world, in stark contrast to epic narratives like that of the Cid or Fernán González where collective wisdom and consultation is emphasised. If Bernardo’s military action is curtailed, so too is his voice when, at the end of the ballad, the king tells Bernardo to stop speaking so much, and orders him to leave his kingdom for France since Charlemagne is his relative: idvos luego al rey Carlos, que en Francia tiene el reinado, cuyo pariente vos sodes, ca dél seres bien tractado. (ll. 61–62)

(go then to King Carlos, who reigns in France as king, whose relative you are, for you will be well treated by him.)

Bernardo’s blood ties to France reflect the second version of the legend wherein he is the son of Charlemagne’s sister and also represent another degree of territorial loss; not only has Bernardo handed over his castle but he is now being told to leave Spain altogether because he has no family ties left here. It is in great despair that he sets out for the court of Charlemagne: “se partió Bernaldo a Francia muy triste y desconsolado” (l. 63) (Bernardo left for France very sad and disconsolate). One is left wondering whether the French court represents a version of exile, from which he will reemerge in some future opportunity to reclaim his land, or whether Bernardo is dismissed as a threat forever. Arguably the strongest indication of the former lies in his conviction that peace is unacceptable to a true knight. Although his father was not able to return from the beyond, perhaps Bernardo will. The inexorable nature of the king’s decision-making may arouse pathos for Bernardo but other ballads present him as the guilty party in his father’s predicament. In En León y las Asturias (1551) (In León and Asturias ) Bernardo displays signs of self-reproach, consistent with melancholy, claiming that the incarceration of his father is his fault: A grandes vozes diziendo: “¡Ay, buen conde de Saldaña, en mal ora me engendrastes, pues que bivo no os cobrava! De vuestra larga prisión yo, buen señor, fui la causa: no me llamen vuestro hijo, pues de veros no gozava sino muerto como estáis ¡gran dolor es a mi alma!”. (ll. 31–35)

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(Saying very loudly: “Oh, good count of Saldaña, you conceived me in an unfortunate hour, since I could not recover you alive! Of your long spell in prison, I, dear lord, was cause: I am not your worthy son, since I did not have the joy of seeing you except dead as you are now, so great is the sorrow in my soul!)

A strong sense of culpability emerges in Bernardo’s reasoning; he is born in an unfortunate hour by virtue of the fact that he could not reach his father alive. Bernardo is not so much lamenting the event of his illegitimate birth, as the fact that he has somehow perpetuated its consequences by not being reunited with his father. His sorrow stems from not seeing himself as a worthy biological son. From the perspective of the count, Bañando están las prisiones (1595) (The Prison is Bathed) also explores the blame for Sancho Díaz’s plight.32 Grief is the keynote, bathed in tears the count blames Bernardo, the king, and the king’s sister for his plight. Bernardo’s royal blood, from his mother’s side, is used against him by the count to suggest that Bernardo, since he has not come to rescue him, must be judging him like the king has done: ¿Qué descuido es éste, hijo? ¿Cómo a bozes no te llama la sangre que tienes noble a socorrer donde falta? Sin duda que se parece la que de tu madre alcanças, que por ser de la del rey juzgarás como él mi causa. (ll. 9–12)

(What is this upset, my son? How does this noble blood of yours not rouse you to help where there is trouble? Without a doubt your blood resembles that which you take from your mother, since it comes from the king you will judge my plight as he does.)

It is fascinating to see the tables turned, and the royal half of Bernardo’s blood be that which is most strongly maligned and criticised. This highly unusual reflection on Bernardo’s illegitimacy rejects the customary expectation that the bastard’s less illustrious family connections diminish his status and identity. Here, in the count’s view, it is royal blood that potentially renders Bernardo disloyal, judgemental, and ineffective. Sancho Díaz suspects he must be unworthy:

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Aquí estoy en estos hierros pues dellos [hierros] no me sacas, mal padre devo de ser o mal hijo, pues me faltas. (ll. 15–16)

(Here I am in these irons since you do not remove them from me, either I am a bad father or you a bad son, since you fail me)

Bernardo is a bad biological son because of his inefficacy, an inefficacy which stems from royal blood. He has not responded to the “call” of the noble blood of his father. This ballad illustrates that the illegitimate hero is necessarily split; his blood divided into two irreconcilable parts, each of which is capable of being used against him. This is echoed in the ballad’s clever use of contrasts, inversions, and ultimatums, including that of Bernardo’s youth in comparison with the lifetime the count has spent in prison: cuando entré en este castillo apenas entré con barba, y agora por mis pecados la veo crecida y blanca. (ll. 7–8)

(for when I entered this castle I entered with scarcely a beard, and now for my sins it has become long and white.)

This condenses in an elegant comparison between the tears of an old man and the silence of an absent son. Words are all that are left as consolation as illegitimacy is one again out of step with time: Perdóname si te ofendo, que descanso en las palabras, que yo como viejo lloro y tú como ausente callas. (l. 18)

(Forgive me if I offend you, for I rest my case with these words, that I like an old man cry, and you like an absent son are quiet.)

A more optimistic version of the “halving” of blood is seen in A los pies arrodillado (Kneeling at his Feet ) published in the Romancero general of 1605.33 Emphasis on Sancho Díaz’s wasted youth in prison recurs: pero advierte, casto rey, que te ofendió siendo moço, y que en la dura prisión cubren ya canas su rostro. (ll. 5–6)

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(but take heed, chaste king, that he offended you as a youth, and that in the hard prison his face is now covered with grey.)

However, in this later example Bernardo regains some of his epic brío (vigour), attempting to reason with the king then finally threatening him with vengeance. Bernardo argues that illegitimacy is a single offence, “un yerro solo” (l. 7), committed when the count was young, suggesting that time has quickly recovered its order and logic. Moreover, Bernardo and his father have already atoned for the deed, Bernardo with blood from fighting on the king’s behalf, and the count with the tears from his eyes: “yo le he labado con sangre y él con agua de sus ojos” (l. 8). The idea that illegitimacy can be atoned for is accompanied by a reminder from Bernardo that he is half of the king’s sister’s blood: “la mitad es de tu hermana a pesar del mundo todo” (ll. 9–10). If illegitimacy cannot be overlooked through actions, then Bernardo must remind the king that he is half-royal and therefore has the right to speak to him on the same political level, imploring him to keep his royal word, “tu real palabra” (l. 13), or see his kingdom petrified by the vengeance he wreaks: “vengança que cause en tu reino assombro” (l. 13). The two parts of Bernardo’s blood can, in some ballads, amount to less than whole. In Las obsequias funerales (Funeral Honours ) published in the Romancero general of 1605, we have an elegant insight into Bernardo’s devastation at not being able to secure his father’s release.34 During funeral honours, Bernardo wonders how he manages to stay in possession of a soul now that his father is dead, and questions how he can enjoy total freedom when his father experiences only pain and death. The ballad is interlaced with contrasts and paradoxes pertaining to life and freedom and death and prison, for example: “Ya lloro vuestra prisión, ya la libertad condeno” (l. 9) (I cry for your imprisonment, I condemn freedom), “Prisión de tan largos años, libertad con tal excesso” (l. 13) (prison of many long years, freedom to such excess), “padre, que a vos den la vida, o a mí me la acaben presto” (l. 20) (father, let them give you life, or finish mine quickly). Time is once again disrupted and distorted. The presence of his dead father deprives Bernardo of life and identity, as he has been forced to reject his own blood: O estoy más muerto que vivo, o de quién soy no me acuerdo, o huye de mí la sangre, que por vos me ha honrado un tiempo, ¡O casto rey don Alfonso, cómo publica este hecho que no conoces de padres el dulce nombre que pierdo!

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(Either I am more dead than alive, or I no longer remember myself, or my blood runs away from me, having honoured me awhile because of you, O chaste King Alfonso, how it is clear from this act that you do not know the sweet name that I lose from my parents!)

The physical reference to blood escaping from Bernardo reflects religious and cultural associations with blood as shed: “The verb associated with blood in the texts more than any other is fundere, effundere”, writes Walker Bynum (2007, 173). With the loss of his nombre Bernardo is left with not even half an identity. The father who was his missing piece is now the symbol of a void, an identity that is inherently empty. The pieces of an identity have finally come together for Bernardo, but they no longer fit, rendering him less than the sum of his parts. The refined style of the ballad does an excellent job of turning Bernardo’s despair into existential riddles. The contrasts and connections here serve to crystallise and to refine illegitimacy’s inherent contradictions, turning them into a more conceptual form of grief for Bernardo and for the audience a philosophical musing on the relative value of life and death. The ending is masterful in this respect: No pudo passar de aquí, que se le puso en el pecho un lazo estrecho de amor, y de un padre un lazo estrecho. (ll. 21–26)

(He could not move from here, for placed in his heart so fond was a tight bond of love, and on his father a tight bond.)

Standing over the corpse of his father Bernardo is rendered immobile by the bond of love, of blood. This is adroitly compared with the shackles that held his father in prison. The motif of the lazo (the bond, the shackle) illustrates that the ties that bind father and son together are ultimately constrictive, all the more so now Bernardo’s father is dead. Illegitimacy is represented as the tightest of bonds and, at the same time, one requiring an unsustainable level of tension. The ballads above all raise the question of why in the mid to late sixteenth-century Bernardo’s biological blood ties are being consciously brought out of the darkness, via the prison scenario, and celebrated as an integral part of his heroic identity. Bernardo is a fluid hero to start with; lacking an extant epic form he has been reconstructed through

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a host of different narratives and this seems to make him a fertile, if at times exaggerated, testing ground for the contradictions, hypocrisies, and unnecessarily rigid censures that surround illegitimacy. The messages these ballads send out to their wider society is one which appears to value blood ties as conduits to and validation of entitlements and dues, regardless of whether marriage took place or not. They are also presented as integral parts of any individual’s identity and, in that sense, the very last things that should be shackled and consigned to darkness while the king basks in their secret glory.

The Rumour Mill: “Entre las gentes se dice” Pedro of Castile, also known as Pedro “el Cruel” (The Cruel) or “el Justiciero” (The Just) (1334–69) was a figure who divided public opinion and political allegiances. The ballads concerning him put illegitimacy firmly in the spotlight by exploring Pedro’s relationship with his illegitimate brothers, and illustrating the dire consequences of adultery, both on a human level and in terms of political aftershocks. They also create a highly visible platform for reinterpreting what illegitimacy actually consists of, and how it should be sanctioned, if at all. As discussed in the introduction, Pedro undertook a brutal civil war with his illegitimate half-brother Enrique of Trastámara, and carried out prominent executions including of his brother Fadrique, master of Santiago, in 1358, and his wife Blanca of Borbón, queen of Castile, in 1361. Louise Mirrer Singer suggests that: The romances were probably composed during the fourteenth century by juglares in the service of the respective factions. Their purpose would have been both to spread slander and innuendo against the members of the opposing parties and to legitimize the violent overthrow of the legal heir to the Castilian throne when the Trastámaras came to power. The romances were also recalled in a powerful family’s claim for “pure” and royal blood. (1986, 4)

Entre las gentes se dice (Among the People it is Said) published in the Silva of 1550, describes an illegitimate child who is the offspring of Fadrique. The ballad’s stated theme of gossip aligns it with a social world in which misdemeanours and indiscretions are recorded, ratified, and remembered by this verbal mode. Louise Mirrer has studied the theme of gossip in the ballads she collectively describes as Romance de doña Blanca

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(The Ballad of Doña Blanca) and describes how gossip “plays a crucial role in enforcing female social conformity […] cautioning women not to engage in prohibited sexual behavior” (1995, 220–21). In this context, gossip about Blanca “both draws attention to the continual reappraisal of women’s behavior for the benefit of female receptors—demonstrating to them that there might be no end to the exposés, even after death—and plays on the instability of male-female relations which may generate, in the absence of strong men, women capable of wreaking havoc in society” (1995, 222). If illegitimacy is included within this cautionary picture, the child starts to look like a piece of evidence to weigh up in a world in which censure is strong but authority for it is evasive. As Mirrer explains, “the authors of the speech reported do not, as in the direct mode, speak for themselves. This strategy tacitly suggests singers’ acknowledgement of the reported speech’s veracity -without implicating them in its authorship” (1995, 223). The illegitimate figure is both strikingly evidential, as evidential as anything can be in the ballad’s world, but open to constant reinterpretation; a flesh and blood character but one informed by layers of discourse. It is in this process of reinterpretation that the ballad starts to question its own methods. Gossip inevitably highlights the way in which impropriety is being monitored but, as I shall argue, when gossip is made a theme, brought out into the open and challenged as it is in these ballads, it loses some of its authority, and possibly its fear factor. Moreover, “telling the news of a woman who was already dead” (Mirrer 1995, 220) might not be such a bad thing in a world in which being remembered at all is better than being forgotten. Patricia Meyer Spacks describes gossip as a phenomenon which “raises questions about boundaries, authority, distance, the nature of knowledge; it demands answers quite at odds with what we assume as our culture’s dominant values” (1985, 12). Clearly gossip can both uphold and challenge those values and its potential for subversion is makes it a close parallel to illegitimacy itself in the sense that it “never directly repudiates the dominant culture or institutions it iterates” (Lochrie 1999, 63). In fact, it needs them to be part of itself. Entre la gente se dice starts by describing the rumours that the queen is pregnant by Fadrique: Entre la gente se dice, y no por cosa sabida, que del honrado Maestre don Fadrique de Castilla, hermano del rey don Pedro que por nombre el Cruel había,

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está la reina preñada; otros dicen que paría entre los unos secreto, entre otros se publica no se sabe por más cierto de que el vulgo lo decía. (ll. 1–6)35

(Among the people it is said, and it is not known for sure, that by the honourable Master Fadrique of Castile, brother of King Pedro, who goes by the name of The Cruel, the queen is pregnant; others say that she has given birth some keep it a secret, others talk of it freely it is only as certain as the fact that the people talk about it.)

The mechanism of rumour making is riven with doubt, in the form of two statements that this information is not known for certain (lines 1 and 5). The gossip-makers themselves are split between knowing whether she is pregnant or has given birth, and between keeping this a secret or broadcasting it. Crucially, whether it is true or not that the woman is pregnant, the populace is gossiping about it anyway. This gossip might be deemed authoritative discourse in the sense that it is a tacit acknowledgement of veracity (Mirrer 1995, 223) but the gossip seems more divided than it is collaborative and therein lies a hint of its weakness. In a context in which no two people will think the same, what the ballad’s opening offers is not a chorus of condemnation so much as a reinforcement of the principle that there is always room, no matter how small, for doubt and difference of opinion. Thelma Fenster and Daniel Lord Smail’s description of fama recalls how reputation in language is ever-shifting: “fama as talk, was fleeting, aspectual, and notoriously protean; it was a process […] the process of fama constructed, deconstructed, and reconstructed the things remembered” (2003, 6). The delicacy of fact and fiction is reinforced by the narrative content of the ballad, which describes how the queen, troubled by the rumours, and failing to find Fadrique because he is out hunting, calls for Alonso Pérez, Fadrique’s secretary, and lays the blame for the illegitimate child on one of her ladies-in-waiting. Her reaction seems greatly concerned with establishing the truth of the matter, and holding up the moral shortcomings of the pair: Quejosa estoy del Maestre con gran razón que tenía, por ser del sangre real, y hacer tal villanía, que dentro en mis palacios una doncella paría, de todas las de mi casa a quien yo muy más quería: mi hermana era de leche que negar no la podía. (ll. 21–22)

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(I am aggrieved at the Master with very good reason being of royal blood as he is, and doing such a lowly thing, that in my palaces a maid has given birth, of all those in my household it was she whom I cherished the most: she was my sister in milk and could not deny this.)

Whether the child is the queen’s, or that of her lady, is unclear, all the more so when the queen suggests that she would be heartbroken if the kingdom were to find out: “A la ánima me llegara, si en el reino se sabía” (l. 23) (It would reach my very soul, if this were known throughout the kingdom). The possibility that this is either an act of quasi-sisterly betrayal or a cover-up job exemplifies the shifting ground on which gossip develops. Fadrique’s absence must also be factored in. He never appears in person and is said to be off hunting, “A caza es ido, señora, con toda su montería” (l. 16) (he has gone hunting, lady, with all the hunting party). The motif of the hunt is widespread in the ballad tradition and has many different connotations, ranging from hunting simply being the habitual activity of a knight (Rogers 1974, 133) to it having supernatural connotations (171). The hunt as a pretext for Fadrique’s absence can suggest a dereliction of duty and a failure to answer directly for his sexual misdemeanour, but it might also imply innocence and vulnerability insofar as “the hunt motif has become also an introduction to death” (Rogers 1974, 149). After all, in an ominous ending, Pedro summons Fadrique to tournaments in Seville. The fate of the illegitimate child further clouds the picture. Alonso takes the baby to Llerena to be brought up by a lady called Paloma, a development in the narrative which continues the child’s ambivalent identity and plural associations. Described as “dentro del Andalucia […] un lugar muy nombrado” (ll. 28–29) (within Andalusia […] a very famous place), Llerena, in present-day Extremadura, was historically the residence of the Masters of the Order of Santiago, including Fadrique himself, which increases its associations with Fadrique’s paternity of the child. It is clearly, in history and in the ballads themselves, a place of great repute, fitting for the son of royalty, but also not particularly secret, hidden, or far from Seville. The Jewish woman Paloma is described as “hermosa […] a maravilla” (l. 30) (prodigiously beautiful) as well as “hija de un tornadizo y de una linda judía” (l. 32) (daughter of a convert and a beautiful Jewish woman). The mixed ethnicity and religious identity of the woman is intriguing, perhaps even ambivalent given the connotations of her father

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being a tornadizo (a Jewish convert to Christianity). This colloquial term referred “not only to those who ‘se han tornado’ (have become) Christian, but also to those who go back (tornar/volver) to the evil of their first Error after having received Baptism” (García-Arenal 2013, 2). Being looked after by a woman whose father is labelled by a movement across religions adds a level of fluidity to the child’s early years. Paloma turns out to be a character to be liked and trusted; her beauty is endearing and she is trusted by Alonso Pérez, himself a beloved secretary of Fadrique (l. 11). Like Paloma, the child is partly un-placeable, the product of different strands of identity that do not conform. She, like the child, may be both accepted and rejected by society, existing between worlds. What Paloma exemplifies, however, is the continuing gulf between assumptions and truth. Her background, without a longstanding Christian identity, might carry social stigma, but she proves to be loyal and trustworthy. She is a woman stepping beyond social norms and surviving unscathed in the ballad memory because of a goodness that is innate. A further strand of the narrative deals with María de Padilla, the historical mistress of King Pedro and here the language of truth and falsehood hardens, further inviting us to treat these categories carefully in the ballad. María writes to Pedro but the content is elusive. Crucially, and with echoes of its own judgemental approach to the dissemination of gossip at the start, the ballad states that María is not well informed, but writes anyway: No estaba bien informada cuando al rey se lo escrebia: —Yo, tu leal servidora, doña María de Padilla, que no te hice traición, ni consentir la quería, para que sepas, soy cierta, de aquesto te avisaría; quién te la hace, señor, declarar no se sufría, hasta que venga a tiempo que de mí a ti se diría. (ll. 35–40)

(She was not well informed when she wrote to the king: —I, you loyal servant, Doña María de Padilla, who never betrayed you, nor consented to betrayal, be advised that I am sure, and I will warn you of this much; the person who does betray you, lord, will not bear to say it, until the time comes when they will tell you about me.)

In this masterful example of how to say something without saying much at all, María nevertheless claims certainty, “soy cierta”, and generates a

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series of actual consequences from this ephemeral basis. María’s entire character is fashioned according to the poles of loyalty and betrayal. She presents herself as loyal, and her letters as a testament to that, but the narrator undermines this by alluding to her as “aquella falsa traidora que los reinos revolvía” (l. 34) (that false traitor who stirred up the kingdoms), perhaps registering a popular disapproval in the ballad’s audience of the woman who in history tempted Pedro away from his wife Blanca only two days after their marriage in 1353, leading to her imprisonment in the alcazar of Toledo and her murder. In a ballad which treads warily around speech and, by extension, around truth, María emerges as an epitome of the dangers of misinformation, partial knowledge, and lies. The contrast between her devious presence and the description of the king’s most trusted men, in whose care he leaves Tarifa, serves to underline this. A trustworthy and loyal masculine entourage is spurred into action on account of her writing her letters. Fadrique de Acuña is described as a man of great worth, “hombre de gran valía” (l. 46), and wise in warfare, “sabio en la guerra” (l. 47); Tello de Guzmán is named as an obedient member of the king’s household, where he has been raised (ll. 49–50); García López Osorio is a man in whom he can confide his secrets “de quien sus secretos fía” (l. 52). These men are clearly associated with the world of war, the frontier, and particularly with Tarifa, a key town on the southernmost coast that fell soon after the 711 conquest and was recaptured from the Muslims in 1292. In the more immediate historical context of this ballad, Tarifa was sieged by Moroccan forces in June 1339 but Alfonso XI and the Christian contingents supporting him, including from Navarre, Aragon, and France caused the Muslims to give up the siege and prepare for battle on the banks of the nearby river Salado, which would come to be known as the Battle of Salado (1340) (O’Callaghan 2003, 411– 12). Clearly a strategic military site, and an emblem of Christian success and pride, Tarifa’s appearance in the ballad ushers in a narrative of military might which renders what follows all the more absurd. Arriving at the gates of Seville and finding them shut, Pedro resorts to an undignified series of actions in order to gain entry, even getting injured in the process by his own guards (ll. 60–61). Their lack of recognition, and by extension of loyalty to their king, comes because they do not trust what they see. And their caution is both exemplary and absurd. García López is forced to tell them who the king is, yet they remain distrustful, “Entonces bajan las guardas por ver si verdad sería” (l. 64) (Then they lower their guard to see if he is telling the truth). Seville is a place of secrecy and

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lies, an enclosed and claustrophobic space which stands in stark contrast to the heroic “Tarifa la nombrada” (l. 46) (Tarifa the Famous). Once inside the city gates, Pedro closets himself up in a chamber, in secret, for three days, “para su aposento aguija | Tres días está secreto, que no sale por la villa” (65–66) and reverts to behaviour not dissimilar to that of his mistress, issuing letters to Fadrique whose content, an invitation to torneos (tournaments) in Seville, evokes suspense and apprehension. In a context of military brilliance epitomised by Tarifa, this skulking vision of Pedro emerges as the handiwork of false words. Although Fadrique is embroiled in the rumour mill at the start of the ballad, by the end of it it is his brother who seems to have come off worse from this web of half-truths. Looking at a shorter version of the ballad dating from 1600 with the alternative title Entre las gentes se suena (Among the People it is Rumoured) confirms that gossip is itself subject to scrutiny: Entre las gentes se suena, y no por cosa sabida, que de ese buen Maestre don Fadrique de Castilla, la reina estaba preñada; otros dicen que parida, no se sabe por cierto, mas el vulgo lo decía ellos piensan que es secreto, ya esto no se escondía. (ll. 1–5)

(Among the people it is rumoured, and it is not known for sure, that by that good Master Fadrique of Castile, the queen is pregnant; others says that she has given birth, it is not known for certain, but the people like to talk they think that it is a secret, but this is hidden no more.)

The opening is very similar to Entre las gentes se dice, but the substitution of the verb decir for sonar turns saying into sounding, making it more of a performance, or maybe more out in the open. It hints at the nature of gossip as overflow, described by Karma Lochrie as “its openness, its surplicity, its excess” (1999, 58). This is confirmed by the way in which in this ballad the secret is less able to be contained than in the earlier version. Now what is thought to be secret can no longer be hidden, gossip has proliferated. This is further evident in the way rumour is embedded within the narrative; the matter of one of the ladies-in-waiting giving birth is presented as existing gossip in and around Seville: “dícese por Sevilla | que una de mis doncellas del Maestre está parida” (ll. 12–13) (it is said

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around Seville that one of my ladies has given birth to the Master’s child). In tense exchange, the queen and Alonso Pérez contest the truth of the rumours. Alonso’s reply is as follows: —El Maestre, mi señora, tiene cercada a Coimbra, y si vuestra alteza manda, yo luego lo llamaría; y sepa vuestra alteza que el Maestre no se escondía; lo que vuestra alteza dice debe ser muy gran mentira. (ll. 14–17)

(The Master, my lady, has lain seige to Coimbra, and if your highness orders, I will call for him directly; and your highness may know that the Master is not hiding.)

The queen’s response is to present the “evidence”, a child that has been hidden in the palace and now emerges wrapped in a blanket, a child which also resembles Fadrique: No lo es, dijo la reina, que yo te lo mostraría. Mandara sacar un niño que en su palacio tenía, sacólo su camarera envuelto en una faldilla. —Mirá, mirá, Alonso Pérez, el niño, ¿a quién parecía? —Al Maestre, mi señora, Alonso Pérez decía. (ll. 18–22)

(It is not, said the queen, for I will show you it. She ordered a child to be brought out from her palace, her maid brought it out, wrapped in a skirt. —Look, look, Alonso Pérez, who does the child look like? —Like the Master, my lady, Alonso Pérez said.)

The illegitimate child, as physical evidence of an affair, sustains the ballad’s ability to turn gossip into a broader invitation to weigh up the various sources of information that constitute truth. Alonso’s rather formal denial quickly turns into a simple affirmation of an undeniable physical resemblance. But still the ballad presents a world of seeming and appearances. The child may look like Fadrique but looking is still an arena of doubt. In-between the queen’s order to take the child away to be raised in secret and before Alonso Pérez reaches Llerena, the ballad describes the queen’s utter abjection:

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Muy triste queda la reina, que consuelo no tenía, llorando de los sus ojos de la su boca decía: —Yo desventurada reina, más que cuantas son nacidas, casáronme con el rey por la desventura mía. De la noche de la boda nunca más visto lo había, y su hermano el Maestre me ha tenido en compañía. Si esto ha pasado, todo la culpa era mía. Si el rey don Pedro lo sabe, de ambos se vengaría, mucho más de mí, la reina, por la mala suerte mía.— (ll. 25–33)

(The queen is very sad, no consolation could be found, crying from her eyes she spoke this from her mouth: —I wretched queen, more wretched than all who are born, married the king for my great misfortune. Since the wedding night I have seen him no more, and his brother the Master has kept me company. If this has happened, all the fault lies with me. If King Pedro finds out, he will take vengeance on us both, and more so on me, the queen, as bad luck would have it.)

The queen turns gossip into confession in the form of an admission that her husband Pedro left her alone so long she sought company with Fadrique. The gossips may have been proven right, but the nature of her discourse leaves room for clemency. Rather than a maligned adulteress she emerges in the mould of an epic heroine; her weeping is expressed with physical phrases found in epic poetry like the Cantar de Mio Cid. Moreover, we have the impression that the gossips have felt their way to the truth through good luck more than hard fact, by virtue of the way fortune has turned against her, as she emphasises in references to “desventura” and “mala suerte”. As the queen states the truth about herself, her self-examination illustrates how both gossip and confession rely upon the same paradoxical mechanism of both acknowledging social non-conformity and making some allowance for it at the same time, akin to Lochrie’s description of gossip functioning as “a resistant oral discourse of marginalized groups” (Lochrie 1999, 57). Even in the queen’s apparent confession there is a level of resistance; blame is by all means assumed by her on account of her being a woman, but it is also outsourced to simple bad luck. Moreover, with the prominent hypothetical “Si” clauses doubt creeps in at the linguistic level: what if this

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were never discovered? What if Pedro were never to find out? Confession, as Michel Foucault puts it, is “ordered according to the infinite task of extracting from the depths of oneself, in between the words, a truth which the very form of the confession holds like a shimmering mirage” (1978, 59). As in the 1550 version, the child is taken by Alonso to the town of Llerena, to “una judía, | criada fue del Maestre, Paloma por nombre había” (ll. 35–36) (a Jewish woman, servant of the Master, who was called Paloma). The sparser detail about the woman, including the lack of information about her parents, and the sense that she is an established member of Fadrique’s household, fits with the resolute ending to this ballad, in which Enrique, the new king of Castile, takes the throne and makes the child an admiral: tomara aquel infante y almirante lo hacía: hijo era de su hermano, como el romance decía. (ll. 38–39)

(he took this child and made him admiral he was the son of his brother, as the ballad told.)

The historical Enrique II, to whom this character undoubtedly corresponds, was himself illegitimate, so the idea that he invests another illegitimate child with social and political recognition is significant. What is more important, however, is the fact that the final line brings us, full circle, back to a verb of saying. But what is there left for the gossips to say? They may still speculate about the child’s identity but his assumption into a world of male political activity may supersede that. All we know is that in this final statement, the burden of proof still lies out of reach in the realm of speech, in the performance of the ballad where “fact” is more a collection of plausible possibilities than a single verifiable detail, and where the illegitimate child illustrates that the realm of gossip can also be a space of possibility that is more liberating and socially resistant than the opening lines of the ballad might initially suggest.

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Illegitimacy in Other Worlds: ´ Espinelo and Abenamar The ballads I focus on in this final section explore illegitimacy in a context in which the coordinates of the real world are transcended and the illegitimate figure plays a central role in a drama about human identity in its most fluid and most evocative forms. Illegitimacy becomes a realm of possibility; customarily defined by languages of law, politics, and morality it manages to shake free of them and illustrate, like casting off a cocoon, that these are just ways of describing it in language. To be illegitimate is to belong to different places, different cultures, different religions, to be split and to be double. It is a frontier in its own right. Romance de Espinelo (Ballad of Espinelo) belongs to the novelesque group and was published in Juan de Timoneda’s Rosa de amores (Rose of Love) (Valencia, 1573). It bears many resemblances to popular poems found across Europe, such as the fourteenth-century ballad Gibello from Italy and the twelfth-century Fraisne from France, from which it may be derived (Díaz Roig 2003, 283). Espinelo’s illegitimacy is forged at a junction of real and imaginary worlds, where discourses of politics and folklore come together. It is a tale that broadly explains how he comes to rule the kingdom of Suría, and he tells it from his sickbed to his lover, Mataleona. He describes how his mother introduced a law stating that any woman who gives birth to multiples should be considered a treacherous adulteress, burned, and then thrown into the sea. His mother then gives birth to twins and seeks counsel from a Muslim necromancer held in captivity as to how to preserve her honour. She is advised to throw one of the two sons into the sea inside a precious chest so that someone will find and raise him. She does as she is instructed, and the child ends up on terra firma in the shade of a hawthorn from which he derives his name. A bunch of travelling sailors find him and present him to the ruler of Suría who accepts Espinelo as his son and leaves his kingdom to him. The narrative perspective of a dying man is doubly emphasised by Mataleona’s emphatic invitation to Espinelo of “Contásesme tú, Espinelo, contáseme la tu vida” (l. 12) (Tell me, Espinelo, tell me your life story). Illegitimacy exists in, and as, narrative. It is, therefore, a construct, and one which belongs to more than one type of discourse, and none exclusively. Espinelo’s birth is an ironic and potentially arbitrary version of illegitimacy, in the sense that his birth fits a description of illegitimacy defined by his own mother’s laws, but it is also firm and pre-decided,

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rooted in a master narrative of Espinelo’s distinctiveness, his special relationship with fate and fortune. In the political sense, his mother is powerful and placed on a lexical par with his father: Mi padre era de Francia, mi madre de Lombardía; Mi padre con su poder a toda Francia regía. Mi madre como señora una ley introducía: que mujer que dos pariese de un parto y en un día, que la den por alevosa y la quemen por justicia, o la echen a la mar, porque adulterado había. (ll. 14–19)

(My father was from France, my mother from Lombardy; My father over France was ruling powerfully. My mother introduced a law, for she was a lady, that a woman who gives birth twice in one go, and in one day, should be taken to be a traitor, and burned for equity, or thrown into the sea, because there has been adultery.)

However, her law-making leaves her hoist with her own petard. The law seems both stringent and drastic; it marks out an unusual and remarkable feat of the female body, the birth of twins, as a treacherous and adulterous deed. The lexis of wrongdoing—alevosa, justicia, adulterado—turns a feat of nature into a social disgrace, following the assuming that the children must be the fruits of adultery. However, Espinelo’s version of his own multiple birth reveals that in another light this is a narrative of prodigious fortune: Quiso Dios y mi ventura que ella dos hijos paría, de un parto y en una hora que por deshonra tenía. (ll. 20–21)

(God and my luck so willed it that she gave birth twice, in one birth and one hour and this was taken as dishonourable.)

Deeply concerned about the repercussions of her incredible and rapid birth, taking place as it does within one hour, Espinelo’s mother seeks advice from improbable quarters: a Muslim woman who is also a captive and expert in dark arts:

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Fuérase a tomar consejo con tan loca fantasía a una cautiva mora, sabia en nigromancía. (ll. 22–23)

(She went to take advice with such a crazy notion from a Muslim prisoner, expert in necromancy.)

This unconventional source of counsel affirms a contrast between two circuits of knowledge in the ballad, and two worlds of perception: a sociopolitical framework built around loyalty, purity, and honour which divides the world and its actors into good and bad, right and wrong, and a system of knowing that is porous and culturally divergent and welcomes the ineffable, the auspicious, and the alternative. The inexorable language of law is challenged by a different discourse of knowing: “¿Qué me aconsejas, tú, mora, por salvar la honra mía?” Respondiérale: “Señora, yo de parecer sería, que tomases a tu hijo, el que se te antojaría, y lo eches en la mar, en una arca de valía.” (ll. 24–27)

(“What do you recommend, Muslim, to save my honour?” She responded: “Lady, it seems to me that, you should take your child, whichever one you fancy, and throw it into the sea, in a valuable chest.)

The Muslim lady bridges the worlds of politics and fortune by softening the hard edges of honra into a lexical field of perception and suggestion, marked by terms like parecer (to seem) and se te antojaría (that which you like/fancy; that which occurs to you). Honour becomes hostage to fortune the moment the child is cast out to sea; it will be resolved not in the law courts but in the world at large. This deference to chance and auspice is pre-empted in the beginning of the ballad, when Mataleona reminds Espinelo that he was born in emphatically auspicious circumstances: Espinelo, Espinelo, ¡cómo naciste en buen día! El día en que tú naciste la luna estaba crecida, ni un punto le faltaba, ni un punto le fallecía. (ll. 9–11)

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(Espinelo, Espinelo, born on so fortunate a day! The day you were born the moon was great, not a point was waxing, not a point on the wane.)

As we will see, this phrasing is echoed in the frontier ballad Romance de Abenámar (Ballad of Abenámar). Espinelo’s identity is associated with otherworldly signs of peace, calm, perfection, and plenitude and by invoking prodigious imagery the ballad also renders him subject to other systems of knowledge and belief, ones governed by impression and prediction instead of fact and edict. Paul Bénichou has observed that in the Romance de Espinelo the full moon functions as a testament to the protagonist’s loyalty and candour (1968, 82–83); in the context of his formal illegitimacy it serves to prove a kind of moral legitimacy. It also provides a discourse in which his birthday, the source of dishonour and shame on his mother’s part, can exist and be celebrated in an alternative and open space of the imagination. The Muslim captive’s suggestion that one of the sons be launched into the sea in a jewel-encrusted gold chest means that the other child is never mentioned again. It is down to the mother to decide, apparently on a whim, which child will be saved. The severance of the twins underlines the exceptional luck associated with Espinelo, for whom fate “falls”, while his sibling is consigned to narrative silence. This is a reminder of how precarious identities are in this ballad but also how Espinelo is necessarily split, simultaneously different and the same, singular and duplicate. He carries some of “the shadowy unknown” associated with the double (Keppler 1972, 2): Cayera la suerte en mí, y en la gran mar me ponía, la cual estando muy brava arrebatado me había y púsome en tierra firme, con el furor que traía. (ll. 30–32)

(Such was my luck, into the great sea I was cast, which being very rough tossed about me about and threw me onto dry land, with the fury it possessed.)

Before an epic quest takes place in the form of Espinelo’s voyage to sea, the detail that a twin did not make it that far carries an aura of the uncanny into the rest of the ballad. Espinelo is literally affirmed as a chosen one,

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born in a fortunate hour, but implicit in that prodigiousness is duality, as C. F. Keppler’s description of the twin brother denotes: He [the Twin Brother] is the product of the apparently age-old tendency of the human imagination to think of many of its subjects as a basic oneness divided into a basic twoness, while still retaining the oneness and using it as a cohesive force to counterbalance the divisive force. He is unmistakeably outside, but just as inescapably inside. (1972, 18)

Espinelo’s singularity is also a latent dualism, he is both divided and more than one which invests him with a fluidity of identity. We see this in microcosm when he is cast out to sea in a precious chest, an instant adventurer but also precarious and vulnerable on the rough waves of the “gran mar” (l. 30). The intricately wrought chest in which he is placed “una arca de valía, bien embetunada toda, con mucho oro y joyería” (ll. 27– 28) (a valuable chest, well shined all over, with much gold and many jewels) also becomes a focus for reflecting on Espinelo’s identity. The gilded chest reminds us of the connection between closed containers and memory, following Aleida Assmann’s observation that “because of the close link between book and box, the arca became a recognized metaphor for memory” (2011, 104). In this case, it further endorses the foresight of the Muslim lady in preventing Espinelo’s illegitimacy from being discovered and dishonouring his mother, but preserving his life at the same time. The “arca” necessarily invites us to consider its outward appearance and its inner contents. The chest is ornate because its cargo is of aristocratic blood and so it evokes luxuria, that category of the excessive, the elaborate, and the ornate which is found frequently in the ballads and can, in certain contexts, denote greed and a lack of control as well as an obviously impressive material status. This is not the only part of the ballad in which Espinelo is associated with finery. At the very outset, his sickbed is constructed of gold and silver planks, with a fine linen mattress, diaphanous sheets, and a pillow beset with pearls. His lover is fanning his face with a peacock’s feather: los bancos eran de oro, las tablas de plata fina, los colchones en que duerme era de holanda muy rica, las sábanas que le cubren en el agua no se vían, la colcha que encima tiene sembrada de perlería

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a su cabecera asiste Mataleona, su amiga, con las plumas de un pavón la su cara le resfría. (ll. 2–7)

(the benches were gold, the boards of fine silver, the mattresses he sleeps on were very fine linen, the sheets which cover him are clearer than water, the pillow above is sewn with pearls by his head Mataleona, his lover, attends, with peacock feathers his face she cools.)

These luxuries unavoidably imbue the ballad, and the protagonist, with a distinctly amorous and courtly character, particularly when we consider that in the opening scene he is with his lover, Mataleona, and is most probably still in a Muslim kingdom. Is the illegitimate Espinelo associated with the same sexual licentiousness that hangs over his mother and his own birth? There is further support for this later in the ballad when Espinelo recounts his life story in a courtly fashion, “con amor y cortesía” (l. 13) (with love and courtliness). Moreover, Espinelo’s name comes from the name of the hawthorn tree under which he finds shelter, “a la sombra de una mata | que por nombre espino había, | que por eso me pusieron de Espinelo nombradía” (33–34). The hawthorn is a symbol of carnal love in medieval love allegory, an arbor cupiditas, “an inversion of the ‘fruitful tree’ found in both the Old and New Testaments” (Eberly 1989, 41). The association between Espinelo and carnal love strengthens the case for an undercurrent of sexual liberty running through the ballad. The hawthorn also has associations with fertility and fecundity, particularly connected to the May season and spring festivals (Eberly 1989: 43, 45) which would confirm that Espinelo’s identity is shaped by a heightened sense of sexuality. However, if the ballad tradition teaches us anything it is not to judge according to appearance. Just as the “arca” has an externally attractive appearance but inscrutable contents, acting as a perfect visual emblem of “engaño” (deception), so too does Espinelo’s identity carry hidden depth. The hawthorn with which his name is associated also bears the connotation of pain and suffering. This is partly because of the obvious role of a thorn in causing pain, but also owing to extended associations between the thorn and “self-reproach, remorse, guilt” (Eberly 1989, 48). Espinelo’s sickness may even be a symptom of his fallen condition, despite the obvious material comforts that surround him. He is blessed with

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“ventura”, but he is also destined to suffer, being a character of mixed fortunes. In that respect, the association between the hawthorn and Christ is compelling. The crown of thorns placed on Jesus’s head during his trial was thought from early times in Britain to be made of hawthorn (Eberly 1989, 50) and so its carnal associations are combined with deeply spiritual ones. As Eberly puts it, “In his love for humanity, he [Christ] has suffered as a man as welll as a god; as the Bridegroom of the soul, he wears the crown of thorns—he accepts physical, corporeal pain—in order to offer spiritual grace” (1989, 50). Espinelo’s character also benefits from this double association between the physical and the spiritual. The chest becomes an object around which the contrasts of Espinelo’s identity—privilege and rejection, sexuality and suffering, Christian kingdoms and Muslim territories—are concentrated. It is also a vessel, reminiscent of Michel Foucault’s description of a boat as “a floating piece of space, a place without a place that exists by itself, that is closed in on itself and at the same time is given over to the infinity of the sea” (1986, 27). The “arca” thus enables Espinelo to reinvent himself, going on to become the adoptive son of a ruler with no offspring of his own, and thereby inherits his kingdom: Marineros navegando halláronme en aquel día, lleváronme a presentar al gran soldán de Suría. El soldán no tenía hijos, por su hijo me tenía; el soldán agora es muerto. Yo por el soldán regía. (ll. 35–39)

(Sailors sailing found me that day, they took me to meet the great Sultan of Syria. The sultan had no children, he made me his son instead; the sultan is now dead. I ruled in the sultan’s stead.)

The idea of an illegitimate child being welcomed into a different political hierarchy as a kind of substitute, and possibly even saviour, makes us question the logic of him being rejected from his own. The honour code which looms large in his mother’s worried reference to “la honra mía” (l. 24) (my honour), coupled with his mother’s heavy-handed introduction of a law of which she falls foul, seems patently illogical given how seamlessly Espinelo enters a new political sphere and ends up governing it. The Sultan of Suria/Syria appears, accepts Espinelo as his son, and dies in a matter of just three lines. Espinelo’s acceptance in a Middle-Eastern

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court lends him a further double identity. He is now geographically and culturally fluid, ending up ruling a Muslim kingdom when the sultan dies. The way this inheritance of the kingdom is narrated, with its simple but effective repetitions of “soldán”, “hijo” and “tenía” creates the impression that Espinelo is a natural fit. Perhaps this reflects the political aptitude of his parents with their respective jurisdictions; perhaps it is his distinctive nature as a chosen one, born under miraculous signs, saved unlike his twin; perhaps it is also a hint that he belongs outside of Christian kingdoms and has greater affinity with, and freedom in, this place. The Muslim kingdom is, after all, where the ballad starts, with its unforgettable image of Espinelo on his sickbed, perhaps even his death bed, being fanned by his lover in exotic and opulent surroundings.36 The ballad illustrates several distinctive and often contrasting strands of Espinelo’s identity, but reconciling them is clearly not the point. Illegitimacy sparks a narrative of new life and possibility but we meet Espinelo at the point where it is coming to an end. The time frame of the ballad places illegitimacy in the past, present, and future of the narrative. The imperfect verb in the very last line “Yo por el soldán regía” (l. 38) leaves us hanging, just as the opening allusion to Espinelo’s grave illness does. Both scenarios are on a brink and illegitimacy is eternally open. The frontier ballad Romance de Abenámar (henceforth Abenámar) has much in common with Espinelo, especially in terms of the illegitimate figure existing between Christian and Muslim identities, being marked out as distinctive, and being part of a narrative in which time and space are creatively represented. It engages more fully, however, in the question of what constitutes truth. It is a fitting conclusion to this chapter because its representation of illegitimacy holds verdad (truth) itself up for scrutiny, in a narrative which is all about being dazzled by a vision, blindsided by a desire. The ballad exists in three principal variants; one from the Cancionero sin año (1547), another from the Cancionero de romances (1550) and a third from Pérez de Hita’s Guerras civiles de Granada (1595, see edition 1982) (Civil Wars of Granada). Abenámar is loosely based on events which took place in 1431. In that year, King Juan II of Castile, on the advice of his chief minister Álvaro de Luna, led an army into the kingdom of Granada to curb an internal revolt from the Castilian nobility. The king and his troops set up camp to the North of the city and it is possible that he was accompanied by a Granadan seeking political advantage from the encounter. It is difficult to ascertain who Abenámar was historically; his name may reflect his descendancy

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from Ibn al-Ahmar (the Red), founder of the Nasrid dynasty in the thirteenth century, since the name Aben-al-Ahmar, son of the red, could have been used for several Granadan kings in this line. This would certainly fit with the Alhambra being a version of al-Hamra (the red) (O’Callaghan 1975, 433). The chronicler Álvar García de Santa María describes a particular Muslim prince called Abenalmao offering his services to help Juan II oust the Rey Izquierdo, Mahomad. This could be the same figure who went on to reign as Yusuf IV. Intriguing as the historical circumstances might be, this majestic ballad cannot simply be decoded in relation to historical events; its presentation of illegitimacy is predicated on an understanding of identity as fluid and composite, set in a world where alliances are shifting. In the 1547 version of the ballad, Abenámar’s illegitimacy is not mentioned, he is simply “moro de la morería” (Muslim of the Muslim people), whereas the 1550 and 1595 versions introduce the idea in some detail: “¡Abenámar, Abenámar, Moro de la Morería, hijo eres de un Moro perro y de una Christiana catiua, a tu padre llaman Halí y a tu madre Catalina; Quando tú naciste, Moro, la luna estaua crecida y la mar estaua en calma, viento no la rebullía; Moro que en tal signo nasce no deue dezir mentira!” (Cancionero de romances 1550, ll. 4–9; Correa 1999: 300–1)

(“Abenámar, Abenámar, Muslim of the Muslim people, you are son of a Muslim dog and a Christian captive, they call you father Halí and your mother Catalina; When you were born, Muslim, the moon was full and the sea was calm, the wind did not blow; a Muslim born under such a sign ought not to tell a lie!”)

“¡Abenámar, Abenámar, Moro de la Morería, el día que tú naciste grandes señales auía! Estaua la mar en calma, la luna estaba crecida: Moro que en tal signo nace, no deue dezir mentira.” Allí respondiera el Moro, bien oyréys lo que dezía: “No te la diré, señor, aunque me cueste la vida, porque soy hijo de un Moro y una cristiana cautiua;

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siendo yo niño y muchacho mi madre me lo dezía: que mentira no dixesse, que era grande villanía: por tanto pregunta, Rey, que la verdad te diría.” (Guerras civiles de Granada, 1595; Correa 1999: 302)

(“Abenámar, Abenámar, Muslim of the Muslim people, the day you were born the signs were great! The sea was calm, the moon was full: a Muslim born under such a sign ought not to tell a lie.” Then the Muslim responded, you will hear what he said: “I will not tell one, lord, although it might cost me my life, because I am son of a Muslim and a Christian captive; as child and boy my mother would tell me: not to tell a lie, for it was a great perfidy: ask many questions, king, for the truth I will tell thee.)

Like Mudarra in the Siete Infantes de Lara ballads, Abenámar’s parents are from different religious and ethnic backgrounds but the other way around. The ballad seems superficially to dwell on that distinction, and particularly on the superiority of his mother, both in the less flattering description of his Muslim father, and in the way she issued him as a child with the advice never to lie. The development of the mixed parentage theme may have political roots. Sizen ¸ Yiacoup describes how Juan II was fond of Islamic culture, and also had a mother named Catalina, rendering it possible that the ballad “partly serves as a reflection of the mixed cultural influences that divided the king”, and “introduces an element of wry humour and satire that would have appealed to contemporary audiences” (2013, 30). On that basis, the allusion to the waxing moon, “la luna estaua crecida”, might also allude to Álvaro de Luna’s inordinate power over the king (Yiacoup 2013, 30). This is a compelling argument but the ballad clearly transcends the political context which informs it. Abenámar straddles two worlds which exist in creative tension with one another, and these worlds shift and overlap. He is a fusion of Christianity and Islam, Castile and Granada, politics and providence, truth and mendacity, past and future, life and death. As Yiacoup has argued, the ballad recalls “the encounter between individuals who are not in fact from diametrically opposed cultural backgrounds but who represent what are essentially composite cultural identities that conflict with one another yet overlap” (2013, 36). Yiacoup more generally advocates reading the frontier ballads as “a tacit recognition of the inextricability of Hispano-Muslim

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and Christian-Castilian cultures” and warns that Orientalist theory “risks invalidating and excluding the memory of Hispano-Muslims’ involvement in the development of Spanish culture” (2013, 11). In terms of cultural hybridity, he enacts the way “hybridity makes difference into sameness, and sameness into difference […] a breaking and a joining at the same time, in the same place, difference and sameness in an apparently impossible simultaneity” (Young 1995, 26). Abenámar’s cultural duality also flags the simultaneity of human experience more generally, a view that is supported by the ballad’s predilection for binary phrases and structures. It is important, however, not to dilute its message of cultural fluidity but to retain it as a specific reminder that here, issuing from sixteenth-century Spain, is a powerful and memorable illustration that an individual can belong to more than one culture. The repetitions in the ballad’s most famous line, “Abenámar, Abenámar, moro de la morería” (1574, l. 1; Correa 1999, 297) provide a subtle prelude to the general doubleness of this ballad’s nature. Found in all three principal variants, this line turns a proper name into a performance; the repetitions make the act of enunciating the main character more diffuse than precise, reminiscent of what Michel Foucault refers to as the “quasiinvisibility” of the statement: “like the over-familiar that constantly eludes one; those familiar transparencies, which although they conceal nothing in their density, are nevertheless not entirely clear” (1972, 111). This is developed in the surrounding lines of the two later versions where it becomes apparent that Abenámar is a character situated on more than one plane of being. The contours of an identity understood through verbs of being and obligation, “ser” (to be) and “deber” (to have to, must) meet a context in which “señales” (indications) and “signos” (signs) are also a register of meaning. Trying to speak Abenámar’s identity as the king does, creates an increasingly evasive sense of it, where even truth and mendacity, two apparently immovable concepts, are understood in partnership with an unpredictable natural setting. Like that of Espinelo, Abenámar’s birth takes place against a backdrop of uncanny calm in the natural world. The sea is still, the wind does not blow, the moon is full. The ballad tradition often describes ominous signs; Visión del rey Rodrigo (King Rodrigo’s Vision) for example, evokes a punitive atmosphere with its reference to a natural order being overturned: “Los vientos eran contrarios, la luna estaba crecida, | los peces daban gemidos por el mal tiempo que hacia” (ll. 1–2; Díaz Roig 2003, 148) (the winds were adverse, the moon was waxing | the fish were groaning with

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the bad weather that was raging). The same is true of the ballad of Juan de Navarra which sets the plight of the king who loses his kingdom in a context where “Los aires andan contrarios, el sol eclipse hacía, | la luna perdió su lumbre, el norte no parecía” (ll. 1–2; Díaz Roig 2003, 113) (the winds blew wildly, an eclipse of the sun, | the moon lost its light, the North had gone). The equation of natural references with the gain or loss of a kingdom is a common motif, perhaps even an opening that the audience would have understood as introducing a significant narrative of political and personal loss. In both of the aforementioned ballads, the turbulent natural world the narrator describes ushers in the presence of Fortune who engages in dialogue with the characters. In the 1550 and 1595 Abenámar versions quoted above, the king himself describes the circumstances of Abenámar’s birth and offers the interpretation that a Muslim born under such phenomena ought not to lie, lending it less of an air of accepted truth and more one of wishful thinking. While the king’s statement is categorical, it illustrates an uneasy conjunction of political and providential language. The king warns Abenámar not to lie because he wants a truthful response to his ensuing question: “¿Qué castillos son aquéllos? ¡Altos son y relucían!” (1550, l. 15; Correa 1999, 300) (What castles are these? The are tall and they shine!). The shimmering buildings are the Alhambra and the Mezquita but the king can only know this through the interpretation of Abenámar, which means we see them through a filter of either “verdad” or “mentira”, truth or lies. His vision is also, at least initially, not politicised. The king’s political ambition to conquer Granada becomes apparent by the end of all versions of the ballad. However, it is clear that his initial engagement with Granada, from a distance, leaves him impressed but bewildered, reaching for the safe but reductive categories of what is true and what is not. Truth in the Abenámar ballad variants has high stakes. Bénichou has remarked on the surprising emphasis on truthfulness in the ballad, especially in relation to how simple the king’s question actually is, and in light of how famous and recognisable these buildings actually were (1968, 76– 77). Not only is “telling the truth” the only way in which the king can understand the identity of Granada, but it is also the only way in which Abenámar, and his son, can stay alive, thereby investing narrative with the supreme power to preserve life. In the 1550 version, the king tells Abenámar explicitly that he will spare his son who is held captive if he tells the truth:

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Preso tengo un hijo tuyo, yo le otorgaré la vida si me dizes la verdad de lo que te preguntaría. (ll. 10–11; Correa 1999, 300)

(I have taken a son of yours prisoner, I will grant him his life if you tell the truth about what I will ask you.)

He then threatens to kill Abenámar as well if he lies, “Moro, si no me la dizes, a ti también mataría” (l. 12). In the 1595 version this is omitted in favour of a different set of lines where Abenámar refers to his mother warning him as a child that lying is a serious offence: siendo yo niño y muchacho mi madre me lo dezía: que mentira no dixesse, que era grande villanía. (ll. 8–9; Correa 1999, 302)

(when I was child and boy my mother would tell me: not to lie, for it was a great perfidy.)

Truthfulness is understood by the king in absolute terms, and merits an absolute punishment if not provided. However, the king is also searching for truth in a context in which it is understood as an amalgam of nature and nurture. The kind of truth the king is searching for simply does not exist. It is exasperatingly relative, as is its guarantor. Part of the problem lies in Abenámar’s make-up as someone who is special and remarkable, as nature seems to acknowledge, and yet might not traditionally be associated with legitimacy, sincerity, and correctness. Abenámar’s relationship with truth prompts reflection on genealogy and inherited characteristics, and also, more generally, on time and its overlying strands. Is truth immutable, or does it continually elude a place in time? The ballad raises this question in the way Abenámar’s birth overlaps with his presentday ability to speak the truth. It is also manifest in the other narrative of past-ness embedded in the ballad, in which Abenámar recounts the construction of the Granada buildings. The Muslim who worked on them, earning one hundred doblas a day, appears in all three versions and becomes, as the variants progress, an emblem of precariousness despite shaping the foundational structures of arguably the most evocative and memorable buildings in the Iberian collective memory and beyond.

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Whereas in the 1547 version he represents rich reward for his labour, the 1550 variant tells us that if he stops work he loses money and then, when it is finished, he loses his life: el día que no los labra de lo suyo las perdía: desque los touo labrados, el rey le quitó la vida porque no labre otros tales al rey de la Andaluzía. (ll. 19–21; Correa 1999, 302)

(the day that he stops working he lost his pay: when the work was done, the king took his life away so that no such work could be done for the king of Andalusia.)

In the 1595 variant, the death sentence is removed: “y el día que no los labra otras tantas se perdía” (l. 16; Correa 1999, 302) but the fact remains that the very construction of the tangible edifice the king wants to understand and know the truth about is couched in uncertainty and threat. Once Abenámar has identified the buildings and explained the circumstances of their creation he disappears from the ballad. All versions of Abenámar then describe the king speaking directly to Granada and offering to marry her: “Granada, si tu quisiesses, contigo me casaría” (1547, l. 9; Correa) (Granada, if you wish, I would marry you). The city responds, in all versions, with the statement that she is already married, for example in the 1547 ballad: Casada so, el rey don Juan, casada soy, que no biuda; el moro que a mí me tiene bien defenderme querría. (1 l. 11–12; Correa 1999, 297)

(I am married, King John, I am married and not yet a widow; the Muslim who owns me wants to defend me well.)

In the quick-fire return of the past participle casada, Granada speaks a language of belatedness and, apparently, one of defence. The king’s proposal comes too late, but also too early as she is not yet a widow. Time overlaps and in so doing a space of opportunity opens. In the 1547 and 1550 versions the king, undeterred, mounts a fierce attack

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and the Muslims are unable to defend the city leaving the Muslim king with no choice but to submit to being the Christian king’s vassal. In the 1595 version, the ballad changes defenderme (to defend me) in the earlier variants, to the verb querer, to love. Casada soy, Rey Don Juan, casada soy, que no viuda; el Moro que a mí me tiene muy grande bien me quería. (ll. 22–23; Correa 1999, 302)

(I am married, King John, I am married and not yet a widow; the Moor who owns me loved me so well.)

As this is the last line of the ballad, it leaves the possibility entirely open that the Muslim’s great love for Granada keeps it safe. Like Espinelo, the ending of this ballad keeps us on a brink. The ballad audiences would have known the fate of this resplendent city but the ballad imagination refuses closure. The architectural theme of this ballad, its presentation of visual and material pre-eminence, in the form of the majestic Alhambra offers us another physical emblem through which to test the fluidity of illegitimacy, like the “arca” in Espinelo. Abenámar’s identity, by virtue of his special knowledge of Granada, fuses with that of the cityscape itself, making it possible to read Granada as a visual illustration of the way illegitimacy is partly determinable and explainable, and partly not. The trope of building the Alhambra, the reminder via the Muslim’s labour and the repetition of the verb “labrar” (ll. 19–21 of 1595 version above) that it is forged of stone, brings to mind its createdness, and reminds us of other “made” structures that end up being more than the sum of their identifiable parts, not least the text. The representation of its making, together with the request that Abenámar explain its identity, thereby placing it in the system of language, make the Alhambra explainable but only to a point. Like the illegitimate figure whose identity is similarly configurable through words, and through the building blocks of social rules and mores, it resists a full narrative. It remains double, explainable and elusive, outside of time, and geographically poised between cultures. This ambivalent and heterogenous account of what traditional discourse might co-opt as “the fall of Granada” is what makes Abenámar such an impressive window into

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Islamic Granada at the close of the Middle Ages. Illegitimacy is utterly central to a vision of an end that never happens, it is an eternal frontier. As the range of examples above has demonstrated, the old ballads imagine illegitimacy as a series of apparent contradictions. The bastard can be more than the sum of his parts, but he can also be less. The hybrid identities of characters like Mudarra and Abenámar illustrate that “a doubleness that both brings together, fuses, but also maintains separation” (Young 1995, 22). Bernardo del Carpio is a figure of both excess and deficiency at one and the same time. He is a political problem, an inconvenience for a king who would rather see him sidelined than enjoy the privileges of his mother’s royal blood, but being surplus to requirements is precisely what makes Bernardo a rebel and a warrior. Although politically excessive, some ballads present Bernardo as internally collapsing, crushed by loss, melancholy, and self-doubt while his father rots in jail. King Pedro ballads underline how illegitimacy, like identity, is perpetually in-between. Truth or lies, loyalty or betrayal, fact or rumour are all co-existing categories rather than alternatives. The more society attempts to put the illegitimate figure in any single one of them, the more attention turns to that attempt and shines a light on its ways and means—its violence, its bias, its hypocrisy, its vendetta, its so-called code of honour—the way in which “that other ‘denied’ knowledge enters upon the dominant discourse and estranges the basis of its authority -its rules of recognition” (Bhaba 1994, 162). As an oral genre, the ballads place illegitimacy within a constantly moving picture. There were published versions, but there is no such thing as an official ballad, nor are the ballads governed by a set of hard moral standards. Their representation of illegitimacy is an amalgam of consensus view and individual creative acts and so their moral and poetic bases are fluid. Illegitimacy is held up as handiwork, as something created, within an art form in which change, variety, and creativity are meaning itself. In the ballads, illegitimacy necessarily becomes part of a collective memory, a cultural memory, which preserves for future generations the precious message that identity is open ended and in a state of constant recreation.

Notes 1. In May 1900, Menéndez Pidal was on honeymoon with his new wife María Goyri. In the Castilian town of Osma they came across a washerwoman who knew a vast repertoire of traditional ballads, including a

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2.

3.

4.

5.

6. 7.

romance noticiero (news-bearing ballad) about the death of Prince John in 1497. This was a seminal moment in Spanish literary and cultural tradition which Menéndez Pidal referred to as the “sun” of Castilian tradition finally dawning after a night lasting three centuries. What he confirmed was that the tradition of singing ballads was old and deep-rooted; the ballads had never disappeared, but had been existing latently, in darkness. Menéndez Pidal describes the “estado latente” (latent state) as follows: “Toda vida es producción de nuevas individualidades con muerte del ser que se reproduce, y la literatura colectiva es literatura viviente; vive en refundiciones, en variantes continuadas, destinadas a la muerte, vida latente en la mayor parte de su curso” (1963, 152) (All life involves the production of new individualities with the death of the being that reproduces, and collective literature is living literature; it lives in reworkings, in continual variants, destined for death, for a latent life for the majority of their trajectory). It is common critical and editorial practice to classify and categorise the medieval Spanish ballads. Broadly speaking, there are deemed to be two main types of ballad: fictional (novelesque) and historical (see, for example Díaz Roig who divides them into ‘Romances históricos’ and ‘Romances de invención’) although it is accepted that there may be porosity between even these broad categories in terms of distinguishing history from fiction. Editors and critics further divide the ballads into frontier ballads, historical-epic ballads, novelesque ballads and Carolingian ballads. See, for example, the sixty-six versions of La bastarda y el segador (The Bastard Woman and the Reaper) at Pan-Hispanic Ballad Project https:// depts.washington.edu/hisprom/. Except to strike important comparisons, I have limited my material to ballads found in early manuscript or printed versions from the sixteenth century since these examples illustrate an older and more traditional conception of illegitimacy. My choice of ballads is inevitably selective; I have chosen the ballads on the basis of the relevance of illegitimacy to their narratives, and in order to present a representative selection from across the corpus, and across the different subsets of ballads. The strongest refutation came from Roger Wright who argued that the ballads may be older than scholars had hitherto believed, and may precede epic texts (1986). For an outline of this debate, see Coates (2010, 72–73). This is the term given to the sung epics of medieval Iberia. It literally means “songs of deeds”. Thomas Lathrop has studied the different chronicle versions of the legend, including the later Refundición toledana de la crónica de 1344 which he calls “the last in a long series of chronicle renditions of the epic […] the most interesting and best constructed account” (1971, 15).

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8. See Menéndez Pidal (1971, 11), Deyermond (1987, 75–76), Ratcliffe (2011, 131), Escalona Monge (2000). On the background to the legend, see Montgomery (1989). For the Crónica de 1344, see the edition by Cintra 1951. 9. Ballad citations refer to the corresponding hendecaysllabic line number. Although the ballads are octosyllabic it is standard editorial practice in ballad anthologies to reproduce the ballads with longer 16-syllable line and an implied break between the two corresponding octosyllabic halves of it. For this ballad, see Díaz Roig (2003, 165). 10. All translations of the ballads are mine, unless otherwise indicated and referenced. Where possible, I have tried to preserve the effect of the assonantal rhyming endings of the Spanish ballads with full or partial rhyme in English; however, where lexical accuracy would be sacrificed too much I have opted for a more literal translation. 11. The tablado was “a mock castle loosely built of boards, set up for knights to knock it down as if they had skill and strength enough with javelins” (Griswold Morley, cited in Burt 1982, 347). 12. In the Estoria’s version, after Lambra’s cousin Álvar Sánchez appears to strike the winning blow, Gonçalo Gonçález dramatically outperforms him by splitting part of the construction in half and the two men then quarrel over their respective reputations: “ouo a responder Gonçalo Gonçalez, et dixo: ‘tan bien alcançades uos et tanto se pagan de uos las duennas, que bien me semeia que non fablan de otro cauallero tanto como de uos’. Aquella ora dixo Aluar Sanchez: ‘si las duennas de mi fablan, fazen derecho, ca entienden que ualo mas que todos los otros.’ Quando esto oyo Gonçalo Gonçalez, pesol muy de coraçon et non lo pudo sofrir” (Alfonso X 1955, vol. 2, 432) (Gonçalo Gonçalez responded and said: “you reach so well and the women are so pleased with you that it seems like they talk about no other knight but you”. Then Alvar Sanchez spoke “if the women speak about me, they are right to do so, for they understand that I am worth more than all the rest”. When Gonçalo Gonçalez heard this, he felt great sorrow in his hear and could not stand it). 13. The Refundición toledana de la crónica de 1344 describes how Mudarra so closely resembles Gonzalo that Gustios begins to call Mudarra by his name: “pues vos avéys la misma semejança de vuestro hermano y amado fijo mio, don Gonçalo Gonçales, nunca otramente vos llamaré” (Lathrop 1971, 70) (since you look so much like your brother and my dear son Gonçalo Gonçales, I will never call you anything else). Lathrop describes how “this completes a circle” (71). Lathrop’s study includes an edition of this chronicle. 14. It is common critical and editorial practice to classify and categorise the medieval Spanish ballads. Broadly speaking, there are deemed to be two main types of ballad: fictional (novelesque) and historical (see, for

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15.

16. 17. 18.

19. 20. 21. 22.

23. 24.

25. 26.

27.

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example Díaz Roig who divides them into ‘Romances históricos’ and ‘Romances de invención’) although it is accepted that there may be porosity between even these broad categories in terms of distinguishing history from fiction. Editors and critics further divide the ballads into frontier ballads, historical-epic ballads, novelesque ballads and Carolingian ballads. This evokes the descriptions of hybridity found in nineteenth-century discourse when it was part of cultural debate: “A hybrid is defined by Webster in 1828 as a ‘mongrel or a mule; an animal or plant, produced from a mixture of two species’ (Young 1995, 6). The most extensive chronicle version of his story in is the Estoria de España by Alfonso X (1955, vol. 2, 350–57, 370–76). See Díaz Roig (2003, 152). In a version of the same ballad from 1562, published in Menéndez Pidal’s Romancero tradicional de las lenguas hispánicas (1957, vol. 1, 176), the child becomes known as “un caballero” (l. 5) (a knight), then “muy gentil hombre y de los buenos de España” (l. 6) (a very noble man and one of the good men of Spain). Published in Menéndez Pidal (1957, vol. 1, 177–78). Mañanita era, mañana, in Menéndez Pidal (1957, vol. 1, 177–78). Version from Tangiers, in Menéndez Pidal (1957, vol. 1, 178). Version from Tangiers, Mañanita era, mañana, in Menéndez Pidal (1957, vol. 1,178). See also version from Larache, Menéndez Pidal (1957, vol. 1, 181–82). Version from Tangiers, Mañanita era, mañana, in Menéndez Pidal (1957, vol. 1, 178–79). Partida IV.15. 2, “Por qué razon los fijos non serien legítimos, maguer nasciesen de casamiento” (For this reason the offspring will not be legitimate, although they are born to a marriage). See Pidal (1957, vol. 1, 198–200). This is evident in another ballad Hueste saca el rey Orés (King Orés Launches an Army) “también quedó el rey de dar su padre a Bernaldo; | pero nunca se lo dio ca non era tal su fado” (ll. 36–37) (the king also agreed to give Bernardo his father; | but he never handed him over for this was not his fate); see Menéndez Pidal (1957, vol. 4, 204–5). See Pidal (1957, vol. 1, 185–86). As Colin Smith points out, the author of the ballad’s geography is shaky; Burgos is on the river Arlanzón, not the Arlanza (1996, 10). This represents a creative approach to historical fact as Musa ibn Nusayr died in the early eighth century. This is a feature of other variants. In a version from 1580, Bernardo’s threat to the king is a more direct assertion of his inheritance rights, and of the prospect of him crossing over into France to inflict damage on

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Spain if he is not given his dues: “si no me das a mi herencia pasar me yo para Francia | y de aqueste hecho, el rey, no bendrá vien por España” (ll. 18–19) (if you do not give my my inheritance I will cross over into France | and from this deed, king, no good will come for Spain). In another variant from a seventeenth-century manuscript Bernardo resolves to put his life on the line for his country: “Con gascones y leoneses y con la gente asturiana | yo iré por su capitán o moriré en la batalla” (ll. 19– 20) (with Gascons and Leonese and with the people of Asturias | I will be their captain or I will die in the battle). See Díaz Roig (2003, 153). The ending of the 1573 version is similar; the people of Spain would rather die than see their kingdoms given over to France, “Morirán los castellanos antes de ver tal jornada: | montañeses, y leoneses, y esa gente esturiana” (ll. 21–22) (The Castilians will die before they see such a day: | mountain people and Leonese, and those people from Asturias). See Menéndez Pidal (1957, vol. 6, 207–8). See Menéndez Pidal (1957, vol. 10, 213–14). Menéndez Pidal (1957, vol. 1, 245). Menéndez Pidal (1957, vol. 1, 255). Menéndez Pidal (1957, vol. 1, 267–68). See Wolf (1856, 213–17). See for example the description of fine garments in Reduán and La mañana de San Juan (The Morning of Saint John’s Day) (Díaz Roig 2003, 87, 91).

Works Cited Adair, Richard. 1996. Courtship, Illegitimacy and Marriage in Early Modern England. Manchester: University Press. Alfonso X. 1807. Las Siete Partidas del rey Alfonso el Sabio cotejadas con varios códices antiguos por la Real Academia da la Historia, 3 vols. Madrid: Real Academia de la Historia. vol 3. ———. 1955. Primera crónica general de España que mandó componer Alfonso el Sabio y se continuaba bajo Sancho IV en 1289, ed. Ramón Menéndez Pidal, 2 vols. Madrid: Gredos. Álvar, Carlos, and Manuel Álvar (eds.). 1997. Épica medieval española. Madrid: Cátedra. Armistead, Samuel G. 1981. Epic and Ballad: A Traditionalist Perspective. Olifant 8: 376–388. Assmann, Aleida. 2011. Cultural Memory and Western Civilization: Arts of Memory. Cambridge: University Press. Bénichou, Paul. 1968. Creación poética en el romancero tradicional. Madrid: Gredos.

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Bhaba, Homi. 1994. The Location of Culture. London and New York: Routledge. Biet, Christian and Christophe Triau. 2019. What Is the Theatre? trans. Jason Allen-Paisant and Joanne Brueton. Abingdon: Routledge. Burt, John. 1982. The Bloody Cucumber and Related Matters in the Siete Infantes de Lara. HR 50: 345–352. Cintra, Luis F. Lindley, ed. 1951. Crónica Geral de España de 1344, 3 vols. Lisboa: Academia Portuguesa da História. Coates, Geraldine. 2010. Menéndez Pidal and the Romancero. In Ramón Menéndez Pidal After Forty Years: A Reassessment, ed. Juan-Carlos Conde, 61–83. PMHRS, 67, PMIMSS, 1. London: Queen Mary, Department of Hispanic Studies. Correa, Pedro. 1999. Los romances fronterizos: edición comentada, 2 vols. Granada: University Press. Cummins, John G. 1970. The Creative Process in the Ballad Pártese el moro Alicante. FMLS 6: 368–381. Deyermond, A.D. 1976. Medieval Spanish Epic Cycles: Observations on Their Formation and Development. KRQ 23 (3): 281–303. ———. 1987. El “Cantar de Mio Cid” y la épica medieval española. Biblioteca general, 2. Barcelona: Sirmio. ———. 1996. The Problem of Lost Epics: Evidence and Criteria. In Al que en buen ora naçió. Essays on the Spanish Epic and Ballad in Honour of Colin Smith, ed. Brian Powell and Geoffrey West, Hispanic Studies, TRAC, 27–43. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press & MHRA. Díaz Roig, Mercedes. 2003. El Romancero viejo. Letras Hispánicas, 52 Madrid: Cátedra. Eberly, Susan S. 1989. A Thorn Among the Lilies: The Hawthorn in Medieval Love Allegory. Folklore 100: 41–52. Ellerby, Janet Mason. 2015. Embroidering the Scarlet A: Unwed Mothers and Illegitimate Children in American Fiction and Film. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. Escalona Monge, Julio. 2000. Épica, crónicas y genealogías: En torno a la historicidad de la Leyenda de los infantes de Lara. CLHM 23: 113–176. Accessible on line: http://www.persee.fr/web/revues/home/prescript/article/cehm_0 396-9045_2000_num_23_1_917. Fenster, Thelma, and Daniel Lord Smail (eds.). 2003. Fama: The Politics of Talk & Reputation in Medieval Europe. Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press. Foucault, Michel. 1972. The Archaeology of Knowledge and the Discourse on Language, trans. A. M. Sheridan Smith. New York: Pantheon. ———. 1978. The History of Sexuality Volume 1: An Introduction. New York: Vintage Books.

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———. 1986. Of Other Spaces: Utopias and Heterotopias, trans. Jay Miskowiec. Diacritics 16 (1): 22–27. Freud, Sigmund. 1917. Mourning and Melancholia. In The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, vol. 14, 237–258, trans. James Strachey. London: Hogarth. Garcia-Arenal, Mercedes. 2013. Creating Conversos: Genealogy and Identity as Historiographical Problems (After a Recent Book by Ángel Alcalá). Bulletin for Spanish and Portuguese Historical Studies 38: 1–19. García Gómez, E., and Ramón Menéndez Pidal. 1951. Sobre la etimología del nombre del bastardo ‘Mudarra’. Al-Andalus 16: 87–98. Gilman, S. 1972. On Romancero as a Poetic Language. In Crítica y poesía: Homenaje a Casalduero, 151–160. Madrid: Gredos. Hernando, Julio. 2010. Reigning Revenge in the Poema of El Cid. In Vendetta: Essays on Honor and Revenge, ed. Giovanna Summerfield, 63–79. Cambridge: Scholars Publisher. Hornblower, Simon, et al. 2012. The Oxford Classical Dictionary, 4th ed. Oxford: University Press. Keppler, C.F. 1972. The Literature of the Second Self . Tucson: University of Arizona Press. Lathrop, Thomas A. 1971. The Legend of the Siete Infantes de Lara. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. Lochrie, Karma. 1999. Covert Operations. Philadelphia: Pennsylvania University Press. McCracken, Peggy. 2003. The Curse of Eve, the Wound of the Hero: Blood, Gender, and Medieval Literature. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. McDougall, Sara. 2017. Royal Bastards: The Birth of Illegitimacy 800–1230. Oxford: University Press. Menéndez Pidal, Ramón. 1945. La epopeya castellana a través de la literatura española. Madrid: Espasa-Calpe. ———. 1953. Romancero hispánico, hispano-portugués, americano y sefardí: teoría y historia, 2 vols. Madrid: Espasa-Calpe. vol. 1. ———. 1963. El estado latente en la vida tradicional. Revista de Occidente, 129– 152. ———. 1971. La leyenda de los Infantes de Lara, 3rd ed., Obras de R. Menéndez Pidal, 1. Madrid: Espasa-Calpe. Menéndez Pidal, Ramón and María Goyri. 1957–85. Romancero tradicional de las lenguas hispánicas (español, portugués, catalán, sefardí), 12 vols. Madrid: Gredos. Mirrer, Louise, 1995. “Entre la gente se dice: Gossip and Indirection as Modes of Representation in the Romances noticieros.” In Studies on Medieval Spanish Literature in Honor of Charles F. Fraker, ed. Mercedes Vaquero and Alan Deyermond, 219–229. Madison: Hispanic Seminary of Medieval Studies.

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Montgomery, Thomas. 1989. ‘E sobre esto se levanto la trayçion’: Probing the Background of the Leyenda de los Siete Infantes. Hispania 72: 882–889. O’Callaghan, Joseph F. 1975. A History of Medieval Spain. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. ———. 2003. Reconquest and Crusade in Medieval Spain. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. Pérez de Hita, Ginés. 1982. Guerras civiles de Granada: primera parte, ed. Shasta M. Bryant. Newark, DE. Juan de la Cuesta. Prince, Meredith. 2010. Pietas as Vengeance in Ovid’s Metamorphoses. In Vendetta: Essays on Honor and Revenge, ed. Giovanna Summerfield, 1–11. Cambridge: Scholars Publisher. Ratcliffe, Marjorie. 2011. Mujeres épicas españolas: silencios, olvidos, ideologías. Monografías A291. Woodbridge: Tamesis. Rawson, Beryl. 2003. Children and Childhood in Roman Italy. Oxford: University Press. Rogers, Edith R. 1974. The Hunt in the Romancero and Other Traditional Ballads. HR 42: 133–171. Smith, Colin. 1996. Spanish Ballads. London: Bristol Classical Press. Spacks, Patricia Meyer. 1985. Gossip. New York: Knopf. Summerfield, Giovanna. 2010. Vendetta: Essays on Honor and Revenge. Cambridge: Scholars Publisher. Walker Bynum, Caroline. 2007. Wonderful Blood: Theology and Practice in Late Medieval Northern Germany and Beyond. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. Witte, John. 2009. The Sins of the Fathers: The Law and Theology of Illegitimacy Reconsidered. Cambridge: University Press. Wolf. 1856. Primavera y flor de romances,, vol. 1. Berlin: A. Asher & Company. Yiacoup, Sizen. ¸ 2013. Frontier Memory: Cultural Conflict and Exchange in the “Romancero fronterizo”. MHRA Texts and Dissertations, 87. London: Modern Humanities Research Association. Young, Robert J. C. 1995. Colonial Desire: Hybridity in Theory, Culture and Race. London and New York: Routledge.

CHAPTER 4

Narrating Illegitimacy: The Novelas ejemplares

To explore the subject of illegitimacy in the context of Golden Age narrative is to place the definition of legitimacy itself under careful scrutiny. In a context in which writers and thinkers identified the difficulty in knowing truth in a world of deceitful appearances, how could any definition making claim to correctness, appropriateness, or honesty be taken at face value? The difference between being and seeming (ser and parecer), and between trickery and disillusion (engaño and desengaño) carried enormous ethical and aesthetic weight; it “exercised a decisive influence on the questions of agency, morality, reason of state, trust and honour” (Robbins 2007, 1). It is no surprise to see alternative modes of being and thinking represented in the literature of the period. Non-conformity, delinquency, subversion, and irony have long been cited as trademark features of the literature of Spain’s Golden Age.1 Narrative is a particularly dazzling source of such novelty and non-conformity. In this chapter, I explore three of Cervantes’s Novelas ejemplares (Exemplary Novels ) on the theme of illegitimacy: La fuerza de la sangre (The Power of Blood) La ilustre fregona (The Illustrious Kitchen-Maid), and La señora Cornelia (Lady Cornelia). The Novelas ejemplares were published in 1613, before Cervantes’s masterpiece Don Quijote, and across twelve stories present a vast range of characters and settings, “ranging from the Aegean to the Caribbean and from Britain to North Africa” (Ife in Cervantes 2013, vii). Illegitimacy is part of this variegated and eclectic textual world, one informed © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 G. Hazbun, Reading Illegitimacy in Early Iberian Literature, The New Middle Ages, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-59569-2_4

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by Cervantes’s own voyages while in active military service, including in Lepanto in 1571 then in Corfu and North Africa, and undoubtedly by his five-year period of captivity in Algiers after being captured by corsairs on his way back to Spain in 1575.2 It is possible to see illegitimacy, if we understand it as a form of reaction, and resistance, to social mores and edicts, as a reflection of Cervantes’s own attitude towards the society and culture of his day, of his “Olympian freedom to play ironically with its codes” (Close 2000, 5), based on his own at times difficult experiences of war, injury, poverty, and captivity. At various levels, including in the attitude towards religion he demonstrates in the Novelas ejemplares, Cervantes demonstrates that life is both risible and tragic and that it is a set of double standards. As Jean Canavaggio describes, his contact with other cultures contributed to this fluid perspective: “al contacto de moros y renegados, Miguel tiende a prescindir de prejuicios, a renunciar a las opiniones apresuradas. Fustiga en sus obras a los que, por debilidad y falta de valor, abandonan la fe de Cristo; y exalta, por contraste, el heroísmo de los mártires fieles a sus convicciones” (2015, 109) (through contact with Muslims and renegades, Miguel tends to lack prejudices, to reject superficial judgements. He harshly criticises in his works those who, through weakness or lack of courage, abandon faith in Christ and he exalts, in contrast, the heroism of martyrs who are faithful to their convictions). Melveena McKendrick describes Algiers where Cervantes was imprisoned as “Culturally […] an exotic hybrid, teeming as it did with Christian slaves, expatriate Spanish moors, renegades and adventurers from everywhere […] Like any frontier society living on the margins of conventional law and order, it was a place of opportunity” (1980, 62–63). Illegitimacy, through its continual relationship with legitimacy, questions the official and superficial layers of social and political life, asking us to approach them from a different perspective. In this sense, illegitimacy is perfectly aligned with the dynamic and probing spirit of the Novelas ejemplares, and of Cervantes himself, and it is a vital part of his ongoing illustration that narrative can unlock levels of complexity and contradiction that exist in the real world but are often denied by it. Illegitimacy is a central part of Cervantes’s development of literary form. It is a fluid and daring theme within a bigger experiment in narrative. In this chapter, I consider illegitimacy in the context of emerging narrative technique, and in light of the relationship between fiction and reality. Ultimately, I ask whether exploring illegitimacy in the context of Cervantes’s narrative necessarily means questioning the nature of truth

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itself; whether, as a byword for the improper, the unethical, the illegal, the socially unacceptable, illegitimacy’s tendency to define itself against social norms, and against the thing that it is not, starts to fracture our belief in those very things, leaving us in the certain knowledge that any known experience or established truth is, by necessity, fragile and partial. Illegitimacy, in the context of early narrative, is about making and unmaking. In examining this selection of short stories, I am looking at illegitimacy as a theme within them, as well as in connection with the development of narrative, and narrative’s own relationship with legitimacy. In the case of the Novelas ejemplares, this involves first considering what exemplary might mean. Narrative might be regarded as having the capacity to organise and to make sense of an otherwise chaotic reality. Frank Kermode describes how “all novels imitate a world of potentiality […] They have a fixation on the eidetic imagery of beginning, middle, and end, potency and cause” (2000, 138). A tension is evident in the prologue to the Novelas ejemplares between form and its dissolution. Statements inherited from earlier narrative beginnings, concerning such matters as memory, novelty, humility, entertainment value, and utility are no sooner stated than they are called into question by the tradition preceding them, and the matter surrounding them. Exemplarity is claimed but, at the same time, obfuscated by double negatives and hypothetical clauses: Heles dado nombre de ejemplares, y si bien lo miras, no hay ninguna de quien no se pueda sacar algún ejemplo provechoso; y si no fuera por no alargar este sujeto, quizá te mostrara el sabroso y honesto fruto que se podría sacar, así de todas juntas como de cada una de por sí. (1992, 52) (I have called them exemplary, and if you look closely at them, there is not a single one of them from which one cannot take some useful example; and without wishing to elaborate too much, perhaps I would show you the tasty and wholesome fruit which could be extracted, from all of them combined or from each one on its own.)

The text is offered as a gaming table, a play space where Cervantes claims, again in hypothetical mood, to offer entertainment, and not to cause harm:

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Mi intento ha sido poner en la plaza de nuestra república una mesa de trucos, donde cada uno pueda llegar a entretenerse, sin daño de barras: digo, sin daño del alma ni del cuerpo, porque los ejercicios honestos y agradables antes aprovechan que dañan. (1992, 52) (My intention has been to place in the square of our republic a gaming table, where anyone can come and entertain themself, without fear of checkmate; I mean to say, without harm coming to their soul nor to their body, because honest and agreeable pastimes are more advantageous than they are harmful.)

He qualifies this with reference to man’s need for recreation, this time in the reviving setting of gardens and groves, the locus amoenus of medieval tradition: Horas hay de recreación, donde el afligido espíritu descanse. Para este efeto se plantan las alamedas, se buscan las fuentes, se allanan las cuestas y se cultivan con curiosidad los jardines. (1992, 52) (There is time for recreation, when the troubled spirit may rest. For this reason poplar groves are planted, fountains are sought, peaks are levelled, and gardens are cultivated with wonder.)

He is referring here to the concept of eutrapelia or harmless recreation which sought to refresh and enhance one’s capacity for moral instruction.3 As Colin Thompson puts it, “wholesome entertainment is a necessary good for humans and therefore has its own moral value” (2005, 264). There seems to be a difference, however, in the entertainment of a beautiful garden and that of a gaming table. The metaphor of the text as a “mesa de trucos” invites us to consider Cervantes’s particular brand of entertainment as related to trickery, and dependent on what the reader brings to the table. The game announces itself as a game so fully that one is overtly conscious of being in a play space, which risks lessening its escapist possibilities. Roberto González Echeverría notes that “the stories are forms of eutrapelia, meaning a good twist or trope, a trick like those of a magician or acrobat” (2005, 177). Cañizares in El coloquio de los perros (The Dialogue of the Dogs ) describes “aquella ciencia que llaman tropelía, que hace parecer una cosa por otra” (2003, 337) (that science they call tropelía that makes one thing seem like another).

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Wolfgang Iser’s description of textual play is a helpful insight into Cervantes’s recursive technique: “The game makes the text into a mirror world in which nothing can escape its doubling […] in playing the text, the reader cannot escape being played by the text” (1993, 272–73). More elusive still is the prologue’s claim that the Novelas contain a hidden mystery which elevates them, “algún misterio tienen escondido que las levanta” (1992, 52) (some hidden mystery which elevates them). The promise of hidden mystery potentially endows the work with promise and meaning, but this may be another way of talking about the text as a space for play, adventure, hide and seek. The statement is both entirely certain and wholly uncertain, owing to the indefinite adjective “algún” (some), reflecting the inherent indeterminacy of play: “playing is not predetermined but, rather, arises out of a basic indeterminacy […] play inscribes into it the unpredictability of what first makes the gaming possible” (Iser 1993, 204).4 The prologue is a reflection on narrative form as something simultaneously being made and undone, so how does illegitimacy fit into this picture? To begin to answer that, an overview of how and where illegitimacy manifests itself in the tales is necessary. In La fuerza de la sangre, a young nobleman named Rodolfo abducts, rapes, and discards a beautiful woman named Leocadia, who then gives birth in secret to a son named Luis. As a young child, Luis is trampled by a horse and gravely wounded. An older gentleman, who happens to be Rodolfo’s father, comes to his aid and is astonished that he resembles his own son so closely. Leocadia tells Rodolfo’s mother, Estefanía, who the child really is, and Estefanía orchestrates their meeting and their marriage. Leocadia ends up marrying the man who raped her and we are told that they go on to live a happy life, with many descendants. In La señora Cornelia, the plot twists and turns on a regular basis. Two Spanish noblemen in their twenties, don Antonio de Isunza and don Juan de Gamboa, leave their studies in Salamanca and go off to see something of the world, ending up in Bologna. There they hear about an extremely beautiful woman named Cornelia who lives under the protection of her brother Lorenzo Bentibolli. One night, Juan hears a voice whispering and is asked if he is Fabio. He responds in the affirmative and is handed a baby, which he entrusts to a maid, instructing her to change the baby into more humble clothes, and to seek a wetnurse. He returns to the house where he heard the voice only to find a skirmish taking place and he saves a man from being attacked. The man thanks him but insists on his identity remaining secret. Juan mistakenly

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takes another man’s hat, and the man he saved tells him to keep it. It is covered in diamonds. Juan’s friend Antonio also has a strange story to tell: a beautiful woman comes up to him in the street and pleads for his help. He takes her back to their house for safety and she tells him how the duke of Ferrara promised to marry her but had reason to wait, and she discovered she was pregnant. The duke was supposed to arrange for her to be whisked away to Ferrara to give birth but the very night that this was supposed to happen her brother and his companions appeared and, terrified, she gave birth there and then. Cornelia is aware of a baby in the house and tries and fails to feed it. Eventually she realises that this baby is hers, a realisation helped when the child is dressed in the original luxurious swaddling clothes he was wearing when Juan found him. Cornelia’s brother Lorenzo happens to come to the house to ask Juan to travel with him to Ferrara in his quest for justice, since he is a Spaniard and understands matters of reputation. Juan agrees and Antonio stays with Cornelia. Her distrustful landlady meanwhile persuades Cornelia to travel with her, the wet-nurse, and the baby to a hamlet close to Ferrara to take refuge with a priest. Lorenzo hears that the duke has remained in Bologna and turns back with Juan; they bump into the duke’s party and the duke recognises Juan who is wearing his (originally the duke’s) diamond-encrusted hat. The duke explains why he has not yet married Cornelia, because he was waiting for his mother, who had another wife lined up for him, to die first. The duke and Lorenzo settle their differences but when they return to Bologna they find Cornelia and the baby missing. The duke by chance travels to the village where Cornelia is staying because he is a friend of the priest; the priest has the baby brought to him dressed in luxurious garments and jewels and the duke recognises his son. Eventually all the men gather there and the duke pretends that he has fallen in love with a woman from the village. When the men take offence at this, out processes Cornelia in splendid fashion, to their great surprise. The duke and Cornelia are married; Juan gives away the bride and Cornelia and the duke go on to have two daughters. In La ilustre fregona, the two sons of don Diego de Carriazo and don Juan de Avendaño are supposed to be studying in Salamanca but give their guardian the slip and go off in search of picaresque adventures. They come to an inn in Toledo where a notoriously beautiful kitchen-maid named Costanza lives. Avendaño catches a glimpse of her and falls in love, deciding to stay on at the inn and do menial work for the innkeeper so he can remain close to Costanza. Carriazo is more interested in returning to

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the tunny fisheries where he has spent many happy summers but stays on to support his friend; he takes on the new name Lope Asturiano, and Avendaño calls himself Tomás Pedro. When the Corregidor’s son comes courting Costanza, the innkeeper tells the Corregidor of how a lady dressed as a pilgrim, but evidently a noblewoman, arrived fifteen years ago in a terribly ill condition and gave birth to a beautiful baby girl.5 She left the child in the care of the innkeeper and his wife as their niece, with a gold chain missing six pieces, and half of a piece of parchment, so that whoever would come back to claim her would have proof of their identity. Costanza was raised in a village not far from the inn. The boys’ fathers and their entourage come to the inn which prompts Tomás/Avendaño to confide in Costanza as to who they really are. It turns out that don Diego, Carriazo/Lope’s father, is the biological father of Costanza, having raped her mother who moved away and then died two years later. Don Diego, because of a servant’s greedy desire to keep the dowry, did not find out about the child when he was supposed to. Costanza is introduced to her true father but wishes to remain with her adopted mother, the innkeeper’s wife, so she comes along too. Carriazo tells his father about his friend’s love for Costanza and marriages are arranged between Tomás and Costanza, don Diego de Carriazo and the Corregidor’s daughter, and don Pedro, son of the Corregidor, with a daughter of don Juan de Avendaño. In the novelas, illegitimacy is closely related to time and renders it elastic and malleable. It forces a look into the past, to deeds committed there, sometimes deeds committed outside the text’s frame in its prehistory. It inhabits a middle ground of present-time risk, problems, and dilemmas, and it necessarily looks towards the future, to any potential modes of resolution. Because it concerns children, it also encourages reflection on progress, growth, and coming to fruition in a way that supports the linear potential of narrative, especially where there are biographical elements. Illegitimacy in all cases affects the ending, especially the concept of the happy ending via recognition and resolution and calls for the reader’s involvement in interpreting the nature of the ending. This is never more true than in La fuerza de la sangre with its problematic final marriage of rapist and victim. Alongside this focus on narrative time, there is also emphasis on narrative order and sequence. Illegitimacy often involves coincidences, peripeteia, chance encounters, different versions of events, trickery, criminality, burla—in short all those happenings and techniques which disrupt the logical sequence of narrative and

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force an alternative perspective, both from the characters within it, and the readers beyond it. The illegitimate child exists at the borders of verification and provability, at one and the same time, a lie and a truth, a fiction and a reality. Illegitimacy in the narratives discussed here also raises considerations about quantity, insofar as these are stories unavoidably concerned with excess and deficiency—the child is always more than what is expected—a boon, a vision of beauty—and often more than what is known about—a secret lying in waiting for example—but is simultaneously also deficient, lacking the same lineage, authority, status, upbringing, perhaps even opportunities, as society’s acknowledged or legitimate players. The illegitimate figure is a narrative secret and a narrative assertion, included and excluded at various points and so reflecting the selective nature of family history, and of narrative itself. With this focus on quantity and measure there is a natural connection with fiction and reality, namely the extent to which these narratives negotiate the worlds of real life and the imagination in such a way as to make both possible, to deliver convincing quantities of each. The illegitimate character is a replica of the narrative itself given its tendency to denote one thing on the surface, by virtue of appearance, and other things more deeply, via hidden depths. Emphasis in these narratives on the externally denotative field—beauty, clothing, jewels, tangible pieces of evidence—allows us to see this as an arena where identity is only partially constructed, and where recognition can be both achieved and obscured. This, in turn, emphasises what Georg Lukács calls, in the context of the novel, the “process of becoming” where illegitimacy highlights narrative as an art form which “establishes a fluctuating yet firm balance between becoming and being” (1971, 72–73). Illegitimacy exposes the making of an identity—its ambiguities, contradictions, fragility, and fissures—for what it is and, with that, “the constitutive dividedness of human beings” (Iser 1993, 84).

Excessive Force and Forcible Excess: Quantifying “La fuerza de la sangre” “Cuando Dios da la llaga, da la medicina” (2003, 87) (When God creates the wound, he also creates the medicine); so reasons Leocadia while explaining the circumstances of her illegitimate son Luis’s birth to Estefanía.6 One could be forgiven for taking this as a potted definition of the novela’s plot, hinging as it does on the unthinkable injury to Leocadia and

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then her ostensibly restorative, reparative marriage to Rodolfo. While in one sense old wounds are healed, and Luis’s accident and recovery, which leads to the revelation of who he is, makes it all the more tempting to read the latter part of the novela in terms of curing, the reader understands from the very outset that balance is incredibly hard to find and achieve, and that this is a work with more to say about excess and unfinished-ness than balance and resolution. My view is that Cervantes is using illegitimacy in this narrative to reflect a world in which a point of equilibrium is elusive. The ending is superficially happy but creates a lingering sense of unease to make us focus on the nature of a resolution or conclusion in circumstances where all other signs defy this. The tale exposes a world broken down into quantities and measures of behaviours and feelings, and not in a good sense: honour and reputation are both elusive and dreadfully onerous; justice falls short; the terrifying carnal urges of mankind—to possess, to enjoy, to have—are scarcely held back, or not at all, feelings swing wildly between pain and joy. More ominously still, everything is at a potential tipping point; so much in the novela is on the verge of being something else that the reader’s interpretative stance is necessarily cautious, held at a knife edge. Some critics do see in the novela a kind of overriding order or design, often via a religious interpretation of the work. A possible typological relationship between Leocadia and Saint Leocadia of Toledo, martyred c.304 for her faith, is evident, supported by the story being set in Toledo. Joaquín Casalduero regards the text as a story of the fall and salvation of mankind, in which the cross triumphs over the devil (1969, 151). R. P. Calcraft describes how “la fuerza de la sangre can finally be seen as both a symbol of the way that heaven will inscrutably work its will on earth by human agency, and as a clear and moving analogy of the power of Christ’s own blood to redeem mankind” (1981, 203). Paul Lewis-Smith calls it “a marvellous and very subtle portrayal of Providence, working through Nature” in which “Cervantes lays down clear guidelines for Christians living in a corrupt and deceptive world, the general message being one of patience and caution” (1996, 886, 897). For Nina Scott, “Cervantes offers his concise commentary on the ideal Christian family” where “she [Leocadia] and Rodolfo enter into a legitimate and enduring relationship, one based on individual worth, compatibility, an acceptance of responsibility and obedience to the sacrament of marriage” (1977, 132). Alban Forcione connects the work with miracle narrative but in a way that highlights “a tendency, running through the entire

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tale from its very beginning, to present and simultaneously recoil from the miraculous” (1982, 354). He goes on: “Cervantes takes his stand midway between the extremes marked by contemporary asceticism, with its obsessions with sinfulness and a distant, all-powerful God, and skepticism, with its unsparing disclosure of the violence that superstition and fanaticism can bring about with God’s puzzling apparent acquiescence” (395).7 The difficulty in arriving at firm definitions of the novela’s workings and meaning is more commonly voiced, given that it is “widely recognized as a problematic text” (Rhodes 2008, 201). Barry Ife and Trudi Darby describe how “the extraordinary dénouement poses some of the greatest interpretative challenges of any story in the collection” (2005, 172).8 E. T. Howe observes the “antithetical, yet varied, connotations suggested by fuerza and sangre” (1994, 66). Ruth El Saffar notes that “it is impossible to understand how a girl could fall in love with and marry the same man who raped her seven years earlier” (1974, 128). For Eric D. Mayer, “Cervantes’ reader is often left in a state of interpretative uncertainty, as a coherent reading of the tale is steadily undermined by certain curious and insoluble interpretative problems” (2005, 98). One of these problems is the nature of recognition itself (98). David Boruchoff notes that internal textual conflicts are key to an understanding of the work’s artistic and didactic intentions (2016, 474). For González Echeverría, “The language of blood, like that of the story, is one of paradox, not ambiguity. Ambiguity suggests a possible resolution; paradox enunciates the convergence of contraries” (2005, 191).9 For obvious reasons, critical work has often focussed on the ending of the novela and, although this involves the illegitimate child Luis implicitly, criticism has not considered the theme of illegitimacy in its own right and at sufficient length.10 In some cases, the illegitimate child has been vastly underestimated.11 It is my contention that illegitimacy is central to the uncertainty and inscrutability which distinguish this tale because illegitimacy is always more than one thing at the same time: familiar and unfamiliar, hidden and visible, known and unknown. This, in turn, affords the reader an opportunity to be closely involved in the production of the novela’s meaning, illustrating that for Cervantes exemplarity comes at the level of the reader’s response. The illegitimate figure is also a prime example of how Cervantes’s novelas offer: “the possibility of entering into other worlds and alternative lives which are both like and unlike our own” (Dunn 2005, 88–89). Some critics have observed how the character Luis is responsible for bringing opposing parts of the story together.

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For Edward Friedman, Luis is “an obvious link between the events of the first part and those of the concluding section” (1989, 143). Howe calls him “the linchpin connecting both halves of the story, even as he embodies both honour and disgrace” (1994, 70) and “the child whose face confirms the power of Rodolfo’s lust” (73). González Echeverría refers to him as “ambivalent proof and judgment because on the one hand Luisico’s mere presence is an accusation, while on the other it is a blessing” (2005, 186). My reading is that his essential duality needs to be understood in connection with the broader concern in the novela with quantification. Being double, being more, is in dialogue with concepts of surfeiture, demonstrability, and even exemplarity more widely. The novela opens with the family returning from an outing to the river in Toledo and entirely unsuspecting of what is about to befall them. Cervantes’s stress on their unpreparedness, even their naivety, is the first indication of a theme of deficiency and absence that runs right through the tale, closely interlaced with demonstrations of excess. They are so far from imagining the horror of Leocadia’s abduction and rape, yet the narrator, in laconic mood, stresses that this is not uncommon with misfortunes, which tend to arrive unanticipated: “Pero como las más de las desdichas que vienen no se piensan, contra todo su pensamiento les sucedió una que les turbó la holgura y les dio que llorar muchos años” (77) (Like most misfortunes that arrive announced, when they least expected it one befell them which disturbed their repose and caused them years of sorrow). The years of sorrow that ensued might at first glance sound like a cliché, but it is in fact an important quantification of their pain, consistent with the novela’s violent opening swing from blissful ignorance to agony. Cervantes uses the full arc of human experience. Where the family may be lacking in foresight, Rodolfo is described in terms of excess: un caballero de aquella ciudad a quien la riqueza, la sangre ilustre, la inclinación torcida, la libertad demasiada y las compañías libres, le hacían hacer cosas y tener atrevimientos que desdecían de su calidad y le daban renombre de atrevido. (77) (a gentleman of that city whose fortune, illustrious blood, twisted inclinations, excessive freedom and out of control companions made him perform acts of such audacity as to belittle his status and earn him a reputation for boldness.)

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Libertad (freedom) and atrevimiento (boldness) shape him as a true figure of extremes; too rich, too illustrious, too free, too undiscerning in his companions, who are themselves insolent. Boldness defines him; not only is his first, daring act of staring directly at the faces of the women in the party described as an “atrevimiento” (77) but he is referred to subsequently by Leocadia as an “Atrevido mancebo” (80) (bold young man). No sooner had he been struck by the beauty of Leocadia’s face then he and his friends had resolved to abduct her. In topsy-turvy fashion, his ill intent finds only support: “siempre los ricos que dan en liberales hallan quien canonice sus desafueros y califique por buenos sus malos gustos” (78) (rich people who err on the generous side always find people who consecrate their crimes and describe their wicked desires as good ones). Leocadia’s abduction is premeditated and physically daring; her parents react by shouting, her little brother cries, and the maid scratches him, but to no avail, on any front. Renato Barahona describes how abduction was a significant form of violence against women in the early modern period, calling it “a bold and perhaps desperate action after other forms of persuasion and pressure had been exhausted” (2003, 77). He also observes that abductions were “seldom one-on-one endeavours, go-betweens and confederates assisted in the thefts” (92). The clear contrast between Rodolfo and his companions on one hand, and Leocadia and her family on the other keeps deficiency and excess constantly in tension in the novela. Balance is elusive; everything is either insufficient, or too much. When Leocadia is seized she turns into a shell of her former self; devoid of strength, voice, sight, and consciousness: “no tuvo fuerzas para defenderse y el sobresalto le quitó la voz para quejarse, y aun la luz de los ojos, pues, desmayada y sin sentido, no vio quién la llevaba” (78) (she had no strength with which to defend herself and the shock took away any voice with which she could complain, and even the light from her eyes for, in a faint and unconscious, she did not see who took her). The vain efforts of her family to stop the abduction also pale in a setting where solitude and silence reign: “todo lo cubría la soledad del lugar, y el callado silencio de la noche, y las crueles entrañas de los malhechores” (78) (everything was hidden by the solitude of the place, the hushed silence of the night, and the inner cruelty of the evildoers). Rodolfo’s lasciviousness has an evacuating effect on her and her entire family. While he experiences no opposition to his desire, they lose out:

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Rodolfo llegó a su casa sin empedimento alguno, y los padres de Leocadia llegaron a la suya lastimados, afligidos y desesperados: ciegos, sin los ojos de su hija, que eran la lumbre de los suyos; solos, porque Leocadia era su dulce y agradable compañía; confusos, sin saber si sería bien dar noticia de su desgracia a la justicia, temerosos no fuesen ellos el principal instrumento de publicar su deshonra. (78) (Rodolfo arrived at his house unhindered, and Leocadia’s parents arrived at theirs hurt, afflicted and hopeless: blind, without the eyes of their daughter, who was the light of theirs; alone, because Leocadia was their sweet and agreeable companion; confused, not sure whether to report the affront to the authorities, fearful that they would become the main vehicle of her public dishonour.)

Rodolfo returns home without obstacle—a menacingly simple preface to the imminent rape—yet the family, forced to return without their daughter, are allotted a melodramatic description of all that they have lost; the excessive rhetorical style contrasts sharply with the cold simplicity of Rodolfo’s desires and actions. Framing the rape as a form of robbery also maintains the sense of a quantitative dynamic; blind of understanding, and in the dark, Rodolfo takes what does not belong to him. Only then does the text provide us with a limit: desire satisfied is, at least temporarily, halted and Leocadia can be disposed of. Having been all he wanted when he caught sight of her beautiful face, she is now as if nothing: “Ciego de la luz del entendimiento, a escuras robó la mejor prenda de Leocadia; y como los pecados de la sensualidad por la mayor parte no tiran más allá la barra del término del cumplimiento dellos, quisiera luego Rodolfo que allí desapareciera Leocadia” (79) (Blind to the light of his own understanding, in the dark he stole Leocadia’s greatest treasure; and since the sins of the flesh mostly do not last longer than their fulfilment, Rodoldo wished that Leocadia would disappear from there). Once the rape has been committed, honour enters the equation. In this context too, the search for balance is elusive as Leocadia faces the difficult matter of having to keep the rape secret to preserve her own honour. She suggests that if he killed her, death would restore a kind of balance, tempering cruelty and mercy: “y así, en un mismo punto, vendrás a ser cruel y piadoso!” (79) (and thus, in a single stroke, you will be cruel and merciful). However, Rodolfo’s confused reaction reveals that he is also a deficient character, an inexperienced youth, who simply does not understand her logic, and whose silence on the matter is so stunning to

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Leocadia that she begins to wonder if he is even real at all, or if she is in the presence of a ghost: “con las manos procuraba desengañarse si era fantasma o sombra la que con ella estaba” (80) (with her hands she tried to work out if she was with a ghost or a shadow). Both are hollowedout characters; Rodolfo by virtue of his apparent youth and inexperience, Leocadia through her determination to live a life of secrecy and silence on the matter of her dishonour: venturosa sería yo si esta escuridad durase para siempre, sin que mis ojos volviesen a ver la luz del mundo, y que este lugar donde ahora estoy, cualquiera que él se fuese, sirviese de sepultura a mi honra pues es mejor la deshonra que se ignora que la honra que está puesta en opinión de las gentes. (79) (I would be fortunate if this darkness were to last for ever, without my eyes ever seeing the light of the world again, and if this place where I am now, whichever it might be, were to become a sepulchre to my honour, for the dishonour that is not known is better than the honour that becomes public knowledge.)

Both their identities are subject to partial erasure. Leocadia has never seen Rodolfo’s face, and never wishes ever to see it, while she confronts life now wishing she had never been born, or assuming that she was born to be a wretch (80). She goes on to live in her parents’ house physically covered up, and unseen by anyone lest her misfortune be readable from her face (84). Even Rodolfo’s spoils are easily diminished since Leocadia compares them with what he could have taken from a tree trunk or a stone, gaining similar notoriety (81). Finding a balance is never more difficult than where honour is concerned. Its system is revealed as both inexorable and relative. Leocadia’s father believes in her innocence and virtue but understands the need for total secrecy, and so frames it as a skewed system of weight and measure where the smallest amount of dishonour will always outweigh a larger portion of secret disgrace: “que más lástima una onza de deshonra pública que una arroba de infamia secreta. Y pues puedes vivir honrada con Dios en público, no te pene de estar deshonrada contigo en secreto: la verdadera deshonra está en el pecado y la verdadera honra en la virtud” (84) (an ounce of public dishonour is more harmful than a stone of secret infamy. And since you can live an honourable life before God and public, do not suffer from

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your secret dishonour: true dishonour lies in sin and true honour lies in virtue). In practice, this is difficult to implement, on account of Leocadia’s pregnancy. Whereas Rodolfo erases all memory of the incident, Leocadia demonstrably fails to do so because she is forced to remain in hiding; when she realises that she has no other option, she cries almost forgotten tears, “las en algún tanto olvidadas lágrimas” (84). Luis’s presence is a further demonstration of deficiency and excess pitted against one another. Leocadia’s pregnancy and childbirth are couched in secrecy—she does not even trust a midwife to be present—and the child is soon whisked away to spend his early years in a remote village before he is taken to live with his grandfather, as his nephew. Despite this hidden life, Luis’s unimaginable beauty makes him highly conspicuous: Era el niño […] de rostro hermoso, de condición mansa, de ingenio agudo, y en todas las acciones que en aquella edad tierna podía hacer, daba señales de ser de algún noble padre engendrado; y de tal manera su gracia, belleza y discreción enamoraron a sus abuelos, que vinieron a tener por dicha la desdicha de su hija por haberles dado tal nieto. (85)12 (The child was […] of beautiful face, gentle temperament, and keen intelligence, and in all the things he was able to do at that tender age, he showed signs of being the son of a noble father; and his grace, beauty, and prudence so greatly enraptured his grandparents that they came to regard their daughter’s misfortune as a stroke of fortune for having given them such a grandson.)

Capable of converting sorry to joy, and desdicha to dicha, Luis is a transformative figure exuding nobility and grace. He is excessive in all of the right ways, taught the “riches” of learning, for example, where he cannot be showered with money: “porque la intención de sus abuelos era hacerle virtuoso y sabio, ya que no le podían hacer rico” (85) (because the intention of his grandparents was to render him virtuous and wise, because they could not make him rich). Moreover, his presence is totally arresting and charismatic: Cuando iba por la calle llovían sobre él millares de bendiciones; unos bendecían su hermosura, otros la madre que lo había parido, éstos el padre que le engendró, aquéllos a quien tan bien criado le criaba. Con este aplauso de los que le conocían y no conocían llegó el niño a la edad de siete años. (85)

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(When he walked down the street he was showered with thousands of blessings; some blessed his beauty, others the mother who bore him, some the father who engendered him, others blessed those who were raising such a good boy. With the praise of those who knew him, and those who did not, the boy reached seven years old.)

The excessive blessings heaped on the child and, by extension, on his family convert illegitimacy into a source of joy, praise, and social unity. The ironic reference to people showering good will on the mother who bore him and the father who engendered him does not go unnoticed in a context where Leocadia is still in hiding, and her father has forgotten all about the circumstances of his conception. Given that Luis is an excessively beautiful and blessed character, more than the sum of his parts, when his body is broken his worth only increases. When he is trampled by a horse in the street and left for dead with blood gushing from his head, the pity aroused for the accident is increased on account of who he is, people are “lastimados de la desgracia de tan hermoso niño” (86) (devastated by the misfortune that befell such a beautiful boy). The emphasis on beauty harmed is an ironic echo of the initial rape but the accident also draws attention to Luis as a physical body and, as such, precarious, and even more precious. It is also the circumstances by which the process of recognition starts to take place as Rodolfo’s parents see in Luis’s face an image of their own son: “que ninguna vez le miraba que no le pareciese a su hijo delante” (87) (she never once looked at him and did not see the image of her son before her)—fact that is repeated throughout the narrative as if to underline the iterative quality of the child. When Leocadia confesses the truth to Estefanía, Luis’s worth is once again quantified through the way that her own parents felt bereft: “ya les faltaba la lumbre de los ojos y el báculo de su vejez faltándoles este sobrino” (88) (with the loss of this nephew they lost the light from their eyes and the comfort of their old age). Luis continues to be associated with a surfeit of good qualities and of love in return: “que con muchas ventajas excede al que suelen tener otros padres a sus hijos” (87) (which with many benefits exceeds that while other parents usually have for their children). Luis’s close resemblance to his father is a form of doubling in a novela full of antithetical and duplicative moments, duly announced by the opening analogy of Leocadia and her family and Rodolfo and his companions meeting like “dos escuadrones, el de las ovejas con el de los

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lobos” (77) (two squadrons, that of the sheep and that of the wolves).13 Although antitheses are prominent in the tale, moments of duplication and correlation are no less important or frequent. Luis connects to at least two other male characters. The first is the little boy mentioned at the very outset of the tale who is Leocadia’s younger brother, “un niño pequeño” (77) (a small child). Ife and Darby suggest that it is tempting to see him as “a harbinger of the nephew Luis who is yet to be born” but that he may be even more significant, as the child is ruled out of defending Leocadia because of his age, denoting that “the wronged woman will have to fend for herself” (2005, 181). There is something unsettling about the fragile presence of a boy who is mentioned during the abduction as crying but not again. He and Luis are linked, strangely connected in an uncanny relationship, in “a story about the uncanny, about the familiar becoming unfamiliar, about the return of phenomena and of things” (González Echeverría 2005, 179).14 The boy prefigures Luis, rendering Luis uncanny, following Schelling’s definition of the uncanny as “everything […] that ought to have remained hidden and secret, and yet comes to light” (Freud 1919, 3). The child is initially a presence but becomes an absence, drifting out of the story, whereas Luis, initially hidden away becomes more and more conspicuous. Such doubling and substitution undoubtedly reminds us of the author’s selective hand in the tale and the constructed-ness of the entire novela. It also primes us for versions of sameness and difference in the field of male identity, and for Luis’s close facial resemblance to his father Rodolfo. However, it also immerses us in a more general atmosphere of something not being quite right. The twofoldness of the narrative opens up the question of inevitable or alternative paths. C. F. Keppler discusses a version of the double which is the second self in time, and observes that it is about “having, sometime in the past, parted company with the self he might have been” (165). The small, innocent boy is a version of Luis’s self in the past, but does not seem to represent a lost opportunity for happiness or fulfilment. His presence is a harmless but sad one, the child is uninitiated into an adult world but is already sorrowful, a fitting personification of mankind’s original and fallen condition. The later version that Luis seems to represent is another embodiment of violence and pain in a way that confirms the inevitability of it, but also carries forward a possibility of what could be better, a possibility which the end of the narrative challenges. Rodolfo’s parents see the likeness between Luis and their son and, at the very end of the tale, we discover that Rodolfo does too: “Viose

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Rodolfo a sí mismo en el espejo del rostro de su hijo” (95) (Rodolfo saw himself in his son’s face as if in a mirror). Rodolfo’s encounter with his son is a further example of a double self throughout time, where the temporal space between them invites questions about choices and alternative actions, what Rodolfo could have done differently. It is also about the workings of time more generally and how “on the one hand it sweeps all things into the grave of the ‘gone’ but on the other hand it is constantly resuscitating these corpses” (Keppler 1972, 163). The child is a return of a past action but the moment is scarcely one of self-examination for Rodolfo. The face that is also a mirror invites us into the realm of psychoanalysis. What does Rodolfo see reflected there? Is it the divided, misrecognised self that Lacan speaks of when describing the mirror stage? Is this an indication that at the end of the novela, Rodolfo is, at best, playing a role? Iser describes “humankind’s doppelgänger status” as a duality which “itself arises out of our decentered position” (1993, 81). Where Luis and Rodolfo are doubled, Cervantes is undoubtedly passing comment on self-construction and self-fashioning where “being oneself […] means being able to double oneself” (Iser 1993, 81). That roleplay is at the core of identity is supported by the tale’s emphasis on theatrical, visual effects such as light and dark, and the configuration of space, revealing “the consciously dramatic intentions of the author” (Scott 1977, 128).15 In such terms, Rodolfo cannot, in the end, be associated with a happy resolution. The face is also a part of a whole. While González Echeverría suggests that bodies in the narrative are telling, “it is bodies and things that will tell the story” (2005, 186), they are also disparate and misleading. Illegitimacy narratives frequently concern parts that stand for a whole, synecdoche, pieces and traces, clues and leads. However, this is troubled here by their association with appearance, by the way in which Cervantes draws so much attention to the role of faces that they start to look like images, impressions, disguises, mirrors, and we take a step back from the easy comparisons they invite. The same goes for the careful evidence, señales, that Leocadia preserves of the room where she is raped; when her father rejects the use of the silver crucifix as evidence of her assailant’s identity, for fear that it will have the opposite effect, he is passing a broader comment on the arbitrary nature of things and signs, drawing back from certainty of any kind in a context where even the site of her attack is one big theatre, “el teatro donde se representó la tragedia de su desventura” (82) (the theatre where the tragedy of her misfortune was staged). Mayer concurs that “one observes in this

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tale various events (usually recognitions) whose basic truth self-consumes at critical junctures” (2005, 116). The duality and theatricality with which facial recognition is invested primes us for a cautious final understanding of the role of appearances. The theme of excessive physical beauty which runs from Leocadia’s fateful encounter with Rodolfo to Luis’s striking appearance continues in the narrative’s closing stages. When Estefanía knows Luis’s true identity, she contrives to get Rodolfo to marry Leocadia, and does so by tempting him back from Naples with the prospect of marriage with an extraordinarily beautiful woman (89). The mood of excess is reflected in narrative discourse; Leocadia’s parents are described as “contentísimos” (extremely happy) and give infinite and unceasing thanks to God (89). Rodolfo rushes back, his appetite whetted for such a beauty, “con la golosina de gozar tan hermosa mujer” (89) (with the sweet prospect of enjoying such a beatiful woman), and is himself described as the epitome of bravery and refinement: “los extremos de la gala y de la bizarría estaban en él todos juntos” (89–90) (the extremes of bravery and refinement came together in him). When he sees a picture of this woman, and she turns out to be unattractive, Rodolfo changes his tune, citing the unbreakable bonds of marriage as a reason why he ought to be free to choose an attractive wife. He also reasons that marriage is a holy sacrament, in which sex is for the purpose of procreation, and he will not be able to fulfil this function if not attracted to his wife (91). Rodolfo’s newfound consideration of the sanctity of marriage has been seen by Thomas Pabon as an awareness of “a moral responsibility to himself and to others […] a maturity of judgment and behavior which was not in evidence before this scene” (1977, 123). However, his priggish pronouncement about the correct circumstances for the creation of legitimate offspring is ironic given the existence of Luis, and no more mature than it is totally predictable, as his mother reveals, knowing full well that her plan is succeeding (91). As Estefanía’s plan unfolds, the superlatively beautiful Leocadia makes her appearance before Rodolfo. The atmosphere is one of total reverence, as if she were a heavenly apparition: “Levantáronse todos a hacerle reverencia, como si fuera alguna cosa del cielo que allí milagrosamente se había aparecido” (92) (They all stood up to bow to her, as if a heavenly apparition had miraculously appeared). Rodolfo thinks her an angel and we are reminded, in this allusion to veneration, of the tortured Saint Leocadia from whom she inevitably takes her name and who represents another version of returning identities in this uncanny tale. Just as it

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seems, however, that these excesses are building to a happy conclusion, Leocadia’s self-confidence and faith in her own future happiness start to weaken. She reflects on how close she is to achieving happiness and in doing so faints: Consideraba cuán cerca estaba de ser dichosa o sin dicha para siempre. Y fue la consideración tan intensa y los pensamientos tan revueltos, que le apretaron el corazón de manera que comenzó a sudar y a perderse de color en un punto, sobreviniéndole un desmayo. (93) (She considered how close she was to being happy or without happiness forever. And her consideration was so intense and her thoughts so tumultuous that they put her heart under strain and all of a sudden she began to sweat and to turn pale, as a faint came over her.)

The point of equilibrium represented by dicha proves exasperatingly difficult to achieve. Rodolfo’s disappointment on seeing the ugly portrait prefigures in this sense the way happiness is elusive and caution is judicious. The narrative appears to be saying that excess of any nature is inherently precarious, always on the verge of loss; this applies to beauty as much as it does to the illegitimate child in his own right, following his brush with death after his accident. Of course, this was well understood in the pre-modern world in connection with another guiding system: that of Fortune, whose wheel was never at its highest point for long before crashing down. Being at Fortune’s height was both a blessing and a disaster waiting to happen. Fainting is common in the novela as if to illustrate how delicate the borderline is between feeling too much and feeling nothing at all; not even sentience is free of quantification. At the end of the novela, excess assumes several different and competing forms; an atmosphere of extreme and immersive jollity accompanies Rodolfo’s recognition of this son, where there is not a corner of the house that is not visited by a spirit of jubilation (95). However, Rodolfo finds the happy night progressing with leaden pace, not with wings but crutches, “no con alas, sino con muletas”, as his desire to be alone with Leocadia is so intense (95). As soon as it is time to withdraw to bed, the narrator describes how the house falls into a deathly silence, but the story itself, which is destined to continue indefinitely, does not: “quedó toda la casa sepultada en silencio, en el cual no quedará la verdad deste cuento” (95) (the whole house was buried in silence, but the truth of

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this story will not be). The reason given for the story’s refusal to fall silent is the offspring of Leocadia and Rodolfo once they are married: “pues no lo consentirán los muchos hijos y la ilustre descendencia que en Toledo dejaron” (95) (because the many offspring and the illustrious descendants that they left in Toledo will not permit it).16 The descendants of Leocadia and Rodolfo may be prolific but they are, by the same token, a never-ending narrative of a more troubling nature being an ongoing witness to, and continuation of, the original violation in the same way that Rodolfo’s earlier speech about sex and procreation within Christian marriage is undermined by the nature of his earlier crime. Moreover, following Cervantes’s interlacing of genealogy and narrative as two openended threads, we discover that the last words of the novela refer to the “valeroso, ilustre y cristiano abuelo de Luisico” (courageous, illustrious and Christian grandfather of little Luis) finding the child on the ground bleeding after his accident (95). Giving the endnote to the grandfather, the character instrumental in bringing the identity of the child to light, cuts through the emphasis on desires and feelings in the closing stages of the novela to highlight instead the power and role of perception, the physical seeing of the child’s blood spilt, “que vio derramada” (95), and, by inference, the recognition of a likeness in him. Blood is matter here, alarming evidence, but it is also more complicated than that, as Caroline Walker Bynum writes, “Bloodshed was dying and violation; it was also source, origin, and birth […] blood was ambiguous because profoundly bipolar” (2007, 187). Recalling the hidden mystery of the prologue, we can conclude that the illegitimate child represents pain and new life in one, being absent but ever-present, a secret that ought not come to light, but does.17 Hence “Luisico” is the very last word of the tale, an identity and a question until the last.

All That Glitters: “La señora Cornelia” Like La fuerza de la sangre, La señora Cornelia is a tale of excess which connects illegitimacy to a world of quantity and value. It is a long novela, with lavish details, coincidences, and narrative chicaneries. It is also concerned with high society: Don Antonio de Isunza and Don Juan de Gamboa are Basque nobility, the Bentibolli family of which Cornelia is a member is an old and distinguished one, and the Duke of Ferrara is of noble lineage. Beauty, wealth, and finery lend a shimmering veneer to the story. Cornelia’s extraordinary beauty is stressed from the start,

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“hermosísima en extremo” (242) (extremely beautiful) and encapsulated in a painting. Juan recovers a diamond-encrusted hat which, as we find out later, belongs to the Duke of Ferrara; the illegitimate baby Juan is handed is “la más hermosa que jamás hubiese visto” (244) (the most beautiful child that ever was seen). Crowding the tale with superlatives and excesses of this type takes us to the heights of visual experience but the narrative also descends and branches out in other directions, eventually bringing the question of appearance full circle. We come to the surprising revelation, all the more surprising for the world of finery in which it is set, that appearances are not always deceptive, that the material world can be evidence not artifice, and that engaño is frequently obvious and solvable. I will be arguing here that the illegitimate child is central to these realisations, that all that glitters can be gold. Critics once disregarded La señora Cornelia as a relatively uninteresting novela in the Italian fashion, but a number of recent studies have argued persuasively against the former neglect of the tale, proposing that it is more difficult to categorise, and even to understand.18 Melveena McKendrick’s article is seminal in this regard; acknowledging Peter Dunn’s efforts in rehabilitating the text she focusses on “the manner of its telling”, finding in the detail of its writing “something that resists categorisation but leaves us with the feeling that we have been the victims of an elaborate literary joke” (2005, 702–3). Stanislav Zimic connects the tale to the Italian novelistic tradition but stresses its transcendence of literary classification as “un importante experimento artístico con que se intentan ciertas modificaciones radicales en una multisecular tradición novelística” (1991a, 105) (an important artistic experiment attempting to make certain radical modifications to a centuries-old novelistic tradition). For Eric J. Kartchner, it is “a story about stories, a fiction about fictions, a demonstration of idealistic fiction and a deconstruction of romanticized rhetoric” (2005, 112). Friedman describes it as “a fascinating and puzzling narrative —fascinating, in part, because it is puzzling— and its ostensible accessibility at first may hide its display of Cervantine irony” (2014, 94). The narrative exploits both the sharp details of this world of beauty and riches—details McKendrick refers to as “bringing the narrative to life like the touch of red in a painting” (2005, 710)—and muffled shapes and outlines. Cervantes employs precision and indeterminacy in the visual field to draw attention to the material world in such a way as to stress its tangibility, its role as evidence and reality, the fact that it is not always

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illusory. The beauty described in the opening sections is contrasted with dark shapes. When the baby handed is over in the dark to Juan, he is described as a “bulto” (bundle), “topó un bulto y queriéndolo tomar” (243) (he felt a bundle and tried to take hold of it). The woman Antonio bumps into, namely Cornelia, is “un bulto negro de persona” (246) (the dark shape of a person), and the group of men who join the Duke of Ferrara by night are “un bulto de gente” (246) (a mass of people). All instances of these mysterious masses are easily unravelled and shown to be precisely what they seem to be. The child, once handed over, is gradually unwrapped, first by Juan who discovers that the swaddling clothes are evidence of a rich family, “Los paños en que venía envuelta mostraban ser de ricos padres nacida” (the clothes in which it was swaddled indicated that the child was born to rich parents), then by the maid, who takes off these layers to reveal a boy (244). Undressing the child is a form of stripping back the secret of who he is, but this is denied when Juan decides that the garments ought to be swapped for more humble ones, that the child should be taken to a wet-nurse and that he ought to be given any suitable parents, so long as Juan’s secret is not revealed (244). Not only does this re-bundling of the baby thwart our expectations of an early revelation of the child’s identity, but it lays bare the mechanics of secrecy; the bulto is no more mysterious than it is pragmatic. It also starts a narrative interest in the child’s actual whereabouts, marking him out as a physical object, a boy who needs real things like milk and sustenance. The matter of who has the child re-emerges when Antonio brings Cornelia back to the house and she sees the child going past her room en route to the house of a wet-nurse. The baby’s cry attracts her attention and prompts Juan to explain that the child was left at the doorstep and that the maid has gone to look for someone to breastfeed it (250). He even quips that finding babies on the doorstep is a regular occurrence (250). This most alarming of discoveries is ironically quotidian. Cornelia holds the child and tries to breastfeed him, a moment I shall return to later, but at this stage she does not recognise him as her own, although Juan and the reader are suspecting as much. Only later, when the baby is re-dressed in his fine garments, does Cornelia realise who he is, and even then Juan has to confirm it: “Esas mantillas y ese niño son cosa vuestra” (255) (These shawls and this child are yours). The clothes and the child are what they appear to be; the failure to connect them is entirely Cornelia’s. The baby/bundle is objectified later in the tale again when the ama sees fit to persuade Cornelia to leave with her child, for fear that

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Juan and Antonio are not all they claim or seem to be. When they are discovered, and the Duke of Ferrara arrives, the child is revealed for who is he, by the light of a window. There is nothing misleading about his appearance; in fact, he is adorned with clues, the precious jewels given by the Duke to Cornelia, but still it takes the duke some time to realise that this is indeed his son. The strength of the evidence is great, “le pareció que miraba su mismo retrato” (272) (it seems as if he was looked at his own portrait); clothing is no intricate secret, no trick; the deficiency is entirely due to a failure to match the evidence with the facts. Furthermore, Cornelia’s dark shape is almost immediately discerned as that of a woman as soon as she comes closer, “llegándose cerca, conocí ser mujer en el hábito largo” (246) (coming closer, he realised it was a woman in a long dress). Meanwhile, the Duke of Ferrara is approached by a group who instantly appear to be friends: “A lo que yo creo, no son enemigos, sino amigos los que aquí vienen. Y así fue la verdad” (246) (As far as I know, they are not enemies approaching but friends. And this was correct). The notion that all is not what it seems or, as the maid puts it, that “no es todo oro lo que en ellos reluce” (263) (all that glitters is not gold), is overtly emphasised in the early stages of the narrative, before being disproven. An evidence-based reading of La señora Cornelia must take into account the theme of storytelling and the sheer number of explanations, versions of events, and voices that the novela contains. In this sense, the illegitimate child is found in multiple, shifting contexts which risk preventing clear sight of the story and its possible meaning. However, as with the visual appearances discussed above, the severance between word and meaning is subject to a double bluff, or a double negation, such that word and meaning can sometimes start to come together again. Our exposure to plural versions of events begins when Juan and Antonio go their separate ways, encounter different but equally strange situations, and tell each other about them when they reunite. There is emphasis on the process of telling, cuentos and contar; Antonio says “en el camino os contaré un extraño cuento que me ha sucedido, que no le habréis oído tal vez en toda vuestra vida” (on the road I will tell you a strange story about something which happened to me, the like of which you will not have heard in your entire life) to which Juan responds: “Como esos cuentos os podré contar yo […] pero contadme el vuestro” (246) (I could tell you a tale or two like that […] but tell me yours). When Antonio finishes a lengthy account of his meeting with Cornelia, Juan asks if he has anything further to say. Antonio replies, incredulously, to

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ask if it is not enough to have told him that under lock and key in his room is the most incredible beauty that has even been seen. Juan is apparently underwhelmed, “El caso es extraño […] pero oíd el mío” (248) (it is a strange business, but wait until you hear mine) but when they both finish their tales, the narrator informs us that they are actually quite impressed with each other’s encounters (248). The strangeness of the events that have occurred to each of them is diluted by a narrative process which accepts them as strange, but believable notwithstanding. Zimic refers to “cuentos, recuentos, cuentos dentro de cuentos” (stories, retellings, stories within stories) and links this metanarrative quality to an “auténtico ambiente teatral” (genuine theatrical atmosphere) but even in this context our expectations are met, “A veces, las expectativas del lector se identifican por completo con las del personaje-oyente” (1991a, 111) (Sometimes, the reader’s expectations are completely aligned with those of the character-listener). Ryan Schmitz also notes that while “Many of the novela’s characters […] are adept at the creation of fictive realities and the manipulation of appearances”, nevertheless “there are characters that demonstrate the ability to read external signs in order to see through such deceits and understand the internal and concealed intentions, feelings and loyalties of others” (2011, 360). Cornelia begins to tell her story when she is alone with Juan and Antonio but not before a substantial build-up which draws attention to narrative as an event. Before she begins, Cornelia remarks that she needs to eat something (251). This is more than a passing detail. It draws attention to the commencement of storytelling, and grounds the story in the realistic needs of the body. It also suggests that some effort will be required for her to tell her tale. There is further prelude to the story; Cornelia is described as reclining on a bed with the veil that was covering her now revealing her beautiful face, which is compared with the moon or the sun (251). The start of the story is then deferred by a display of emotion, as she sighs and tries to calm herself, again introducing an element of realism into the narrative moment as we witness the physical toll of her reflecting on her situation: “después de haber dado muchos suspiros y después de haber procurado sosegar algún tanto el pecho” (251) (after many sighs and after having managed to calm herself down a little). The lengthy description that follows, in which Cornelia describes her meeting with the duke, and the conception of their child, stands out for its matter-of-factness and for Cornelia’s clear insight into the set of circumstances that has brought her to the point. She speaks in

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terms of truths: “que con deciros esto quizá habré dicho dos verdades” (252) (in telling you this I will perchance have told you two truths); she understands the difference between the public and the private domains, and between appearance and reality when referring to her fama gathering momentum via a portrait her brother commissioned of her while she was kept behind walls and in solitude (252). Moreover, the emphasis on vision in her meeting with the duke marks this out as a moment of reciprocal, tangible attraction and reveals a clever double understanding of seeing as a physical act and seeing as finding oneself: “Allí miré y fue vista […] allí, finalmente, via al duque y él me vio a mí, de cuya vista ha resultado verme ahora como me veo” (252) (There I looked and I was looked at […] there, finally, I saw the duke and he saw me, and from that look he saw me in the way I see myself now). Cornelia’s narrative also stays within plausible boundaries, delimited by time: “No os quiero decir, señores, porque sería proceder en infinito, los términos, las trazas” (252) (I do not want to tell you, gentlemen, because it would go on forever, the terms, the plans). Even in describing her liaison with the duke, she clearly identifies where he let her down, and where she was too trusting: “A esto me respondió con excusas, que yo las tuve por bastantes y necesarias, y confiada como rendida, creí como enamorada” (252) (He replied to this with excuses, which I deemed to be sufficient and necessary and, trusting him since he had won me over, I believed him because I loved him). Pretence is stated as such; “me sentí preñada […] me fingí enferma y malencólica” (253) (I realised I was pregnant […] I pretended to be ill and melancholic). Her description of events fits with what we know from Juan and Antonio’s stories, and provides a genuinely clear explanation of how she came to part with the child, out of tremendous fear of her brother’s men arriving. The story is further maintained in the realm of the plausible by the fact that she does not faint at the end, but weeps bitterly, and by Juan’s rather stoic advice to her to bear her misfortunes with patience: “tanto más mostraréis quién sois cuanto más con paciencia supiéredes llevarlos” (254) (the more you bear them with patience, the more you will show who you truly are). Her brother Lorenzo’s story is remarkably similar, both in content and in its pragmatic style. His sense of who is he is grounded in truth “Ser esta verdad tan notoria servirá de disculpa del alabarme yo propio” (257) (The fact that this truth is so well known will serve to pardon my boasting). Both of them stress a need for narrative brevity (252, 257). Like Cornelia, he cites their being orphaned as children as the reason he looks after his

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sister and has kept her away from the public eye. He also stresses, albeit in a more stylised way, the moment of Cornelia and the duke meeting as one defined by seeing and vision: “Alfonso de Este, con ojos de lince, venció a los de Argos” (257) (Alfonso de Este, with the eyes of a lynx, defeated those of Argos). Lorenzo’s take on the duke’s failure to marry his sister is, however, more clearly focussed on engaño: “el duque engañó a mi hermana debajo de palabra de recebirla por mujer” (257) (the duke deceived my sister by giving his word to take her as his wife). In fact, he emphasises the trickery and lies involved in his sister’s situation: Lo que creo es que él se atuvo a lo que se atienen los poderosos que quieren atropellar a una doncella temerosa y recatada, poniéndole a la vista el dulce nombre de esposo, haciéndola creer que por ciertos respectos no se desposa luego; mentiras aparentes de verdades, pero falsas y malintencionadas. (257) (What I think is that he took heed of what the powerful do when they want to overcome a fearful and cautious lady, placing in her sight the sweet name of husband, then making her believe that certain matters prevent him from marrying her; these are lies posing as truths, but they are false and ill-intentioned.)

His theory is, surprisingly, incorrect. Where we might expect a character in his position to have arrived at a correct deduction of engaño, especially in the context of an illegitimate child, this is, in fact, untrue, which is in itself quite ironic. Although at this stage we do not know why the duke did not marry Cornelia, and must wait for his account to discover this, we will soon learn that he did not seek to trick or mislead her and that a clever double bluff is actually taking place, whereby engaño is revealed to be untrue and misleading, and the facts are no more than that: there was a reason why he did not marry Cornelia and she accepted his excuses as sufficient (252). Before we reach the duke’s account, a similar double bluff occurs with the landlady’s conspiracy theories about Lorenzo, and about Juan and Antonio. Cornelia reveals to her ama who the child really is: “de como aquel niño era suyo y del duque de Ferrara, con todos los puntos que hasta aquí se han contado tocantes a su historia” (261) (how that child belonged to her and the Duke of Ferrara, with all the details that until

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now have been told in relation to this story). This full and frank revelation, including the detail that Juan and Antonio are heading to Ferrara with her brother to challenge the duke, sparks a surprising reaction in the woman, likened to the devil taking possession of her, “como si el demonio se lo mandara, para intricar, estorbar o dilatar el remedio de Cornelia” (261) (as if the devil ordered her to complicate, obstruct, or prolong a solution for Cornelia). She spirals into panic imagining that Cornelia’s brother has led Juan and Antonio away so that he can return and kill Cornelia. The landlady is so terrified that Cornelia starts to believe this might be true, “le pareció ser todo verdad lo que decía” (262) (she thought everything she was saying was true). Persuading her to seek refuge with a priest in a remote village, the woman also casts doubt on the good character of Juan and Antonio: no es todo oro lo que en ellos reluce; uno dicen y otro piensan; pero hanlo habido conmigo, que soy taimada, y sé do me aprieta el zapato, y sobre todo soy bien nacida […] y tengo el punto de la honra diez millas más allá de las nubes. (263) (all that glitters is not gold, people say one thing and think another; but they have come up against me and I am cunning, and I know precisely how my shoe fits, and above all I am well born […] and my honour stretches ten miles higher than the clouds.)

Once again, Cornelia is carried away with the narrative and the uncertainty of appearances, “tantas y tales razones le dijo, que la pobre Cornelia se dispuso a seguir su parecer” (263) (such things she told her that poor Cornelia was tempted to believe her). What could well be a reasonable and justifiable set of suspicions, however, which might play on the reader’s background doubts about two noblemen looking after a beautiful young woman, is announced as spurious from the outset with the comparison with the devil, before being disproven by the progress of the narrative itself. Trickery is nullified by the truth, engaño is shown to reside in the mind, not in fact. When the duke recognises Juan on the road to Ferrara, the category of factual evidence and correct perception seems to be deliberately stressed. Wearing the diamond-encrusted hat, Juan is an arresting sight:

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las luces de los diamantes llevaron tras sí los ojos de cuantos allí venían, especialmente los del duque de Ferrara, que era uno dellos, el cual, como puso los ojos en el cintillo, luego se dio a entender que el que le traía era don Juan de Gamboa, el que le había librado en la pendencia; y tan de veras aprendió esta verdad. (264) (the sparkling diamonds attracted the attention of all those who came with them, especially that of the Duke of Ferrara, who was one of them and who, when he saw the hat band, realised that its wearer was Don Juan de Gamboa, the man who had saved him in the fight and he so earnestly realised this truth.)

The truth of his identity is repeatedly stated, “No creo que me engañaré en nada, señor caballero, si os llamo don Juan de Gamboa” (I do not think I am mistaken, dear gentleman, in calling you Don Juan de Gamboa) and confirmed in the same terms by Juan, “Así es la verdad […] porque jamás supone ni quise encubrir mi nombre” (264) (This is the truth […] because I never tried or wanted to conceal my name). This emphasis upon fact and truth is the prelude to the duke’s explanation of his liaison with Cornelia, an explanation invited by Juan and pronounced in front of Lorenzo (265). The explanation itself puts truth-value at the forefront: “es tan verdad, que no me atrevería a negarla aunque quisiese; yo no he engañado ni sacado a Cornelia” (265) (it is so true, that I would not dare to deny it, even if I wished to; I have not deceived Cornelia, nor taken her away). The verbs engañar and sacar are repeated with greater factual emphasis: “no la he engañado porque la tengo por mi esposa; no la he sacado, porque no sé della” (265) (I have not deceived her because I take her to be my wife; I have not taken here away because I know nothing of her whereabouts). The duke goes on to explain that he was waiting for his mother to die because she wanted him to marry Livia, the daughter of the Duke of Mantua. He does, however, also allude to further reasons which he does not deign to qualify, “y por otros inconvenientes quizá más eficaces que los dichos, y no conviene que ahora se digan” (265) (and for other impediments perhaps more significant than the ones I have mentioned, and which it is better not to mention now), so his explanation is not without vagueness, although this lends further, albeit unspecific, weight to the notion of his having had strong reasons to postpone marrying Cornelia. At the end of his explanation, Juan asks the duke to confirm that when Cornelia and the child appear he will accept

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them as his wife and son. He agrees to do so, even if his mother is still alive (266). Moreover, the duke accepts to explain himself to Lorenzo too, at Juan’s instigation. The duke rushes into the narrative situation, calling Lorenzo his brother, and literally welcoming him with open arms, much to the latter’s consternation. However, the duke no longer speaks for himself. Instead, Juan acts as an intermediary, framing the duke’s explanation as a quasi-legal delivery of facts: confiesa la conversación secreta que ha tenido con vuestra hermana […] Confiesa asimismo que es su legítima esposa […] Concede asimismo que fue ha cuatro noches a sacarla de casa […] Dice asimismo la pendencia que con vos tuvo. (266) (he confesses to the secret conversation he had with your sister […] He also confesses that she is his legitimate wife […] He also confesses that four nights ago he took her from the house […] He also mentions the fight he had with you.)

The narrative report from Juan is a series of bold clarifications, interwoven with relative clauses, gerunds, and pluperfects which add depth of detail, and assist in filling in the missing parts of the picture.19 His summary comes to a close by inviting Lorenzo to focus on finding Cornelia and the child: “Mirad […] si hay más que decir ni más que desear si no es el hallazgo de las dos tan ricas como desgraciadas prendas” (266) (See […] if there is anything more to say or to wish for than the discovery of the two rich but wretched spoils). Juan’s role as intermediary is thus doubly successful, in the sense that it unites Lorenzo and the duke in the closest possible terms: “enternecidos, el uno con la pérdida de su esposa, y el otro, con el hallazgo de tan buen cuñado” (267) (moved, one by the loss of his wife, and the other by the discovery of such a good brother-inlaw), and it turns words into action, but not the violent reprisal hitherto imagined. Nobody acts out of turn (Teijero Fuentes 1993, 163). To suggest that the novela brings forth the factual, truthful, and proactive potential of narrative is not, however, to overlook the tale’s more puzzling sections. There are several unclear narrative situations concerning the illegitimate child, and in general the novela contains a number of false leads, as identified by McKendrick who describes how “the teasing use of the false lead is constant throughout the text and often

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goes hand in hand with the device of tropelia” (2005, 710). Schmitz also notes that “in numerous instances […] characters are taken in by false appearances and they misinterpret what they perceive” (2011, 364). One of the first such situations occurs when Juan accepts the newborn baby under the assumption that he is Fabio.20 This raises two important questions: why does Juan lie, and why is the baby handed over so trustingly? The encounter is worth quoting at length: Fuese don Juan, y quedóse don Antonio. Era la noche entre escura, y la hora, las once; y habiendo andado dos o tres calles y viéndose solo y que no tenía con quién hablar, determinó volverse a casa, y poniéndolo en efeto, al pasar por una calle que tenía portales sustenados en mármoles oyó que de una puerta le ceceaban. La escuridad de la noche y la que causaban los portales no le dejaban atinar al ceceo. Detúvose un poco, estuvo atento, y vio entreabrir una puerta; llegóse a ella, y oyó una voz baja que dijo: —Sois por ventura Fabio? Don Juan, por sí o por no, respondió sí. —Pues tomad –respondieron de dentro-, y ponedlo en cobro, y volved luego, que importa. (243) (Don Juan left and Don Antonio remained. The night was almost dark and it was eleven o’clock and after walking two or three streets and finding himself alone and with nobody to talk to, he decided to return home and, on the way, passing through a street that had marble portals he heard someone whispering to him from one of the doors. The darkness of the night and that cast by the portals prevented him from determining the source of the whisper. He stopped for a while, remained still, and saw a door begin to open; he went up to it and heard a low voice which said to him: —Are you Fabio, by any chance? Don Juan, hedging his bets, responded in the affirmative. —Well take it —came the response from inside—and keep it safe, and come back again later, for it is important.)

The context is telling; Juan and Antonio have just parted ways and Juan has been roaming around with nobody to talk to, and has decided to give up and go home. The search for an interlocutor might explain why he so readily agrees to being Fabio, his desire for conversation being so great that he pursues a narrative opening. The darkness of the setting is also emphasised, especially in terms of how the columns prevent him from discerning the whisper properly. It may be that he simply does not hear

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correctly, although he does later discern the command to take hold of the mass that is issued forth so this seems less likely. Juan is, in general, open to an encounter. On hearing the whisper, he stands still, listens attentively, and approaches the door when it starts to open. His admission to being Fabio fits a wider context of disposition to company, and to adventure. What happens is that Juan gets more than he bargained for. Cornelia is, by the same logic, too disposed to hand over her child, owing to her intense fear and the lack of other options; as Schmitz puts it “Due to the darkness of the street and, we can assume, Cornelia’s intense anxiety, she has her servant hand over her newborn child to this imposter without clearly verifying his identity” (2011, 364). McKendrick describes how this “fairy-tale incident of the disembodied whisper in the dark from a half-open door” is “accompanied by some realistic touches”, like the fact that Juan needs two hands to hold the child (2005, 706). For Teijero Fuentes, Cervantes is being both mendacious and ironic when he gives the explanation, “por sí o por no” (hedging his bets, just in case); he refers to “una magistral mentira” (colossal lie) in the making (1993, 157). There is another, more symbolic, way of looking at this episode. The setting is reminiscent of the moment of giving birth, in terms of the darkness, the alternation of silence and whispered voices, the atmosphere of tension, a mass issued forth from a half-open door, and manually received by another person. Cornelia’s child is entering the world for the second time; this time not the private space but a public one by means of which its precarious circumstances may be protected, and eventually legitimised. The child once again becomes a focal point for narrative sincerity and truthfulness when Cornelia tries, and fails, to breastfeed it: Tomóle ella en los brazos y miróle atentamente así en el rostro […] sin poder tener las lágrimas, se echó la toca de la cabeza encima de los pechos, para poder dar con honestidad de mamar a la criatura, y aplicándosela a ellos, juntó el rostro con el suyo, y con la leche le sustentaba y con las lágrimas le bañaba el rostro. Y desta manera estuvo sin levantar el suyo tanto espacio cuanto el niño no quiso dejar el pecho. En esta espacio guardaban todos cuatro silencio; el niño mamaba; pero no era ansí, porque las recién paridas no pueden dar el pecho. (251) (She took the baby in her arms and looked closely at its face […] failing to hold back her tears, she placed the scarf from her head over her breasts, to be able to discreetly feed the creature and, bringing it up to her chest, she placed her face next to its own, and comforted it with her milk and

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bathed its face with her tears. And she stayed like this without raising her head as long as the child remained at her breast. All the while, the four of them were silent; the child was suckling; but it was not truly the case, because women who have just given birth cannot produce milk.)

The scene is intense and reverent. It is imbued with a sorrow verging on penitence as tears flow over the face of the child. It is like he is being washed clean and sustained at one and the same time, as the fluid issuing from the biological mother proves their physical connection, and her visceral love. Their faces become one, and the child is loath to leave her breast, but yet no milk comes. Critics have identified this as a problematic moment in the text; for Pabon “her inability to do so again reinforces the nature of her frustrated union with the Duque de Ferrara” (1977, 111). McKendrick sees it as one of the text’s false leads, as Cervantes setting up an illusion, here “a reverent, almost holy, emblematic scene of mother and child” only to puncture it (2005, 707). Joyce Boro suggests that Cornelia’s inability to feed the baby undermines her maternal authority and prevents her from “inhabiting the important role of physical and spiritual attendant to her baby” (2013, 67). Marilyn Yalom describes how breastfeeding was also socially and politically significant since “within medieval society, the breast had a singular importance: it was a sign of attachment between mother and child, the link from one generation to the next, with all that implied in terms of rank, wealth, and moral responsibilities” (1997, 36). She goes on to say that “breast milk that came directly from the mother, or from the wet nurse who suckled in her place, was the visual equivalent of the family bloodline […] one owed to one’s legitimate progeny” (37). However, as Peggy McCracken explains, breast milk “not only nourishes a baby, it also transmits the mother’s or the nursemaid’s qualities to the child” (2003, 71) and these were not always positive ones, and could be sinful and polluting. Anxieties associated with motherhood in this period confirm this: “first, the paradoxical understandings of childbirth and lactation as simultaneously chaste and redemptive, bestial and sinful; and second, the fraught relationship between the sexes due to female authority over the peripartum” (Boro 2013, 69). If we add the social and political implications of Cornelia’s failure to nurse to the simple fact that this is a life-giving act, and, via the Virgin Mary “a metaphor for the spiritual nurturance of all Christian souls” (Yalom 1997, 5), it would seem that Cornelia is a failure on many fronts, so to speak. However, just as this potentially monumental

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flaw is revealed, Cervantes provides a perfectly practical reason for it: she has just given birth and her milk has not yet come in, only colostrum we might surmise. Cornelia is actually too much of a mother; ironically her newness lends real legitimacy to her biological child but not in the eyes of society; embarrassed she concedes to being new to such matters, “En balde me he mostrado caritativo; bien parezco nueva en estos casos” (251) (I have tried in vain to be caring; I seem to be a novice in these matters). Her motherhood is more real and instinctive than she might care to admit, and so this is another case of “what you see is what you see” on Cervantes’s part. Moreover, Cornelia’s actions are not, as she states, in vain. Breastfeeding is not just food, it is communication, an early narrative moment which predates language itself.21 The child is not dissatisfied; in fact, quite the opposite. It does not want to leave her chest; their faces are together and, in that sense, there is a blissful completeness about the scene that critics have overlooked. The false lead might actually be whether the lack of milk is really that relevant at all, or whether the reader sees in that moment of tender nurturing enough of a true connection and communication between mother and child. This is hinted at when Cornelia asks for the baby to be brought to her before it is taken anywhere, since the sight of it is pure consolation: “que me consuelo en verle” (251) (seeing him gives me great comfort). The relationship between Cornelia and the duke may, in its own right, be considered a puzzling arrangement insofar as it is defined by the promise of marriage but not the official public act. Idoya Puig describes how “they make a mutual promise of marriage but they do not make their relationship public […] Although their marriage is not blessed by the Church, their relationship is always seen in the framework of marriage and thus it is justified to a certain extent” (2005, 226). Pabon also sees justification insofar as “although she too [Cornelia] enjoys earthly pleasures, she does so always within the context of a permanent marriage. It is the assumption of that context and its eventual fulfillment that allows Cornelia to submit to physical desire” (1977, 113). The promise of marriage is an in-between business with repercussions for whether the child is legitimate or not. As we saw in the chapter on popular ballads, the nature and status of a legitimate marriage was far from clear in the early modern period:

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considerable evidence suggests that there was much confusion over the nature of marriage even well after the Council of Trent. Several types of popular unions and living arrangements illustrate this key point. Traditional betrothals and engagements –often self-administered and without a priest-were sometimes mistaken by the parties as bona fide nuptials. Likewise, clandestine or secret marriages contributed to widespread uncertainty over the propriety of the sexual relations entered into subsequently by the couples. (Barahona 2003, xx)

Richard Adair describes “a spectrum of irregular unions in this period, ranging from consensual relationships at one end to fully sanctioned church marriage at the other” (1996, 140) and observes that “spousals can be distinguished from clandestine marriages by the fact that no official conducting the ceremony was usually present. Indeed, they were often entirely private matters with at most a few family or friends present, and sometimes no witnesses at all” (143). The children of such unions could, crucially, be regarded as the fruit of a marriage (142). Cornelia and the duke set eyes on one another at a family wedding, a rare public outing for her. Her explanation stresses the immense desire she and the duke felt for one another, but also her clear understanding that this would lead to marriage and that the duke gave her his word on the matter: “ni guardas, ni recatos, ni honrosas amonestaciones, ni otra humana diligencia fue bastante para estorbar el juntarnos, que en fin hubo de ser debajo de la palabra que él me dio de ser mi esposo” (252) (neither guards, nor caution, nor honourable warnings, nor any other form of human diligence was sufficient to prevent us coming together, which in the end took place because he promised to be my husband). She specifically states that this assurance was instrumental in her behaviour, using a striking analogy: “porque sin ella fuera imposible rendir la roca de la valerosa y honrada presunción mía” (252) (because without it it would have been impossible to demolish the rock of my worthy and honourable caution). Comparing her caution to a rock that was demolished by the duke’s promise emphasises the strength of his word, and her belief in it. This is typical of the time; Barahona describes how “victims and witnesses were quick to note that unless such a promise had occurred no sexual relations would have been ensued” (2003, 17). Moreover, the duke and Cornelia have a mutual attraction; “vi al duque y él me vio a mí” (252) (I saw the duke and he saw me). There is no indication of her being pursued against her will; in fact she submits to the duke of her own volition. There is a clear

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admission of desire driving her actions, encapsulated by the verb estorbar (to hinder, to impede), but Cornelia emphasises the formal promise of marriage as justification. According to the duke’s account, Cornelia is his legitimate wife but the union was lacking public recognition and celebration (266). Barahona reveals that in this period there were many such public and private understandings and agreements of marriage (2003, 7). Often these courtships were characterised by “love initiatives”, including flattery and compliments, love letters, gifts and such like, and both sexes participated in these rituals (9). Predictably, plaintiff’s accounts “are also peppered with allusions to false or deceitful flattery (halagos falsos, halagos engañosos, palabras engañosas )” (10). This element of the false promise, or indeed any kind of forceful solicitation or roguish pursuit on the part of the duke, is absent from La señora Cornelia. There are false tongues and flatterers at the wedding, “sentí que daban gusto las alabanzas, aunque fuesen dadas por lisonjeras lenguas” (252) (I felt the pleasure of praise, even if given by flattering tongues), but the duke is not one of them, and Cornelia is, evidently, able to identify lisonja for what it is. Despite this being a true and binding marriage promise, it is nevertheless still deferred and unfulfilled, and a child is born before the pair are publicly wed. Barahona makes a distinction between seduction and courtship which renders Cornelia and the duke’s case slightly less clear. Seduction is a world of: carefully calibrated promises and assurances of means to ends; of calculated deceptions and duplicities; of subtle guile and cunning […] of secret rendez-vous and meeting places; of surreptitious entries into victims’ homes […] of go-betweens and proxies to carry messages […] and of poignant silences out of fear for parents and families and out of justifiable concern for reputations in the court of public opinion. In sum, courtship was primarily carried out in the public sphere, seduction mostly in the private one. (14)

The problem is that Cornelia deliberately skips over the details of the ways and means by which their desires are fulfilled. The reader is kept in the dark, which gestures at the intensely private nature of their dealings. This is supported by Cornelia’s emphasis on her asking the duke a thousand times to make the marriage offer public by informing her brother—thus confirming its secret status—and by the maid acting as go-between (252– 53). It is also evident in Cornelia’s reaction to her pregnancy, to cover

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up the evidence of her “free” behaviour, “antes que mis vestidos manifestasen mis libertades” (252) (before my clothes revealed the liberties I had taken). She also refers to her situation as a “desenvoltura” (253) (looseness), defined by Covarrubias as “atrevimiento, demasía” (bold and excessive conduct). It appears, therefore, that Cornelia’s position sits somewhere between a respectable and realistic promise of marriage and a dishonourable submission to mutual desire. In such terms, the child is positioned between legitimacy and illegitimacy. We might compare Cornelia and the duke’s dealings with the episode of the “false” Cornelia in the story wherein one of Juan’s pages is caught in the lodging house in Bologna with a woman also called Cornelia in his room and it transpires that he has been sleeping with her for three nights. This humorous episode, which sees Lorenzo, Juan, Antonio and company walk in on the woman while she is wrapped in the bedsheets, with her clothes as a pillow, offers an insight into female desire and sexuality in more flagrant terms. False Cornelia challenges their surprise, “¿Es cosa nueva dormir una mujer con un paje, para hacer tantos milagrones?” (270) (Is it such a novelty for a woman to sleep with a page that you are marvelling at it like this?) and goes on to claim that she has honourable relatives in the city and that nobody refuses her charms: “que nadie dijese ‘deste agua no beberé’” (270) (for nobody should say “that’s not for the likes of me”). The verdict from the onlookers is that she must be a wayward pícara (270). The false Cornelia represents female desire as disinhibited and opportunistic; is she intended to serve as a foil to the titular Cornelia, the “señora”, to reinforce the greater restraint and honour of the latter, whose desire, under the promise of marriage, results in a child? Pabon believes there is a “rather explicit” contrast between the two Cornelias: “the debauched Cornelia like her lover seeks only to satisfy her appetite” whereas lady Cornelia’s relationship “exists, from beginning to end within the framework of marriage” (1977, 113). Is it really so clearcut? Both women experience and act on their desire; the underworld version of Cornelia could be seen to represent an uncanny kind of double figure, an upsurge in the narrative of a wholly delinquent form of the same behaviour that Cornelia and the duke have themselves indulged in, hidden, and gentrified under the umbrella of marriage. As Keppler notes, the second self “necessarily partakes of being first […] in his oppositeness to his counterpart is always the same” (1972, 13). Is this second Cornelia not a hint that, much like in Fernando de Rojas’s La Celestina (1991),

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nobles and servants are not so different in matters of sex and the body, when all is said and done. Arguably, there is not just one “false” Cornelia, but two. At the very end of the tale, the duke decides to play a burla of his own, explaining to Juan, Antonio, and Lorenzo that he has waited long enough for Cornelia, and now wishes to renege on his promise of marriage. He wishes instead to marry a local peasant girl whom he promised to marry and left “burlada” (275) (tricked). At the point where the men become incensed with this news, the duke leaves to collect the girl and in his absence they vow angrily to make him fulfil his promise to Cornelia. He returns with Cornelia, resplendent in her finery and wearing the jewels that were on the baby’s breast, and Juan and Antonio declare this a delicious joke: “dijeron al duque que había sido la más discreta y sabrosa burla del mundo” (276) (the told the duke that this had been the most subtle and satisfying trick in the world). The joke tells us more about the nature of the marriage promise. Albeit under the guise of a burla, the duke speaks some veras , namely that he did not fool Cornelia: “yo jamás engañé a vuestra hermana, de lo que es buen testigo el cielo y mi conciencia” (275) (I never fooled your sister, to which the heavens and my conscience bear witness). He also alludes to his desire to find her and marry her, as promised: “el deseo que he tenido de hallarla para casarme con ella, como se lo tengo prometido” (275). Nevertheless, as part of the joke, the duke pretends that his affections have drifted elsewhere, stressing his youth and naivety in matters of love (275). He also reasons that his word is not everlasting, and that nobody can marry a woman who does not turn up (275). Female absence seems to be understood as a means of releasing the man from his promise: “ni es cosa puesta en razón que nadie busque la mujer que le deja por no hallar la prenda que le aborrece” (275) (nor is it reasonable to expect anyone to look for the woman who leaves him because he cannot find the treasure who hates him). The enraged reaction of Lorenzo, Juan, and Antonio confirms how plausible this scenario of abandonment of the vow is, and how all of the men believe that the duke could do this to her, and so reinforces our impression that Cornelia has been treading a fine line between security and danger. The burla about a burla of a peasant girl makes us question the duke’s character as well as the certainty of anything he says or claims in relation to love and marriage. Why, after all, would he find it funny to defer and complicate the moment of truth, and call his own character into question (again) in the process? Not only does the duke maintain

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an impressive poker face throughout, “sin muestras de contento alguno” (274) (without showing any happiness), but he reads their faces for the impact of his burla, and calls a halt to it at precisely the right moment: “leyendo […] en sus rostros sus intenciones” (275) (reading their minds in their faces). Perhaps the episode serves to concentrate the frustrations and suspicions the men have exhibited throughout the tale into an apex of righteousness, where their exaggerated indignation is outed, before being proved wrong. Scholars have questioned why Juan and Antonio find this burla so funny but Schmitz reminds us that “like the duke, the Spaniards actively participate in their own harmless deceits and practical jokes” (2011, 359). It is also easy to recognise in their good-natured response an element of relief. The exaggerated reaction of Juan and Antonio fits a general mood of extravagance at the end of the tale. The tale’s “happy ending” is a focal point for determining where the child fits into this picture of jokes straightened out, and truths delivered through a thin veil of engaño. Cornelia’s grand appearance at first contains no reference to the baby, just the entourage of servants. In fact, the child’s presence is dropped in almost casually, “El duque tomó al niño, que Sulpicia traía” (276) (The duke took the child, which Sulpicia was holding). As the duke takes the child and hands him over to the incredulous Lorenzo for the first time, inviting him to see his nephew, he alludes to his earlier joke about the labradora: “Recebid […] a vuestro sobrino, y mi hijo, y ved si queréis dar licencia que me case con esta labradora, que es la primera a quien he dado palabra de casamiento” (276) (Take […] your nephew, and my son, and see if you will give me permission to marry this peasant girl, who is the first woman to whom I have given my promise of marriage). This further assertion of the duke’s abiding fidelity connects the child with his pure intentions, and with the certitude that trickery does not dwell in the obvious place in the novela. To the great joy of all assembled, the priest marries Cornelia and the duke, but all agree to keep the marriage secret until the duke’s mother’s illness runs its course, during which time Cornelia returns to Bologna with her brother. Even at this resolutory stage of proceedings, there is a last, teasing glimpse of an engaño, but it is no sooner announced than we are informed, totally factually, of the concluding order of events: “Todo se hizo así; la duquesa murió, Cornelia entró en Ferrara […] los lutos se volvieron en galas” (276) (Everything happened like this: the duchess died, Cornelia entered Ferrara […] mourning turned into festivities). The matter-of-fact and

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paratactic style of the narrative at this point quickly irons out any potential problems or loose threads. Pabon describes how “with the marriage of Cornelia and the Duke sanctified, their child, no longer hidden, is now welcomed into the community […] we are left feeling that only the good can henceforth emanate from the reestablished order” (1977, 114). The uncertainty about the status of their earlier marriage and, by extension, about the child’s legitimacy vanishes. In fact, by way of reinforcement, we discover that Cornelia goes on to have two further children, this time daughters, “dos criaturas hembras” (two baby girls) in the context of an extremely happy marriage, “al duque más enamorado que nunca” (277) (the duke more in love than ever). Friedman describes the novela as one in which “things could go wrong in so many ways, and yet every aspect of the narrative turns to positive, affirmative, and life-sustaining values”; it is “less about conflict than conflict resolution” (2014, 97). This is pre-empted in Juan’s advice to Cornelia in the early stages of her plight: “que imagino que estos tan extraños sucesos han de tener un felice fin, que no han de permitir los cielos que tanta belleza se goce mal y tan honestos pensamientos se malogren” (252) (for I imagine that these strange events will have a happy ending, because the heavens will not allow such beauty to suffer and such honest thoughts to go to waste). The happy ending he envisages could not be more clearly stated nor enacted; everyone ends up either rich, or married, or both. Juan and Antonio are sent a series of lavish gifts to Bologna by the duke that are so generous they are impossible to refuse, and when they return to see the couple Cornelia gives the diamond cross to Juan and the agnus to Antonio. These former gifts from the duke to her, which they have already refused once from Cornelia when they set out for Ferrara, are now accepted, presumably because it no longer looks like a direct payment for their services, but has become a genuine token of affection. They symbolise the lasting loyalty of the men to Cornelia and her baby’s cause. We also discover that Juan and Antonio marry beautiful noblewomen and keep in touch with Cornelia and the duke. The emphasis on riches and lavish gift-giving at the end is exactly what we would expect it to be, an expression of generosity, gratitude, grace, and pleasure. Happiness exists for its own sake; buried in the swift delineation of the characters’ fates is an allusion to Antonio and Juan being extremely content to have helped the duke in some way (276). The final mood of the tale is universal pleasure: “grandísimo gusto de todos” (277) (the very

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great pleasure of all). The ending is happy, comfortable, and matter-offact, even though real life is not; what might be a simple conclusion is not reached by easy means; La señora Cornelia is a delicate equipoise of truth and illusion which reminds us that sometimes the novelas are like life, and sometimes life is like a novela.

“No es la miel…”: Fit and Elsewhere in “La ilustre fregona” La ilustre fregona opens with a description of Diego de Carriazo junior’s exposure to the picaresque life and his distinctive brand of virtuous roguery: “en Carriazo vio el mundo un pícaro virtuoso, limpio, bien criado, y más que medianamente discreto” (140) (the world saw in Carriazo a virtuous, clean, and well-bred pícaro who had more than his fair share of intelligence). His crowning achievement is having escaped to the tunny fisheries of Zahara, “el finibusterrae de la picaresca” (140) (the land’s end of picaresque life), for three years. The tunny fisheries, known as almadrabas signify both beginning and end, they are the start of the story and the furthest point, the non plus ultra, of Diego’s experience and his imagination. The narrator helps us to see why with his animated summary of this strangely compelling world of filth, vice, music, and gaming. It is a highly dangerous setting which carries the risk of being kidnapped into slavery in Africa, but Carriazo is in his element and, when obliged to return to his parents, leaves his heart on the Southern coast: “Dejó con ellos la mitad de su alma, y todos sus deseos entregó a aquellas secas arenas, que a él parecían más frescas y verdes que los Campos Elíseos” (142) (He left a piece of his soul there, and those dry sands were the source of all his desires, and seemed fresher and greener to him than the Elysian Fields). Once back in Valladolid, he slots back into a life of gentlemanly pursuits but the almadrabas never leave his mind, “en ellas tenía de contino puesta la imaginación” (143) (his thoughts turned to them continuously). He is “melancólico e imaginativo” (143) (melancholy and reflective) to the extent that his close friend Tomás de Avendaño notices and invites him to tell him why. What Carriazo tells him is enough to make him want to experience this life for himself, so they plan to trick their parents and return. The boys will, however, never reach Zahara; they will remain and work at the inn where Costanza dwells, once Carriazo decides—in a moment of self-preservation combined with

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a desire to please his friend (158)—not to leave for the almadrabas , no matter how tempting they are. By opening the tale in this way, Cervantes presents us with a narrative “elsewhere”, a longed-for place that is always on Carriazo’s mind, and beneath the skin of the story. His longing for the riotous tunny fisheries also runs parallel with Avendaño’s love for Costanza, who is, by comparison, a model of constancy and conservatism but who is also an “elsewhere”, being the displaced illegitimate daughter of Carriazo’s father. Casalduero identifies a strand of idealism in the tale through which “el novelista puede trazar a su placer el mundo de lo ideal” (1969, 197) (the novelist traces at his pleasure the ideal world). However, when the boys start to realise their diverging pulls—to remain with Costanza in Avendaño’s case, and to return to Zahara in Carriazo’s—they articulate them in terms of how ridiculously ill-suited each one is to his object of affection: ¡Bien cuadra un don Tomás de Avendaño, hijo de don Juan de Avendaño, caballero lo que es bueno, rico lo que basta, mozo lo que alegra, discreto lo que admira, con enamorado y perdido por una fregona que sirve en el mesón del Sevillano! Lo mismo me parece a mí que es —respondió Avendaño— considerar un don Diego de Carriazo, hijo del mismo, caballero del hábito de Alcántara el padre, y el hijo a pique de heredarle con su mayorazgo, no menos gentil en el cuerpo que en el ánimo, y con todos estos generosos atributos, verle enamorado, ¿de quién, si pensáis?¿De la reina Ginebra? No, por cierto, sino de la almadraba de Zahara, que es más fea, a lo que creo, que un miedo de santo Antón. (152) (How fitting it is for a Don Tomás de Avendaño, son of Don Juan de Avendaño, a fine gentleman, with riches aplenty, abounding in youthfulness, admirably prudent, to be head over heels in love with a kitchen maid who serves at the Sevillano Inn! It seems no different to me —responded Avendaño— than the case of a Don Diego de Carriazo, son of the very same name, his father a knight of the Order of Alcántara, and the son on the verge of inheriting, no less graceful in body than in soul, and with all these bountiful attributes, in love with who, do you think? With Queen Guinevere? No, not at all, but with the tunny fisheries of Zahara, which are more repugnant, to my mind, than the temptations of Saint Anthony.)

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It is in this acknowledgement of the patent gap between social status and desired object that the tale puts these two “elsewheres” together and invites us to consider broader questions of location and fit. Here are two characters looking beyond their ordinary frame of reference and demonstrating a conscious, ironic take on doing so. In a double level of irony, however, it will be revealed that the gap is, in each case not so great: Costanza is of noble birth, while Carriazo’s propensity to the type of uncontrolled violence found at the almadrabas is revealed on two occasions, the first when, acting as water carrier, he defends himself so brutally and nastily that he splits his assailant’s head open with a stone and leaves him virtually dead (160). The second occurs when he is teased and leaves a boy “medio muerto a palos” (196) (half dead from a good beating). Costanza’s illegitimacy must be understood in a context where the entire question of fit is under investigation, and where Cervantes is rendering ironic the simplicity of seeing the revelation of Costanza’s true identity, the lost child found, as the defining narrative moment. The novela explores illegitimacy in a context where we are invited to consider whether any of us really fit anywhere, and why and how the pulls to exist in other spaces and guises, our own “elsewheres”, come about. In choosing the term “elsewhere”, I aim to express both the particular mood of longing that the tale evokes, and the doubly complicated take on location that it presents where any given place can be both exactly right and dislocated. Perhaps the clue lies in the almadrabas , whose name derives from the Arabic meaning “a place to strike”; as such they are, simultaneously, the precise place for a hit/catch and a chaotic and imprecise world bordering Moorish territory by sea, reminding us of Cervantes’s own travels. The almadrabas are a scene of intense and directed longing for Carriazo, as Jorge Checa puts it “una vía de escape para el cumplimiento de sus deseos más profundos” (1991, 36) (an escape route for the fulfilment of the deepest desires). However, they also imbue the tale with the multifarious connotations of the picaresque, of “un mundo ficticio abigarrado y complejo, donde coexisten valores heterogéneos” (Checa 1991, 35) (a varied and complex fictitious world, where heterogeneous values co-exist) and with a fluid impression of genre.22 Costanza has been considered a simple and uninteresting character by critics, a passive hollowed-out character, “personaje en hueco”, who is shaped and defined by the opinions of others (Barrenechea 1964, 200).23 She has also been cast as a middling kind of figure. Ann E. Wiltrout,

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for example, regards her as “trapped between two worlds by a mysterious prehistory not of her making […] remaining peripheral to and aloof from both worlds” (1981, 393). She has also been seen as a mediatrix in the Marian fashion although Christina H. Lee rejects this in favour of her “serving as the metonymic extension for the true heroine of this tale […] Costanza’s mother” (2006, 48). Both designations of Costanza, passivity and in-betweenness, seem to miss the point that those discourses which might ordinarily provide insight into her identity, such as names, or the descriptions by other characters, or the narrator, are designed to be obvious and conflictive constructs.24 Edwin Williamson observes how “language is cast adrift upon a flux of inexact valuations […] concepts, categories, and discourses are thrown into disarray” (2004, 661). We are supposed to see a gap between how she is and how she is described because she is a representative of uncertainty, placed in an obviously middle space, where she is styled as both a living misfit, and as partly at one with her surroundings. She is neither on the margins nor in the middle but so consciously placed and displaced that we learn to see fit, and by extension identity, as a kind of moving target. If the tunny fisheries represent the beginning and end of Carriazo’s mental excursions, then the inn, the posada del Sevillano, where the boys encounter Costanza is a pronounced middle space, as several critics have noted. Williamson calls it a “strange intermediate zone” (2004, 663), while for Laura Gorfkle and Amy R. Williamsen the inn is a symbol of the “intersubjective space of the mother’s body” (1994, 15). William Clamurro highlights it as a place of “random encounter, ambiguous identity, and complex verbal games […] the temporary world of Costanza” (1997, 51) and compares it with Burgos, “the locus of the main characters’ ‘real’ lives” (46).25 Lee sees it rather as serving an conclusive function, “Costanza lives in a shrine-like place where all the major elements of the tale are eventually resolved. It is as of Costanza herself is the end of a pilgrimage” (2006, 47). This is typical of the tale’s presentation of places as fixed and mutable at the same time, one person’s stopping point is quite literally the end of another person’s journey. This both frees the tale from the strictures of linearity and finitude and allows us to see that fit is always subjective. The circumstances through which Carriazo and Avendaño come to be the inn are defined by flux. Entering Illescas, they overhear the conversation of two muleteers, “mozos de mulas”, one of whom is departing from and one arriving at Seville, and it is through this eerily similar prelude to their own situation, in the sense

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that they, particularly Carriazo, face the crossroads of staying or leaving, that they learn of the exquisite beauty of the fregona. They are given a room in the inn that is of very obviously middling standard, “ni de caballeros, ni de criados, sino de gente que podía hacer medio entre los dos extremos” (151) (not for gentlemen nor for servants, but for people who could bridge these two extremes). Avendaño, stalling for time, tries to suggest that he wants to go sightseeing at leisure with a rather ironic allusion to Carriazo’s apparent haste to leave, “que no vamos a Roma a alcanzar ninguna vacante” (152) (it is not like we are going to Rome to fill a vacancy). The scene at the inn is a more sinister kind of middle than critics have stated, however. It is a composite of lies; lies told to the innkeeper, lies told to each other, lies told to their parents, to Costanza, together with the evasion of responsibility, accountability, and, ultimately, justice. Its middling position is precisely between the truth and its opposite number. Perhaps the most obvious function of this manipulation of truth is to ensure that the goodness of Costanza shines like a beacon, or rather like the candle she seems destined to carry everywhere (185). A rather facile equation of Costanza with light and angelic appearance is ubiquitous in Cervantes’s description of her presence at the inn but the attentive reader will remember that she is also “dura como un mármol, y zahareña como villana de Sayago, y áspera como una ortiga” (148) (as hard as marble and as unsociable as a peasant from Sayago, and as prickly as a nettle)—she is, moreover, capable of a pointed retort “que las que servimos no hemos menester criados” (150) (for we who serve have no need for servants). She is also not averse to lying as we discover when she shreds Tomás’s letter so that nobody else can read it, under the pretext that it is “más […] hechicería y embuste que oración santa” (178–79) (more […] sorcery and hoax than a holy prayer). If some of the rough edges of her environment are associated with Costanza this is nothing, however, when compared with the effect of the inn on the two protagonists. While this could be deemed a space for transformation, the nature of the change is ironic. The narrator rather proudly describes how the boys change name and adopt new occupations, a literary feat worthy of Ovid: He aquí tenemos ya —en buena hora se cuente— a Avendaño hecho mozo del mesón, con nombre de Tomás Pedro, que así dijo que se llamaba, y a Carriazo, con el de Lope Asturiano, hecho aguador: transformaciones dignas de anteponerse a las del narigudo poeta. (159)

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(And here we have —let it be known—Avendaño transformed into a stable boy, with the name of Tomás Pedro, which was the name he gave himself, and Carriazo, calling himself Lope Asturiano, turned into a water carrier. These were metamorphoses capable of eclipsing those of the long-nosed poet.)

Tomás also describes in his letter, in rather inflated terms, which are not even true, how he left his homeland for her: “A la fama de vuestra hermosura […] dejé mi patria, mudé vestido” (178) (At the fame of your beauty […] I left my homeland, I changed my clothes). However, against a backdrop of crime the boys sink relatively low. When they overhear the mule drivers talking in Illescas they also hear about the Conde de Puñonrostro’s hard measures against crime in the city. This raises the spectre of real, brutal crime and punishment but in this context of ostensible reform Carriazo undertakes a violent trajectory to prison. The prison space can be considered in the same context as the inn. There are even light parallels between Lope/Carriazo being led through the crowds to prison flanked by two corchetes (constables) and the alguacil (officer) seen by all but denied verbal exchange, then placed “en la cárcel y en un calabozo, con dos pares de grillos” (161) (in prison and in a dungeon, shackled with two pairs of fetters) and Costanza’s existence in the middle of the very busy, observed place that is the inn with “tanta gente y tantos ojos” (177) (so many people and so many eyes). What looks like a descent for Carriazo in the underworld of the dungeon while Avendaño is drawn to the light and beauty of Costanza is an attractive extension of their fundamentally polar urges—towards the almadrabas and towards Costanza—but we are soon brought back to a shared middle space when the authorities are bought off, Carriazo is released and we discover that, all the while, it is Tomás who has been in hell: “¿en qué estado están tus esperanzas? —En el de la perdición— respondió Tomás—; porque en todos estos días que has estado preso nunca la he podido hablar” (164) (what state are your hopes in?—They’ve gone to ruin—responded Tomás—; because for all the time you have been in prison I have not been able to utter a word to her). In this middling space of the posada del Sevillano Costanza is a rather puzzling fit, a “fregona […] que no friega” (164) (kitchen-maid who does not wash a dish) Her reputation as an ilustre fregona precedes her but the ill-fitting nature of the title quickly becomes apparent.26 Avendaño soon realises that her only task is to look after the substantial collection of

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silverware in the house, and he is yet to see her wash a dish (164). While Avendaño highlights her unsuitability to perform menial household jobs, Carriazo sports rather more literally with her title, suggesting that she has earned the epithet “ilustre” by virtue of cleaning the silver (164). The question of her title comes under scrutiny later when the Corregidor turns up at the inn to see the woman his son is infatuated with. It becomes a riddling exchange examining whether or not she is a criada: Señor —respondió el huésped—, esa fregona ilustre que dicen es verdad que está en esta casa; pero ni es mi criada ni deja de serlo. —No entiendo lo que decís, huésped, en eso de ser y no ser vuestra criada la fregona. (185) (Sir —responded the innkeeper—, it is true that the illustrious kitchenmaid they speak of is in this house, but she is not my maid, nor is she not my maid.)

On seeing her, the Corregidor decides that her title does not do her justice: “Digo, doncella, que no solamente os pueden y deben llamar ilustre, sino ilustrísima; pero estos títulos no habían de caer sobre el nombre de fregona, sino sobre el de una duquesa” (185) (May I say, young lady, that people can and should call you not just illustrious, but most illustrious, but these titles do not apply to a kitchen-maid but to a duchess). Spotting instantly that she is out of place, he likens her to a precious jewel set in an unsuitable mount: “ésta no es joya para estar en el bajo engaste de un mesón” (185) (this is not a jewel to be kept in the humble setting of an inn). José Montero Reguera describes how the emphasis on Costanza’s title reflects the creation of “una especie de estado de opinión sobre ella” (1993, 354) (a kind of climate of opinion about her) in which she has minimal direct intervention, remaining “en penumbra” (354) (in semi-darkness). If anything, Cervantes highlights the process of labelling so clearly that we learn to reject it and to see it as an arena of instability and irony.27 Alongside the ilustre fregona title, Costanza’s name seems designed to conjure up immediate associations with constancy and measure. Thomas R. Hart describes her “ability to remain true to the ideals of her own class while living amid the physical and moral confusion of a popular inn –an ability symbolized by her Christian name” (1981, 284). Wiltrout states that “Costanza […] true to her

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name, has constantly maintained her aristocratic mein” (1981, 392). Lee reads this as a connection with her birth mother, the Señora Peregrina: “Once her child is born, she christens her with a name that echoes her own behavior, Costanza” (2006, 53). Costanza’s constancy ironically creates flux. This is evident in the sorrowful scene, once the truth of her identity has been revealed, in which she must leave the woman who raised her as a daughter: cuando dijo el Corregidor a Costanza que entrase también en el coche, se le anubló el corazón, y ella y la huéspeda se asieron una a otra y comenzaron a hacer tan amargo llanto, que quebraba los corazones de cuantos le escuchaban. Decía la huéspeda: —¿Cómo es esto, hija de mi corazón, que te vas y me dejas? ¿Cómo tienes ánimo de dejar a esta madre, que con tanto amor te ha criado? Costanza lloraba, y la respondía con no menos tiernas palabras. Pero el Corregidor, enternecido, mandó que asimismo la huéspeda entrase en el coche. (197) (when the Corregidor told Costanza to get into the carriage as well, her heart sank, and she and the innkeeper’s wife held each other tightly and began to cry such bitter tears that they broke the hearts of all those who were listening. The innkeeper’s wife said: —How can it be, precious daughter, that you are going and leaving me behind? How can you bear to leave this mother who has raised you with so much love? Costanza cried and replied to her with words that were no less tender. But, moved by this, the Corregidor ordered that the innkeeper’s wife should get into the carriage too.)

So loyal is her affection that what ought to be a severance between Costanza and her life at the inn is complicated by the fact that her adoptive mother is permitted to travel with her until they leave Toledo. At the very end of the tale we are reminded of Costanza’s ongoing attachment to the woman who raised her: “con muchas joyas que Costanza dio a su señora: que siempre con este nombre llamaba a la que la había criado” (198) (with the many jewels that Costanza gave to her mistress, for she always called the woman who had brought her up by this name). Elements of her life at the inn are, it seems, carried over, even when her true identity is revealed. The double life that her illegitimacy affords her makes the idea of her constancy difficult to accept. She is simultaneously present

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and elsewhere, attainable and unattainable, longed-for and rejected. While Avendaño places her on the highest pedestal, Carriazo can flatly foresake her for the tunny fisheries: “a Carriazo le pareció tan bien como a su compañero, pero enamoróle mucho menos; y tan menos, que quisiera no anochecer en la posada, sino partirse luego para sus almadrabas” (154) (Carriazo thought her as fine as his companion did, but he was far less in love with her, and so much less that he did not wish to spend the night at the inn, but to leave right away for the tunny fisheries). Where there are burlas , there are also veras . She is not just a rare beauty but also the product of a particularly sinister rape, a moment where a kind of dreadful spontaneity—“el silencio, la soledad, la ocasión, despertaron en mí un deseo” (the silence, the solitude, the occasion, stirred within me a desire)—meets a careful manipulation of the honour code on Carriazo’s part: “que las voces que diere serán pregonaras de su deshonra” (194) (because your shouts will proclaim your dishonour).28 Costanza’s name may gesture towards reliability and trustworthiness but, ultimately, we are left with the impression of a tale that resists closure and conclusion. Stephen Boyd suggests that Cervantes “allows some troubling shadows to cloud what otherwise could be an all-tooneat pattern of loss and restoration” (2005, 38). D. Gareth Walters describes how it “lacks a satisfactory moral conclusion” (2005, 219). Gorfkle and Williamsen note that “Cervantes sketches in the closural patterns of romance and the ideology is perpetuates -unity, sameness (mimesis), autonomy, and order- while forever alerting the reader to their illusiveness” (1994, 17). The evasion of closure at the level of the narrative and its potential message is pre-empted by the way the novela deals with “fit”. Things that fit together involve a level of narrative satisfaction and we see evidence of this when Costanza’s mother leaves her, furnishing the innkeeper with a chain with six links missing and a white parchment cut into a zig-zag pattern which, when reunited with its other half, spells: ESTA ES LA SEÑAL VERDADERA (193) (THIS IS THE TRUE SIGN). The process of joining the pieces is emphasised: “el un pergamino sirve de alma del otro y encajados se leerán, y divididos no es posible” (189) (one half of parchment serves as the soul of the other and when fitted together they will make sense, but separated they will not). Lee describes this as a redeeming moment “symbolic of the union of Costanza’s mother and father” in which “One half symbolizes the hand of the mother, the synecdoche that stands for the raped body, and the other,

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the hand of the father, the corrupt flesh that raped the mother” (2006, 54). However, we might be reminded that the tale also celebrates disjoint and dislocation. One of the most salient examples of this comes when the spurned maid Argüello tells Lope “No es la miel para la boca del asno” (174) (Honey is too good for the mouth of the ass), a parting message that speaks a broader truth that there are some social divisions that cannot be overcome. We might also consider the episode where Lope wagers the “fifth quarter” of an ass in a card game, and is mercilessly teased about it, as an ironic view of or, at the very least, a reflection on the notion of fit. His rather ingenious attempt to avoid losing the beast by including the tail as a fifth part of it is both funny in its own right and an anecdote about pieces that add up to more than the sum of their parts. In a sense, the same is true of names in the tale. The relationship between Costanza’s title “ilustre fregona” and her identity is continually being assessed and found wanting: by the Corregidor (185), the innkeeper (190), and, at the very end, the narrator, who now dubs her “la fregona ilustre” in a sleight of hand move that swaps “ilustre” and “fregona” around to cement her as a predominantly literary figure whose beauty “los poetas del dorado Tajo” (the poets of the golden Tagus) might celebrate and praise (198). This tallies well with the very end of the tale, the last words of which—“¡Daca la cola, Asturiano! ¡Asturiano, daca la cola!” (198) (Give us the tail, Asturiano! Asturiano, give us the tail!)—evoke Carriazo’s ongoing sensitivity to being teased by his fellow water-carriers about the ass’s tail. Both words “ilustre” (illustrious) and “cola” (tail), for very different reasons, ring out throughout the novela as signature tunes or stories in their own right; they are pieces of a larger whole with a kind of emblematic value that celebrates a part of something for its separateness and singularity. Despite the discovery that is made about her true identity, Costanza as “ilustre fregona” is not constrained to those terms; by giving the story this title Cervantes holds is up as a label with an apparently aspirational, exemplary value—ilustre, ilustrísima—only to demonstrate that it is a departure point for all manner of narrative alternatives and elsewheres. Therein lies the lesson that when the pieces are put back together, like the parchment and chain described here, illegitimacy will always be a different version of those pieces; not corrected, not erased but dependent on having been something detached, broken, and displaced in order to be its very particular brand of complete.

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Notes 1. On delinquency, see the iconic study by Parker (1967) and Deyermond (1975, 10), and on the concept of lawlessness, Forcione (1984). Studies that consider irony are too numerous to list here but some highlights concerning Cervantes are Close (1973), Rico (1984) and Friedman (2014). On the theme of subversion, see, for example, Burgoyne (2001). Friedman, citing Kristeva, also describes how in the period from the thirteenth to the fifteenth centuries “An ever greater skepticism toward verbal signs, and toward signs in general, manifests itself in fiction […] Literature exemplifies systems of language and thought in flux” (1989, 129). 2. On Cervantes’s life, see the biography by Jean Canavaggio (2015) especially 75–83 on the Battle of Lepanto, and 101–10 on his capture and imprisonment. Cervantes alludes to the loss of his left hand at Lepanto in the prologue to the Novelas ejemplares as “herida que, aunque parece fea, él la tiene por hermosa, por haberla cobrado en la más memorable y alta ocasión que vieron los pasados siglos” (Cervantes 2013, xxx) (a wound which, although it looks ugly, he regards as handsome, for having gained it on the most memorable and significant occasion witnessed by the past centuries). 3. On the concept of eutrapelia, see the important early studies by Wardropper (1982) and Jones (1985), as well as Thompson (2005) in which he demonstrates how the theory of eutrapelia enhances our understanding of Cervantes’s exemplarity. See also Olson (1982) on literature as play. 4. Not all critics are as sceptical about the nature of the misterio; see Clamurro for a summary of critical views, in addition to his own assertion that “What is mysterious is the diversity of narrative form and of the worlds represented across the novelas, as much as the complexity and irony within each text that express with subtle but troubling efficacy the complex, anti-ideal social and cultural realities in and beyond the text” (1997, 10–11). 5. The Corregidor is equivalent to a Chief Magistrate. 6. Henceforth, all references to quotations from the three novelas are taken from Novelas ejemplares II , ed. Harry Sieber (2003). Page numbers only from this edition are provided. 7. Other readings of the novela which identify order are those of Fernando Riva, who discusses the evolution of Rodolfo’s character and the stabilizing force Luis represents (2016), Salvador J. Fajardo who discusses the reordering of space in the work (2005), and Marcia L. Welles who notes that Leocadia makes this her story and negotiates “a bond of mutual love -and pleasure-with her husband” (1989, 250).

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8. For a description of the critical history of the novela to date, see Ife and Darby (2005, 172–73). 9. Some criticism also identifies Cervantes’s ironic adaptation of earlier literary conventions. See Price (1989) on his ironic use of the lost child topos, and Ojea Fernández on “una mofa de ese universo ideal que en literatura venía representado por los géneros literarios aristocráticos” (2015, 160) (a mockery of the ideal universe which is represented in literature through aristocratic literary genres). 10. See Rhodes (2008, 201) for a summary of critical interpretations of the work’s ending. Lappin (2005) takes a more sympathetic view of the human side of Rodolfo’s actions. 11. See, for example, Ojea Fernández who calls the child “un ser anónimo y carente de autenticidad” (2015, 155) (an anonymous being lacking in authenticity). 12. Scott confirms that “Luisico’s extraordinarily handsome appearance attracts an ironic kind of attention to him” (1977, 128). 13. Critics have frequently discussed the text’s antitheses. Riva describes “la tensión de opuestos sobre la que se eriga la narración (luz y oscuridad; salud y enfermedad que no son otra cosa que dos caras análogas de la misma moneda” (2016, 115) (the tension of opposites on which the narrative is erected: light and dark, health and illness are nothing more than two sides of the same coin). Howe notes how “the structural antitheses evidenced in the two halves of the story mirror the plethora of grammatical antithesis found throughout the story” (1994, 64) and the “binary oppositions that frame the story both structurally and symbolically” (66). For Forcione, antithesis are connected to the tale’s links to miracle narrative: “One could say that antithesis is the dominant figure of this narration […] and it is clear that all these concrete manifestations of antitheses are informed by the profoundly antithetical feeling behind the Christian vision of evil and redemption, of the relation between this life and the afterlife, and of the paradoxes of the Incarnation and the fortunate fall” (1982, 393). Friedman describes how “Antithesis (the Baroque chiaroscuro) is a central figure of La fuerza de la sangre” (1989, 141). 14. Boruchoff also describes “uncanny instances” in the tale (2016, 474). 15. Friedman refers to its metatheatrical qualities (1989, 133). 16. Friedman identifies “an ending which looks to absence rather than presence […] The novella is about crime but not about punishment, about marriage but not about love, about justice but not about poetic justice” (1989, 150). In a later article he calls the tale an example of “deceptive idealism […] its happy ending is compromised by the realism and the reality principles of social negations” (2014, 93).

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17. In a similar vein, Clamurro writes “the story ends with a decorous slide into silence and the assertion of a long and fortunate life history to follow. The reader, however, is left to ponder the novela’s implications and challenges” (2014, 119). 18. For a summary of criticism on the novela since 1969, see Friedman (2014, 98). Esther Lacadena y Calero describes, for example, how the work has suffered from being contrasted with other novelas (1976, 200). 19. Zimic confirms that Juan and Antonio play an important role in putting the pieces together: “figuran don Juan y don Antonio mismos como piezas integradoras del enigma” (1991a, 116). 20. For possible sources of this episode, see McGrady (2008, esp. 199). 21. On the relationship between the breast and language, Yalom comments that “The breast was the sweetener for learning, the gateway to knowledge, with the mother called upon to nourish her child both physically and mentally” (1997, 39). 22. Williamson builds on E. C. Riley’s stance on the novela’s fluid mixture of romance and novel (1981, 78–79) by exploring Cervantes’s “extraordinarily innovation combination of romance and the early “proto-novelistic” forms of picaresque fiction” (2004, 656). For Alison Weber, the novela “demands an inter-generic reading –an awareness that the novella expands, alters, and in some cases challenges the themes and assumptions of picaresque fiction” (1979, 74). Dunn invites us to exercise caution in assuming that the picaresque was a coherent genre in Cervantes’s time (1993, 111). 23. Lee notes that readers have often identified her “excessive plasticity” (2006, 45). Gorfkle and Williamsen approvingly cite Barrenechea on Costanza as “an empty character that the reader only knows or comes to understand through other characters” (1994, 15). 24. Paul Lewis-Smith refers to her as a “parodic version of an immaculate secular heroine” (2010, 29); Karl-Ludwig Selig observes that descriptions of Costanza “reflect the aesthetic and artistic principles of idealized portraiture” (1969, 118). D. Gareth Walters notes “it is not social conventions that govern Costanza […] as much as literary ones” (2005, 212). Zimic also states that “Es así impropio comparar a Costanza con otros personajes femeninos […] concluyendo que aquélla es menos interesante cuando no se distinga entre el tipo humano y su retrato artístico” (1991b, 36) (It is inappropriate to compare Costanza with other female characters […] concluding that she is less interesting because of a lack of differentiation between the human character and her artistic portrait). Lee states that “Every element used to describe Costanza’s appearance compares her to the archetype of the perfect woman, as epitomized by artistic images of the Virgin Mary” (2006, 60).

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25. He describes the inn further as “a place that both allows the ambiguities of disguise and also promotes the ultimate reunions and revelations […] the plausible place for actions ranging from the farcical to the sentimental” (44–45). 26. Monique Joly describes, citing Covarrubias, the possible erotic connotations of the title, given that “refregarse con las mujeres” (to rub/scrub with women) means “allegarse mucho a ellas” (to go up to/get very attached to them) and “la mujer del buen fregado” (lit. “a woman of a good scrubbing” but also a woman in trouble/in a fine mess) is “la deshonesta que se refriega con todos” (1992, 18) (the indecent woman who scrubs up against all the men). 27. This much is clear from the very first paragraph when the boys’ names are summarily dealt with: “por excusar y ahorrar letras, les llamaremos con solos los nombres de Carriazo y Avendaño” (139) (to excuse and save letters, we will call them only by the names of Carriazo and Avendaño), and later when a name change is presented as matter of fact: “Es de advertir que en su peregrinación don Diego mudó el nombre de Carriazo en el de Urdiales, y con este nombre se hizo llamar de los que el suyo no sabían” (142–43) (It should be noted that on his travels Don Diego changed the name Carriazo de Urdiales and he was known by this name by those who did not know his former one). 28. Williamson states that “There is something exceptionally horrible about this particular rape. The circumstances which Cervantes invented seem designed to highlight the power of honour to silence even the most privileged women” (2004, 670). Walters believes that “the magnitude and impact of the crime committed by Carriazo’s father has been grossly understated” (2005, 218). Zimic calls the rape “de extraordinaria brutalidad y vileza” (1991a, 33) (of extraordinary brutality and cruelty). Lee also notes how Carriazo “believes he can silence his transgression by exploiting the honour code” (2006, 51).

Works Cited Adair, Richard. 1996. Courtship, Illegitimacy and Marriage in Early Modern England. Manchester: Manchester University Press. Barahona, Renato. 2003. Sex Crimes, Honour, and the Law in Early Modern Spain: Vizcaya 1528–1735. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. Barrenechea, Ana María. 1964. La ilustre fregona como ejemplo de la estructura novelesca cervantina. In Actas del Primer Congreso Internacional de Hispanistas, ed. Frank Pierce and Cyril A. Jones, 199–206. Oxford: Dolphin Books.

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Boro, Joyce. 2013. Blessed with a Baby or ‘Bum-Fidled with a Bastard’: Maternity in Fletcher’s The Chances and Cervantes’ La señora Cornelia. In The Creation and Re-Creation of ‘Cardenio’: Performing Shakespeare, Transforming Cervantes, ed. Terri Bourus and Gary Taylor, 61–72. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Boruchoff, David A. 2016. Unhappy Endings: La fuerza de la sangre and the Novelas ejemplares of Miguel de Cervantes. BHS 93 (5): 461–77. Boyd, Stephen. 2005. Introduction. In A Companion to Cervantes’s Novelas ejemplares, ed. Stephen Boyd, 1–46. Woodbridge: Boydell & Brewer. Burgoyne, Jonathan. 2001. La gitanilla: A Model of Cervantes’s Subversion of Romance. RCEH 25 (3): 373–95. Bynum, Caroline Walker. 2007. Wonderful Blood: Theology and Practice in Late Medieval Northern Germany and Beyond. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. Calcraft, R.P. 1981. Structure, Symbol and Meaning in Cervantes’s La fuerza de la sangre. BHS 58 (3): 197–204. Canavaggio, Jean. 2015. Cervantes, trans. Mauro Armiño. Barcelona: Espasa. Casalduero, Joaquín. 1969. Sentido y forma de las “Novelas ejemplares”. Madrid: Gredos. Checa, Jorge. 1991. El romance y su sombra: hibridación genérica en ‘La ilustre fregona’. REH 25 (1): 29–48. Clamurro, William. 1997. Beneath the Fiction: The Contrary Worlds of Cervantes’s “Novelas ejemplares”. New York: Peter Lang. ———. 2014. The Justice of Forgiveness in La fuerza de la sangre. RQ 61 (2): 111–24. Close, A.J. 1973. Don Quixote’s Love for Dulcinea: A Study of Cervantine Irony. BHS 50 (3): 237–56. ———. 2000. Cervantes and the Comic Mind of His Age. Oxford: Oxford University Press. de Cervantes Saavedra, Miguel. 1992. Novelas ejemplares I , ed. Harry Sieber. Letras Hispánicas, 105. Madrid: Cátedra. ———. 2003. Novelas ejemplares II , ed. Harry Sieber. Letras Hispánicas, 106. Madrid: Cátedra. ———. 2013. The Complete Exemplary Novels, ed. Barry Ife and Jonathan Thacker. Aris & Phillips Hispanic Classics. Oxford: Oxbow. de Rojas, Fernando. 1991. Comedia o tragicomedia de Calisto y Melibea, ed. Peter E. Russell. Clásicos Castalia, 109. Madrid: Castalia. Deyermond, Alan D. 1975. Lazarillo de Tormes. London: Tamesis. Dunn, Peter. 1993. Spanish Picaresque Fiction: A New Literary History. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.

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———. 2005. The Play of Desire: El amante liberal and El casamiento engañoso y El coloquio de los perros. In A Companion to Cervantes’s Novelas ejemplares, ed. Stephen Boyd, 87–104. Woodbridge: Boydell & Brewer. El Saffar, Ruth. 1974. Novel to Romance: A Study of Cervantes’s “Novelas ejemplares”. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. Fajardo, Salvador J. 2005. Space in ‘La fuerza de la sangre’. Cervantes 25 (2): 95–117. Forcione, Alban K. 1982. Cervantes and the Humanist Vision. Princeton: Princeton University Press. ———. 1984. Cervantes and the Mystery of Lawlessness. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Freud, Sigmund. 1919. The ‘Uncanny’. In The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, trans. James Strachey, vol. 17 (1917– 19), 218–53. London: The Hogarth Press. Friedman, Edward H. 1989. Cervantes’s La fuerza de la sangre and the Rhetoric of Power. In Cervantes’s “Exemplary Novels” and the Adventure of Writing, ed. Michael Nerlich et al., 125–56. Minneapolis, MN: The Prisma Institute. ———. 2014. Exemplary Irony: Cervantes’s ‘La señora Cornelia’ in Context. RQ 61 (2): 86–99. González Echevarría, Roberto. 2005. Love and the Law in Cervantes. New Haven: Yale University Press. Gorfkle, Laura, and Amy R. Williamsen. 1994. Mimetic Desire and the Narcissistic (Wo)man in “La ilustre fregona” and the Persiles: Strategies for Reinterpretation. Hispania 77 (1): 11–22. Hart, Thomas R. 1981. Versions of Pastoral in Three Novelas ejemplares. BHS 58 (4): 283–91. Howe, E.T. 1994. The Power of Blood in Cervantes’ La fuerza de la sangre. FMLS 30 (1): 64–76. Ife, Barry, and Trudi L. Darby. 2005. Remorse, Retribution and Redemption in La fuerza de la sangre: Spanish and English Perspectives. In A Companion to Cervantes’s Novelas ejemplares, ed. Stephen Boyd, 172–90. Woodbridge: Boydell & Brewer. Iser, Wolfgang. 1993. The Fictive and the Imaginary. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. Joly, Monique. 1992. Erotismo y marginación social en la novela cervantina. Cervantes 12 (2): 7–19. Jones, Joseph R. 1985. Cervantes y la virtud de la eutrapelia: la moralidad de la literatura de esparcimiento. AC 23: 19–30. Kartchner, Eric. 2005. Unhappily Ever After: Deceptive Idealism in Cervantes’ Marriage Tales. Newark, DE: Juan de la Cuesta. Keppler, C.F. 1972. The Literature of the Second Self . Tucson, AZ: University of Arizona Press.

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Kermode, Frank. 2000. The Sense of an Ending: Studies in the Theory of Fiction with a New Epilogue. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Lacadena y Calero, Esther. 1976. La señora Cornelia’ y su técnica narrativa. AC 15: 199–210. Lappin, Anthony. 2005. Exemplary Rape: The Central Problem of La fuerza de la sangre. In A Companion to Cervantes’s Novelas ejemplares, ed. Stephen Boyd, 147–71. Woodbridge: Boydell & Brewer. Lee, Christina H. 2006. La Señora Peregrina as Mediatrix in ‘La ilustre fregona’. Cervantes, 45–68. Lewis-Smith, Paul. 1996. Fictionalizing God: Providence, Nature and the Significance of Rape in ‘La Fuerza de la Sangre’. MLR 91 (4): 886–97. Lewis-Smith, Paul. 2010. Realism, Idealism, and the Transformation of Romance in ‘La ilustre fregona’. Cervantes 30 (1): 17–31. Lukács, Georg. 1971. The Theory of the Novel, trans. Anna Bostock. London: Merlin Press. Mayer, Eric D. 2005. Self-Consuming Narrative: The Problem of Reader Perspective in ‘La fuerza de la sangre’. Mester 34: 98–123. McCracken, Peggy. 2003. The Curse of Eve, the Wound of the Hero: Blood, Gender, and Medieval Literature. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. McGrady, Donald. 2008. El incidente del neonato en La señora Cornelia. Cervantes 28 (2): 198–200. McKendrick, Melveena. 1980. Cervantes. Boston: Little, Brown. ———. 2005. The Curious and Neglected Tale of La señora Cornelia. BHS 82: 701–16. Montero Roguera, José. 1993. Cervantes y la verosimilitud: La ilustre fregona. RFR 10: 335–57. Ojea Fernández, María Elena. 2015. Orden y desorden en La fuerza de la sangre de Miguel de Cervantes. Lemir 19: 151–64. Olson, Glending. 1982. Literature as Recreation in the Later Middle Ages. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Pabon, Thomas. 1977. Secular Resurrection Through Marriage in Cervantes’ La señora Cornelia, Las dos doncellas and La fuerza de la sangre. AC 16: 109–24. Parker, Alexander A. 1967. Literature and the Delincuent: The Picaresque Novel in Spain and Europe 1599–1753. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Price, R.M. 1989. Cervantes and the Topic of the ‘Lost Child Found’ in the Novelas ejemplares. AC 27: 203–14. Puig, Idoya. 2005. Cervantine Traits in Las dos doncellas and La señora Cornelia. In A Companion to Cervantes’s Novelas ejemplares, ed. Stephen Boyd, 221–34. Woodbridge: Boydell & Brewer. Rhodes, Elizabeth. 2008. Living with Rodolfo and Cervantes’s ‘La fuerza de la sangre’. MLN 133: 201–23. Rico, Francisco. 1984. The Spanish Picaresque Novel and the Point of View, trans. Charles Davis with Harry Sieber. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

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Riley, E.C. 1981. Cervantes: A Question of Genre. In Mediaeval and Renaissance Studies on Spain and Portugal in Honour of P. E. Russell, ed. F.W. Hodcroft et al., 69–85. Oxford: Society for the Study of Mediaeval Languages and Literature. Riva, Fernando. 2016. La imagen ante los ojos: enfermedad de amor y castidad celeste en La fuerza de la sangre de Miguel de Cervantes. BHS 93 (2): 113– 29. Robbins, Jeremy. 2007. Arts of Perception: The Epistemological Mentality of the Spanish Baroque, 1580–1720. New York: Routledge. Schmitz, Ryan. 2011. Prudence, Sincerity, and the Body’s Betrayal of the Dissimulated Self in Cervantes’ La señora Cornelia. BSS 88 (3): 349–66. Scott, Nina M. 1977. Honor and Family in La fuerza de la sangre. In Studies in Honor of Ruth Lee Kennedy, ed. Vern G. Williamsen and A.F. Michael Atlee, 125–32. Estudios de Hispanófila, 46. Chapel Hill, NC: Estudios de Hispanófila. Selig, Karl-Ludwig. 1969. The Metamorphosis of the ‘Ilustre fregona’. In Filología y crítica hispánica: Homenaje al Prof. Federico Sánchez Escribano, ed. Albert Porqueras Mayo and Carlos Rojas, 115–20. Madrid: Ediciones Alcalá. Teijero Fuentes, Miguel Ángel. 1993. La ‘trágica comedia’ de La señora Cornelia de Cervantes. Algunas notas acerca de su estructura e interpretación. Castilla: Boletín del Departamento de Literatura Española 18: 153–67. Thompson, Colin. 2005. Eutrapelia and Exemplarity in the Novelas ejemplares. In A Companion to Cervantes’s Novelas ejemplares, ed. Stephen Boyd, 261–82. Woodbridge: Boydell & Brewer. Walters, D. Gareth. 2005. Performances of Pastoral in La ilustre fregona: Games Within the Game. In A Companion to Cervantes’s Novelas ejemplares, ed. Stephen Boyd, 207–20. Woodbridge: Boydell & Brewer. Wardropper, Bruce. 1982. La eutrapelia en las Novelas ejemplares de Cervantes. In Actas del Séptimo Congreso de la Asociación Internacional de Hispanistas (1980), 153–68. Rome: Bulzoni. Weber, Alison. 1979. La ilustre fregona and the Barriers of Caste. Papers on Language and Literature 15: 73–81. Welles, Marcia L. 1989. Violence Disguised: Representation of Rape in Cervantes’ ‘La fuerza de la sangre’. JHP 13: 240–52. Williamson, Edwin. 2004. Challenging the Hierarchies: The Interplay of Romance and the Picaresque in La ilustre fregona. BSS 81 (4–5): 655–74. Wiltrout, Ann. 1981. Role Playing and Rites of Passage: La ilustre fregona and La gitanilla. Hispania 64 (3): 388–99. Yalom, Marilyn. 1997. A History of the Breast. New York: Ballantine Books. Zimic, Stanislav. 1991a. ‘La señora Cornelia’: Una excursión a la ‘novela’ italiana. BRAE 61: 101–20. Zimic, Stanislav. 1991b. La Ilustre Fregona. AC 29: 21–43.

CHAPTER 5

Lope de Vega’s Bastard Heroes: Pieces and Traces

The Renaissance stage held a number of illegitimate characters up for public entertainment and scrutiny. Shakespeare’s King Lear (1605), Troilus and Cressida (1601), King John (pub. 1623), Richard II (1595), and Hamlet (1600) all explore illegitimacy, while the theme was equally appealing in French theatre.1 The Spanish stage and its corresponding interest in illegitimacy at the turn of the seventeenth century has been relatively understudied in comparison with England and France. Between 1595 and 1612, Lope de Vega wrote a number of historical plays in which illegitimacy is a central theme, including El casamiento en la muerte (1595–97) (Marriage in Death), Las mocedades de Bernardo del Carpio (1599–1608) (The Youthful Deeds of Bernardo del Carpio), La mocedad de Roldán (1599–1603) (The Youth of Roland), and El bastardo Mudarra (1612) (Mudarra, the Bastard Son); it is also present in his later tragedy, El castigo sin venganza (1632) (Punishment without Revenge).2 In part because of his medieval characters, familiar already to Golden Age audiences from ballad and chronicle, Lope explores the heroic side of bastardy, drawing on the rich bank of evidence from myth and popular tradition that suggests that the bastard is not necessarily a malignant figure. Hercules, Romulus and Remus, Alexander the Great, King Arthur, and William the Conqueror are all illegitimate, illustrating “the need for myths of excentricity, of decentredness and the exception, because both the heroic and the divine are figures of liminality, excluded from the ways of common humanity and familial norms” (Maclean 1994, 18).3 This stands © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 G. Hazbun, Reading Illegitimacy in Early Iberian Literature, The New Middle Ages, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-59569-2_5

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in contrast with the tendency of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century tendency drama to invest the bastard with negative associations.4 Lope’s contrasting view of bastardy may be informed by his own rather colourful life. Lope had extramarital affairs and several illegitimate children of his own, even after he took holy orders in 1614 (Samson and Thacker 2008, 2). He had seven children to an actress Micaela de Luján whom he met in the late 1590s, an affair lasting sixteen years (1616– 32) with Marta de Nevares, who bore him a daughter Antonia Clara, and further affairs with the actresses Jerónima de Burgos from 1607 to 14 and Lucía Salcedo in 1615–16 (Samson and Thacker 2008, 6). That said, to read Lope’s work, and particularly his theatrical works, from a purely biographical perspective is to ignore the “confusion and conflation of Lope de Vega’s life and art in his own work” (Samson and Thacker 2008, 7). The interface between the theatre and the society and politics of Lope’s day must also be taken into account. It is now an established argument that the Golden Age comedia was not just propaganda for monarchy and state, as José Antonio Maravall (1972) and José María Díez Borque (1976) had argued, but that it “retains its capacity for criticism in an authoritarian age” (Stern 1982, 21). Melveena McKendrick describes how Lope’s theatre is “politically anxious and probing” and negotiates “a path of prudence between the acceptable and the unacceptable” (2000, 12). Illegitimacy seems ripe for reconsideration in a context in which drama was capable of “dealing ‘innocently’ with received values and ideologies, so that it could be made to support and subvert simultaneously” (McKendrick 2000, 11). To this we might add the comedia’s special capacity for staging a live version of the hypocrisy, deceit, double standards, and evasiveness of the real world from which it drew its material. The Golden Age theatre drew attention to the theatrical nature of life, and thereby permitted “a dramatic debate on the state and nature of society in seventeenth-century Spain” (Thacker 2002, 3).5 In Lope’s plays the bastard hero is configured in a language of absence and essence, part and whole, building the impression that the bastard is defined by a series of contradictions. The bastard is a combination of what is present and what is not; his coming into being is, paradoxically, both a boon and a loss for his parents. Some part of him too is missing—knowledge of a parent’s identity, recognition, honour, self-worth—a part he often searches for in the past, but he is also dynamic and goal orientated, exhibiting excessive strength and often violence, compared to a force of

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nature, a monster, a devil. Lope’s bastards are also surplus to requirements and so found on the periphery of the family or the social order, often symbolised by a wild or rural space, but they are also integral to both the domestic and the political orders. In the context of the Golden Age theatre, a discourse of absence and presence translates well on the stage; we are already primed to consider what we physically see and what we do not, as well as likeness and impersonation, the certain knowledge that any social identity is “held together by performance and the manipulation of perception” (Finn et al. 2010, 11). It is not, by extension, uncommon to find secrecy, deceit, and even treachery woven into his narrative. Motors and complicating factors of the plot they may be, but these forms of engaño also raise broader questions about perception and truth. The representation of the bastard on the stage is a particularly apt space for reflecting on the grey areas of experience; the Golden Age stage itself was an “overlapping of forms and thresholds” (Biet and Triau 2019, 104). The difference between seeming and being, parecer and ser, is often blurred as the bastard’s identity is negotiated internally and externally; so too are the lines between illusion and disillusion, engaño and desengaño, and between what is familiar to their story, and what is new.6 In this context, so heavily dependent on perspective, neither truth nor legitimacy are completely stable. On the stage we see characters claiming authority, identity, and legitimacy through words. No finer example exists than Edmund’s speech in Shakespeare’s King Lear when he turns the lexical connection between bastard and base into a series of resounding questions: “Why bastard? wherefore base? […] Why brand they us | With base? with baseness? bastardy? base, base?” (1997, 1307). The words “legitimate” and “bastard” are held up as arbitrary, which is typical of the way illegitimate characters reveal what Alison Findlay describes as the “precarious fragility and the oppressive workings of the dominant order” (1994, 136). Legitimacy, as Edmund puts it, is a “fine word” (1997, 1307). In the context of the Golden Age theatre, the reclaiming of legitimacy through the performance of speech sees the bastard figures delve into the falseness and inconsistency of language. However, they also recognise that language is a tool with which to shape their identity, perhaps the only tool, and that assumptions about their status, and the presiding social and political values that inform an understanding of illegitimacy, must be tackled in their most literal forms. Moreover, on the stage, words are all these characters are: “They are semantic entities produced by the elaboration of

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distinctive textual traits that function according to a predetermined and conventional structure” (Biet and Triau 2019, 301). Lope’s representation of illegitimacy is also concerned with legacy and the residual. The attempt on the part of his heroes to claim paternal lineage connects with a discourse of fama. Deemed to be the second of the three lives, fame was a means “of overcoming the mortal fate of man by creating a perpetual memory of his deeds” (Assmann 2011, 29). Fame looks forward, to the future generations who will keep the memory alive, and the influence that great and glorious deeds will have on them, but, for Lope’s bastard heroes, it is also a form of looking back, to a repository of characteristics which can provide an identity for one that in the present time is unacknowledged. The connection between illegitimacy and fama is a natural one; both are defined by external impression rather than inherent being, both look backwards and forwards at the same time, both rely on a definition of truth and goodness that pits essence against achievement, birth against worth. Both ask questions of the very system of moral and social reckoning which defines them. Fame connects with the emphasis on traces and legacies in Lope’s plays, particularly El bastardo Mudarra where a connection is established between the death of the Infantes, their reconfiguration as prendas (tokens) and the legitimacy of the next generation represented by Mudarra and Clara.

Bernardo del Carpio: Illegitimacy and Absence Lope considered himself related to Bernardo del Carpio (Ratcliffe 2011, 73) and adopted his coat of arms “on the basis of the coincidence of surnames” and much to the amusement of his contemporary Luis de Góngora (Samson and Thacker 2008, 5). This interest in the legendary figure generated two plays, El casamiento en la muerte (Casamiento) and Las mocedades de Bernardo del Carpio (Mocedades ). Lope’s versions diverge slightly from the medieval legend described in Chapter 2, and from one another, mainly in the different ways the king responds to Bernardo’s request for his father. Casamiento is a very sombre and nationalistic play which focusses on the concluding stages of the epic narrative. Mocedades is a later, more light-hearted piece, focussing on Bernardo’s rampageous early life. In both plays, the hero’s martial endeavour is driven by the absence of his biological father, creating a situation in which the very character who is not present on stage is most present in the minds of the audience. Staging the drama around an absence allows Lope to invoke

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a number of symbolic and referential modes which potentially undermine the political order. In Casamiento, lack is the keynote from the very beginning; with no Spanish heir to the throne Spain is in grave danger of being handed over to foreign rule in secret by King Alfonso. The definition of legitimacy is thereby questioned and challenged from the outset. The courtiers assert their preference for a monarch descended from Pelayo over an outsider and define legitimacy of rule as blood and lineage, “sangre” and “linaje” (1965a, 52).7 King Alfonso questions this definition by asking why the lack of an heir is his fault, and why they cannot obey a foreign prince, Charlemagne, who is good, just, and pious (52). This moral slant on legitimacy, fitting for a king known as “the Chaste”, remains unconvincing and individuals who are prepared to defend the land with their lives, to be like human blockades in the Pyrenean mountains (52), take the matter into their own hands, ushering in political disorder. This sets the scene for the entrance of Bernardo. Even before Bernardo speaks, guards attempt to prevent him from entering the court, staging in the most obvious terms his unsuitability to succeed the king. Bernardo then embarks upon a long speech, a speech designed to highlight what is there, and what is not, in which he even finds the king’s epithet “el casto” (the Chaste) wanting: “pluguiera Dios no lo fueras [casto] | que no es justo” (52) (I wish to God that you were not (chaste) | for it is not just). Similarly unconvincing are the moral premises on which Alfonso appears to be attempting to legitimise the handover of the kingdom. Stating that he has not come with the usual request for his father’s release, Bernardo succeeds in drawing even greater attention to his father’s absence. In fact, Bernardo makes his father central to his speech by describing Castile as his mother, and claiming that the king has denied him both parents: Dame a mi madre Castilla, que me han dicho que la entregas a Carlomagno de Francia, y padre y madre me niegas. (53) (Give me my mother Castile for they have told me that you are handing her over to Charlemagne of France, and you deny me father and mother.)

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Bernardo’s illegitimacy stems, according to him, from the king’s fear that if his father is released he will marry the king’s sister and make Bernardo legitimate. It is, in his eyes, entirely subjective, a matter of the king’s own caprice: “Si yo soy bastardo, Rey, | que tú quieres que lo sea” (53) (If I am a bastard, king, | it is you who want me to be one). This is confirmed by the Muslim courtier Bravonel who accuses the king of acting out of hatred of Bernardo, and engineering a situation in which Bernardo’s parents are separated so that he may remain illegitimate: “Para que no se casen, y ser pueda | legítimo Bernardo, los aparta” (59) (So that they do not marry and Bernardo may be legitimate, he keeps them apart). The ramifications go beyond Bernardo’s personal situation; King Alfonso’s “chasteness” is increasingly defined as bias clothed as piety, a bias which puts the entire nation at risk: “por un Rey casto | es posible que se pierda” (53) (because of a chaste king | it is possible for it to be lost). The perspective of the Muslims from Aragon, King Marsilio, and his courtier Bravonel affirms the insubstantial basis for Bernardo’s illegitimacy: “un hombre que en su ley llaman bastardo” (59) (a man who according to their law they call bastard). Bastardy is a label, a “fine word”, one generated by malice. Outside Castile, Bernardo garners legitimacy, writing to Marsilio to ask for military support, as well as for marriage to the niece of the emperor of Constantinople, a marriage that will see Bernardo better defend Aragon and Catalonia, and secure his right to inherit Castile. Marsilio praises Bravonel and Bernardo as “columnas […] de España” (60) (columns of Spain), an ironic observation for two reasons: a Muslim and a bastard are the very foundations of Spain’s identity while the Castilian court remains in turmoil, and Bernardo’s immaterial associations with illegitimacy are dispelled by the most material metaphor. As the Spanish go into battle against the French at Roncesvalles, Bernardo’s father is depicted on a flag, bringing him into the visual field of the audience, whether that be as an actual object or imagined, probably the former since the stage direction indicates that it appears. Bernardo refers to the picture again in his own speech, explaining that it serves as weapon, coat of arms, and trophy: “por armas, por blasón y por trofeo” (70). The flag serves many purposes, it can be reinvented as many objects, in keeping with the tendency of stage objects to “neither be purely utilitarian not simply referential nor symbolic” (Biet and Triau 2019, 240), but it principally draws attention to his father’s physical absence by simple virtue of being there when he is not. The more Bernardo describes it, the more it appears as the painted replica it is, a duplication to focus the mind

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on his father’s absence, as well as on the scenic level of the stage itself and the difference between reality and illusion.8 Bravonel shatters any illusion it might have when he states that it would be better for the king to order Bernardo’s father to be released than for him to be brandished on a flag, “Mejor será que el Rey dártele mande” (70). With this flat statement of fact, Bernardo’s illegitimacy takes on a certain urgency; the hero is close to having his father released but, based on the king’s past form, he is also far from it too: “como otras me engañas, no lo creo” (70) (like on other occasions you are deceiving me, I do not believe it). Here illegitimacy intersects with fama; Bernardo’s best chance is to stress the passing of French military might in order to emphasise the opportunity still available to his father. Roland is dead, the Peers are exiled, and his father has been in prison for twenty long years: ¡mira que a Roldán he muerto y a los Pares desterrado! ¡Dame a mi padre, señor, que ha que está preso veinte años! (79) (Look how I have killed Roland and exiled the Peers! Give me my father, lord, for he has been in prison for twenty years!)

The deadlock between the king and Bernardo shifts focus from the king’s responsibility to the role of Bernardo in his father’s absence, and with this comes a profound reinterpretation of the father–son bond. Illegitimacy, already established as a subjective and paradoxical condition, now causes Bernardo to question the very nature of his own existence and the extent to which he is to blame by virtue of being born: “antes de ser formado, | ¿qué culpa, Rey, he tenido?” (86) (before being created, | what fault did I have, king?). Illegitimacy is recast in material terms of entity and non-entity at the most primal level. Similarly, Bernardo wrestles with a paradox: si si si si

está preso, no es mi padre; está libre, mi padre es […] está libre, su hijo soy; preso, no soy su hijo. (87)

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(if he is imprisoned, he is not my father; if he is free, he is my father […] if he is free, I am his son; if he is imprisoned, I am not his son.)

His father is only his father if he released, not while he is a prisoner. Where illegitimacy was subjective or imagined it becomes immediate and literal, defined by essential and existential contrasts between presence and absence, object and void. This theme develops when Sancho manages to get a letter from prison to his son. He emphasises the way he gave Bernardo physical life, “sangre que te di” (the blood I gave you), “a quien te dio ser” (87) (who brought you into being), but states that Bernardo is the cause of his own death, accusing him of patricide: Pero pues tú tienes vida y yo la pierdo en prisión, quedemos en conclusión, tú de hijo parricida, yo de padre en opinión. (87) (But since you have your life and I lose mine in prison let us come to this conclusion, you are a son who commits patricide, and I am a father whose good name is gone.)

Bernardo’s life is Sancho’s death, a further paradox raising the question as to whether Bernardo really has any control over his own legitimacy. If legitimacy is simplified to the extent that his father’s physical presence would suffice to legitimise him then perhaps he does. However, Bernardo’s father notes that his son has also gained a kind of self-made authority and legitimacy, one of his own making and in his own absence: Aquí me cuentan de ti una hazaña y otra hazaña […] Yo no sé por qué la gente te da nombre de valiente. (88) (Here they tell of you this deed and that […]

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I do not know why the people call you valiant.)

Deeds have led to fame, which in turn leads to a form of public and political legitimacy, one that Sancho seems both to envy and to resent since none of Bernardo’s feats include his release. Ironically, however, it is physical proximity that does end up initiating Bernardo’s legitimacy. The king observes that Bernardo is always by his side, like a guardian angel, and this prompts a more benevolent approach to his nephew: ¡Ah, buen sobrino, siempre a mi lado como el ángel bueno! Conozco que te he sido Rey injusto. (89) (Oh, good nephew, always at my side like the good angel! I know that I have been an unjust king to you.)

Bernardo’s fidelity begins to alter the king’s judgement but not quickly enough to benefit Sancho Díaz. By the time the king has seen the error of his ways, Sancho Díaz is already dead. His is a legitimacy prevented before it can take effect, a frustrating encounter between prospect and retrospect. The representation of Sancho Díaz’s death foregrounds the staging of legitimacy, from the detail that Bernardo finds his father propped up on a chair, to the acting out of the marriage ceremony with a corpse. It is a piece of theatre within the theatre, the function of which is to make theatre and performance their own themes, as well as to expose the legitimising process of marriage for the stagecraft that it is. Bernardo draws back a curtain to reveal his dead father, evident both in implicit and explicit stage directions, “Tira, Bernardo, esa puerta | y el paño de esa cortina” (91) (Bernardo opens that door | and the cloth of that curtain). The curtain on stage, the curtain behind the curtain so to speak, underlines legitimacy as something both free and limited. Now able to take in the full sight of his father, Bernardo lingers on the visual details before him, like his father’s grey hair, and refers repeatedly to seeing him: “perdonad no veros antes” (sorry for not seeing you earlier) “no me harto de veros” (I never tire of seeing you), “tarde vengo a veros” (I see you too late) (91). However, as the audience witnesses the hero taking in

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the sight of his father, Lope foregrounds the irony that Bernardo’s eyes deceive him, and his father’s physical presence is only a more acute form of his absence. This is confirmed when the Alcaide informs him that his father has been dead for three days and asks what it really is that he is seeing, “¿Que esto vine a ver aquí | y que esto vengo a ver yo?” (91) (To think that I came here to see this | and that this is what I am seeing?). Even sight is not to be trusted: an object can be hollow; a body can be dead. The macabre detail of his father’s cold hand, coupled with the spectacle of the corpse on the chair, renders Sancho both a presence and an absence at the same time prompting profuse comparisons on Bernardo’s part with deceptive objects and missing pieces: como seco olmo sin hiedra como sortija sin piedra […] Como quien compra al ladrón el oro falso que vende. (91–92) (like a dried out holm olk without ivy like a ring without a stone […] Like he who buys from the thief the false gold that he sells.)

Bernardo’s disillusioned words speak of a deceitful kind of emptiness, and the fact that comparisons, words, likenesses are all with which he is left. Contesting the logical consequence that he will remain a bastard, Bernardo extracts his mother from a convent and forces her to marry his dead father. It may be assumed that Hernán Díaz, the Alcaide, and Rodrigo Rasura are in attendance, but none of them speak, and there is no minister of the Church present, so it is another instance of entity and presence denoting a lack of something. The stage directions are key to this scene, first describing how Bernardo takes each of their hands and unites them, then makes his father bow his head in order to say yes, all the while addressing him as if he were still alive. The timing of the process is deeply ironic; in time to save Jimena from professing her vows as a nun, but not soon enough to stop her husband’s death. Moreover, there is a level of absurdity about Bernardo extracting an “I do” from his father by orchestrating his movements. Bernardo is determined that this renders him legitimate, interpreting the bowed head of his father to stand for a clear yes, “Sí, dice, sí claramente” (93) (He says yes, he clearly says yes).

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He describes how this overrides the legal process, “no hay más ley” (this is the only law) and how their marriage suffices to legitimise him in the eyes of both heaven and earth: en que los dos se han casado, y que me han legitimado cuanto al cielo y cuanto al mundo. (93) (insofar as the two of them have married and they have made me legitimate according to the heavens and in the eyes of the world)

Jesús Gómez describes how Lope creates in Casamiento a Spanish version of Roland, who as we shall see in La mocedad de Roldán is the illegitimate son of a clandestine marriage whose deeds win the recognition from Charlemagne of his true origin (2000, 80). Gómez suggests that the hero manages to legitimise his bastardy but I would argue that Bernardo’s attempt is far from convincing. His mother sits weeping, her tears visibly confirming the failure of this undertaking. Only Bernardo speaks, but mostly we are concerned with his actions as he sets about burying his father and returning his mother to the convent, adding to the impression that this is all gesture, theatre even. Without the living presence of Bernardo’s father, an absence which is amply stressed even to the end in the sense that the body is but a shell—“aquel que mi padre fue” (93) (he who was my father)—the ceremony becomes another means of highlighting what is not there. His father’s presence here is the moment of the play when he is most totally absent. When the ceremony is over, Bernardo states that his misfortune has been remedied, “que pienso que de esta suerte | mi desdicha se remedia” (93) (for I think that this luck | has remedied my misfortune). However, the neatness of the ending is troubled by the verb pensar. Bernardo merely thinks this solves his predicament. It is not the note of possible doubt here that is the issue, but rather Bernardo’s recourse to a language of thinking and seeming, the very terms in which his illegitimacy is upheld throughout the play. His attempts to demolish it through the material presence of his father have failed; illegitimacy resists concrete evidence and continues to enjoy a subjective status both on the stage and beyond it. In Mocedades, Bernardo’s father appears in Act One, which explores the circumstances leading to his imprisonment, and again in Act Three

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when Bernardo finds him in an enchanted castle and organises his release. However, Sancho is mostly a conspicuous absence, especially so since at the end of Act One, when his father is seized, Bernardo is a baby but by the start of Act Two he is a young man who has already grown up without his father. The stage presence of Count Sancho in Act One allows for greater emphasis on the power of blood ties, both in the sense of the biological relationship between father and son, which emerges with realistic detail, such as the father’s protectiveness towards the newborn Bernardo (9), and in blood as “social survival” (Walker Bynum 2007, 157). Sancho is able to defend himself at first; in a monologue he states his love for Jimena, the birth-right of his son, “heredero por derecho | de León y de Castilla” (successor by right | of Leon and Castile), and his own social rank: Si dudas de mi nobleza, yo soy, Rey, don Sancho Díaz: que en Castilla ni en León no hay sangre, Alfonso, más limpia. La antiguedad de mi casa no está de ayer conocida; que sabes tú que primero, como España lo publica, hubo Condes de Saldaña, que no reyes en Castilla. (1965b, 11)

(If you doubt my nobility, I, King, am Sancho Díaz: for in Castile nor in Leon there is no blood, Alfonso, that is purer. The ancestry of my house is not news from yesterday; for you know that first, as it is said in Spain, there were Counts of Saldaña and no kings in Castile.)

Sancho lays claim to legitimacy through the longevity of his family line, which apparently predates the Castilian kings, and through his superlatively noble blood. The reference to “sangre […] limpia” evokes the concept of purity of blood which was still widespread in sixteenth- and

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seventeenth-century society, “a society in which proving pure Christian lineage was a means of attaining a status that was associated with honor” (Kaplan 2012, 36). This apparent guarantee of social status and honour is nevertheless undermined by the suggestion by the jealous courtier Rubio that Sancho can still betray the king: “ofender tu corona el traidor sabe” (6) (the traitor knows how to offend your crown). Turning Sancho’s impressive and apparently unsullied family line into a reason for suspicion, Rubio manages to strip even limpieza de sangre of its ability to secure social position. Illegitimacy has become the gateway for concerns about betrayal and, ironically establishing himself as a voice of caution, Rubio allows trickery to become the operative mode of the play. Despite agreeing to Jimena and Sancho’s marriage, the king therefore tricks Sancho into delivering himself into captivity with a false letter and Act One ends with a distressing scene of deception in which Sancho realises the trick and proclaims it—“¡Vive Dios, que me engañó! | Del Rey engañado he sido” (15) (God help me, he deceived me! | I have been deceived by the king!)—but as he is speaking his eyes are brutally extracted with a burning iron. The count is left “amortecido” (15), in a faint that passes for dead, somewhere between life and death. The broken body represents a vicious assault on the legitimacy of his claims to social status. What might be regarded as longstanding guarantees of good character such as family ancestry and blood purity are undermined by the slightest possibility of a threat to the crown, turning this into a comment on both the naivety of a king who would listen to a poisonous courtier, and on the danger presented by unchecked royal authority. Legitimacy is a contest in this play, and it is represented as such through both verbal and physical conflict. After the shocking violence at the end of the first act, the second act sees conflict dominate from the outset, demonstrated by Bernardo’s destructive behaviour and fearsome reputation in the peasant community. According to local rustics he has torn apart the landscape, performing feats of strength in the process: hace robles fortísimos pedazos, tira la barra más que todos, quita la colmena que el oso lleva en brazos. (16) (he tears tough oaks into pieces, he throws a stick further than others, he takes the beehive that the bear carries in his arms.)

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This corresponds with Michael Neill’s suggestion that in English Renaissance drama, “the bastard […] is habitually figured as a creature who reveals the ‘unnaturalness’ of his begetting by the monstrous unkindness of his nature” (1993, 272). When Bernardo speaks he conflates descriptions of the natural world around him with a language of war and combat, indicative of his frustrated potential such as when he speaks of emerging victorious in killing a wild boar, “luego que mate un jabalí animoso […] para estar con los dos más victorioso” (17) (let me then kill a spirited wild boar […] to emerge the victor of us both). He also voices this frustration outright: he ought not be hidden away among pine and oak trees, and the Muslims ought to know his name (20). The suggestion that his natural calling has been prevented by his obscure upbringing heralds the theme of the heroic bastard’s triumphant return into the community and the social order. This return is to be achieved via great feats which win public repute and reknown, “que con empresas extrañas | se alcanza inmortal renombre” (20) (for with uncommon deeds | immortal reknown can be achieved). Fama and nombre/renombre are instrumental in re-establishing legitimacy. Bernardo’s attitude towards the Muslims is especially aggressive in an attempt to rouse the Castilians into action. He continues to be a force of nature, but now in hyperbolic terms, such as the description one peasant gives of his eyes and mouth flashing with fire: “Rayos arroja de fuego | por los ojos y la boca” (24). He is also associated with wild animals, referring to himself as “un león” (a lion), and is described by the Muslim Benyusef as: Una tigre airada, un león en talle y rostro, nacido dentro en León, de valiente corazón; un rayo, una tigre, un monstruo, a quien llama el Rey sobrino, y todos llaman Bernardo, de nacimiento bastardo. (30) (a furious tiger, a lion in size and face, born within León of valiant heart; a bolt, a tiger, a monster,

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is the one called the king’s nephew, and all call him Bernardo bastard by birth.)

The conflation of natural imagery, including the striking motif of the rayo, the lightning bolt, with the political setting of courts and kingdoms treads the boundary between nature and culture. For Wolfram Schmidgen, “the bastard is permanently between nature and culture, he is with and without an origin” (2002, 139). Although Bernardo may be regarded as “rayo de Alfonso el Casto” (30) by the Muslims, the king worries that he cannot tame this rayo. The king condemns Bernardo standing up to him as the ways of a vile, disrespectful bastard, without respect, honour, and lawfulness: “vil bastardo | sin respeto, honor ni ley” (28). Bernardo, however, views strength as a vital part of the legitimising process. Together with status, his strong arm will prevail: Sólo este brazo; éste, guarda; que lo demás, todo es viento […] si me llaman bastardo ¡mienten!” (28) (This arm alone; this one, prevails; all the rest, is like the wind [..] if they call me a bastard they lie!)

Conversely, Alfonso worries that Bernardo’s natural ability will undermine the highest point of the social order, just like a bolt of lightning strikes the highest point of a structure: “¿Cómo he de resistir a un rayo ardiente? | En lo más alto ha de prender su fuego” (37) (How can I avoid a burning bolt? | Its fire will catch the highest point). We have arrived, via a different route, at the same concerns that emerge in Act One, namely that a superlatively honourable noble might be the very person to undermine and betray the king. The conflict surrounding legitimacy in this play also concerns Bernardo and his stepfather Rubio, and here it takes on a more sinister, cerebral nature. Rubio’s insistence that aggressive behaviour is not appropriate from someone of such humble birth roundly debases Bernardo:

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pensad que naciste humildemente […] un advenedizo, un hijo de un villano, un vil bastardo! (17) (consider that I was born humbly […] a newcomer, a son of a peasant, a vile bastard!)

The term “advenedizo” from advenir (to come, to arrive) marks Bernardo out as a stranger, someone from the geographical outside. “Villano” and “vil” emphasise his alleged rustic identity. However, Rubio takes this a step further by attempting to have Bernardo killed in secret. Rubio’s treacherous role is further emphasised by him reporting that Count Sancho has been poisoned in a language of the visible and the apparent: “aun era de parecer […] en el castillo de Luna | acabe de padecer” (29) (it even seems […] in Luna Castle | he might have just suffered). The contest for legitimacy is being fought in the shadows, downgraded and divorced from the usual codes and words of social and political legitimacy. Bernardo’s reputation, which ought to be traced to the respectable lineage his father claims, and further afforced by his bravery, becomes ever more subjective and distant. However, this social and political breach which opens up actually frees Bernardo to exploit a different political terrain when he forms an alliance with the Muslims. Bernardo’s association with Almanzor is quickly troubled, however, when the Muslim issues an order for Bernardo’s capture, reinforcing our impression that secrecy and engaño are endemic to political life. Bernardo becomes suspicious and increasingly self-reliant, a positive outcome from his peripheral status among the Muslim community. His two arms are sufficient allies: “aquí están mis dos brazos | que me bastan por amigos” (35) (here are my two arms | which are friends enough for me). He himself is enough: “Bernardo soy; | solo basto” (36) (I am Bernardo; | I alone am enough). The king anticipates further conflict on Bernardo’s return but when Bernardo appears before him he is in measured and contrite mood, having won the castle of El Carpio for the crown of Leon. The foray into Muslim company, where Bernardo finds lies and deceit, only confirms his loyalty to his king, causing him to see that in relative terms there is greater merit in internal loyalty, “que no hay que fiarse de gente | de nación contraria y ley” (35) (one should not trust people | of a different nation and law), and more resilience in himself than he perhaps

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realised. Alfonso’s dismissal of Bernardo’s behaviour as “mocedades” (38) (youthful deeds) reinforces Lope’s tendency to associate him with a kind of childish reluctance, “niñería” (39) (childishness) and “porfías” (40) (stubbornness). This belittling vocabulary is suggestive of the fact that Bernardo’s legitimacy has been a work in progress, something relative rather than an absolute. This is confirmed when he is compared with Scipio, Alexander, and Viriatus by the king and Ramiro. A hero come of age. Bernardo’s reunion with his father continues the secretive, subjective mood of Act Two as he faces the enigmas, having been truly in the dark about his father’s fate: “¿Qué enigma es ésta […] Tanto encubrir, ¿qué será?” (40) (What enigma is this? […] So much covering up, what can it mean?). The fact that his father is held in a haunted castle named after the moon undoubtedly adds to the suspense and drama of the reunion, but it offers another chance to reflect on the difference between reality and appearance in connection with Bernardo’s situation in terms reminiscent of the allusions to deceptive and empty objects in Casamiento. On the outside, the castle seems old and grand, inside it is dilapidated and uninhabitable: “Aunque parezca admirable | por de fuera, está perdido, | viejo, roto, inhabitable” (40) (Although it might seem admirable | on the outside, it is lost, | broken, uninhabitable). This lugubrious setting serves to situate Bernardo and his father on the dark periphery of the political order. The castle, a structure fallen into disrepair and disrepute, is a symbol of both Count Sancho and Bernardo’s lapsed legitimacy. This is why Bernardo sees it as still inherently glorious, deserving to be festooned with moons: “Este famoso castillo | que tan levantado veo, | de Lunas he de vestillo” (40) (This famous castle | which I see so tall | I will dress with moons). The wordplay on the term “Luna” as the name of the castle, a decorative image, and the moon itself invites us to consider the moon more generally as a symbol of illegitimacy in this play. Its partial light, weaker than the sun, and capable of being obscured, maps on to the way Bernardo’s full fame is hidden in the play. As seen in Chapter 3, in the context of the ballads Romance de Espinelo and Abenámar, the moon can also signify loyalty, candour, and growing power. The prospect that the castle may be haunted, together with Ordoño’s fear of souls in torment and dreadful giants, offers a note of humour, but it serves a more serious purpose in the play too. The haunted castle is a shelled-out structure, host to fear and solitude, “Todo es miedo, todo espanto | mirando esta soledad” (43) (All is fear, all shock, observing this

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solitude). This emblem of absence and emptiness reflects Count Sancho’s own insubstantial appearance. When Bernardo asks if he is a ghost or a shadow, “¿Quién eres, fantasma o sombra?” (43), he is commenting on a presence that is only partly there. Count Sancho is close to the brink of death and describes himself in middling terms, stating that he is a “shadow” of his former self, that he is neither a man nor a ghost, and that for his misfortunes he is the Count of Saldaña: Aunque sombra del que fui, no soy hombre ni fantasma, y por mi desdicha, amigo, soy el Conde de Saldaña. (44) (Although a shadow of the man I was, I am not a man nor a ghost, and for my misfortune, friend, I am the Count of Saldaña.)

Giving a long account of his misadventures, however, Count Sancho stops being the forgotten count clinking his chains like a lost soul around the derelict castle, and gradually regains his true identity in concrete embodiment. This is confirmed by the tangibility of their reunion, with Bernardo physically kissing his father’s feet and Sancho feeling (since he is unable to see) his son’s strapping appearance (45). In a stunning reversal of perspective, we learn that it is not Sancho who is lacking in substance, nor indeed in jeopardy any more. The castle is an edifice of deceit; the people standing on its ramparts, watching the king’s triumphant arrival, have no idea of the secret presence within it, a presence that can undermine the monarch: Todos en los baluartes deben de mirar la entrada que Alfonso el Casto hace en Luna mientras lloro yo desgracias. (44) (On the ramparts all must be watching the entrance that Alfonso the Chaste makes in Luna while I cry over misfortunes.)

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Rebuilding Count Sancho’s identity relies on words, specifically his historia. Lope places emphasis on speaking an identity, in a way that foregrounds the legitimising and constructive capabilities of narrative, and also reminds us that on the stage the speech act is an event, a presence in its own right. Thus, in the wider context of the play, Sancho’s extended absence from the stage is countered by his monologues when present which seek to restore disrupted communication and bridge the now different referential contexts of him and his son, summarised in his assumption that his historia is well known, yet Bernardo has never heard it: ¿Es posible que mi historia está de vos ignorada pues en Castilla y León hasta los niños la cantan? (44)9

(Is it possible that my story is not known by you yet in Castile and Leon even children sing it?)

In his long speech to Bernardo, Sancho explains the chain of events leading to his imprisonment so effectively that by the end of it Bernardo has gone from blunt, deflecting comments such as “Nadie al entrar encontré” (I came across nobody on entering), “Nunca vuestra historia he oído” (44) (I have never heard your story), to an open and effusive display of word and gesture: “¡Ay, padre del alma mía | dame tus pies!” (45) (Oh father of my soul | give me your feet). The narrative frame becomes a vehicle of desengaño through which Alfonso’s deceptive promise of marrying Bernardo’s parents comes to light, as does his loyalty to the state over his own kin: Diómela Alfonso de falso por razón de Estado o miedo; que no es mucho tema un Rey un determinado pecho. (45)

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(Alfonso gave him to me deceitfully through reason of state or fear; for it is not uncommon for a king to fear a courageous breast.)

Bernardo is disabused of the king’s deceit, and now “sees” clearly what has been covered—“¡Esto me ha tenido el Rey | hasta este tiempo encubierto!” (46) (This is what the king has | covered up until now!). Ironically, however, Sancho remains physically blind to the sight of his own son (45). The performative nature of the legitimising process is stressed in Bernardo’s final approach to the king. He appears, as we saw in the ballad tradition, in mourning clothes, symbolising his father’s situation and his moribund honour: Por el padre y por mi honor este negro luto traigo el uno preso por ti, y el otro muerto a tus manos. (47) (For my father and for my honour I wear these dark mourning clothes, one is imprisoned by you, the other dead by your hand.)

The audience is encouraged to focus on the outward trappings of Bernardo’s emotional and social condition, a fact confirmed when a stage direction identifies him removing his cloak to reveal weapons. This focus on what Bernardo looks like may lead the audience to expect a seamless correspondence between object and meaning, but the focus on accoutrements and arms is set in a context in which engaño is firmly embedded in the play’s discourse. For example, when the king tells Bernardo his request will be met, he assumes he is tricking him, which the king rejects with “No te engaño” (47) (I am not deceiving you). Visual impressions are always somewhat uncertain; even the mourning garb, which seems so resolute a statement, is revealed as comically temporary when Ordoño arrives late having been looking for his mourning clothes. It is in this context that Bernardo’s threat to the king is best understood:

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Si no, guarda tu cabeza y defiende tus Estados, haz sus murallas de acero, busca alcázares más altos. (47) (If not, protect your head and defend your states, make walls of steel, search for taller citadels.)

This is not just a reference to the fallible stature and structures of kingship—the head, the states, the walls and citadels—it serves too as a more general memento that what appears most durable rarely is so, just like that other political structure, the haunted castle which serves as an emblem of deceit, loss, and the illusory and breachable borderline between what is legitimate and what is not. In short, this is not as definitive an ending as it might appear to be. In this final showdown, it is the more modest exchange at the end of the play which holds some of the clues to understanding Lope’s broader vision of illegitimacy as one concerned with traces and remnants, those grey areas between having and losing, presence and absence. Ordoño refers to having sworn on the Bible, and at risk of being dismembered, not to return without Bernardo’s father or some valuable equivalent part: que, si no, jurado había por los Evangelios santos, de no volverme sin él aunque me hiciesen pedazos, o con prenda que valiese de oro y de plata otro tanto. (48) (for, if not, I had sworn on the holy Gospels, not to return without him, even though they may tear me to pieces, or without some token as valuable as gold or silver.)

This potential exaggeration of the threat placed upon Ordoño serves as a timely reminder of the play’s obsession with the partial and the incomplete. Human bodies are easily reconfigured as “pedazos” (pieces) and

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“prendas” (tokens). Broken relationships reach into uncertain futures. We never see Bernardo’s father being released and so can only assume that Lope deliberately leaves open the possibility that he never is. In terms of the plot, this is tantalising. In terms of how we read illegitimacy it steers us towards reading it as reflective of an incompleteness and brokenness that typifies a social world that is both precarious and falsely reassuring with its lustre of material things. The audience is left thinking about remnants, about illegitimacy as part of something present but perpetually incomplete.

“Dulces prendas”: The Tokens of Truth in “El bastardo Mudarra” Lope based his version of the Siete Infantes de Lara legend, El bastardo Mudarra, on Florián de Ocampo’s Crónica general (1541), a reworking of Alfonso X’s Estoria de España, which is the first written source of the legend (see Alfonso 1955). He also made extensive use of the romancero.10 The play opens at the marriage celebrations of the Castilian warrior Ruy Velásquez and Doña Lambra, which are attended by Sancha, sister of Ruy, her husband Gonzalo Bustos of Salas, and their seven sons. The wedding setting brings kinship right to the foreground of the play, and with that comes consideration of likeness, loyalty, and tight blood bonds. However, from the outset of the play kinship is inherently problematic, as Lope illustrates that even blood bonds are breakable, especially where love is concerned. This context calls into question the strength of family or blood ties, providing a compelling backdrop to the narrative of illegitimacy that follows. A play ostensibly about kinship turns on some stark and clearly stated contrasts: the wedding party drives a narrative of vengeance; the act of betrayal converts loyalty and kinship into division and difference; the imprisonment of Bustos brings new life in the form of Mudarra. Most striking, however, is the contrast embedded in one of the play’s most repeated motifs, that of the “dulces prendas” (sweet tokens). One of the most moving scenes of the legend is when the Infantes’ father is presented with each of the seven severed heads of his sons in turn. Lope acknowledges its power and when Bustos is shown the heads by Almanzor he cries out, heartbroken: “¡Ay, dulces prendas, por mi mal halladas!” (1955a, 683) (Oh sweet tokens, sadly found by me!). The line is from Garcilaso de la Vega’s tenth sonnet which begins “¡Oh dulces prendas por mi mal halladas” and describes the tokens or pledges of the

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lover which used to inspire happiness but now provoke only sadness: “con tan grave dolor representadas” (1996, 52) (represented with such great pain). Fernando de Herrera’s commentary on the sonnet describes how Garcilaso was inspired by Virgil’s Aeneid and highlights his focus on time and on contraries, “encarecimiento del tiempo: día, oras i una ora, términos, i los contrarios de bien i de mal ”, as well as his distinctive use of prosopopeia (2001, 346). This rhetorical device, described by Herrera as “fingimiento o hechura de persona” (347), or personification, involves the attribution of human qualities to animals or inanimate objects (Preminger and Brogan 1993, 994). Lausberg defines it as “a figure which gives the ability to act and move to insensate things, as well as speech to absent or present persons or things, sometimes even to the dead” (cited in Preminger and Brogan 1993, 994). The idea that prosopopeia is about conferring a human identity on something non-animate, or life on something insensate, renders it a vehicle of presence and vividness (the latter according to Aristotle) but, at the same time, its substitutive nature highlights the true and fundamental absence of that identity, that life, or that persona which it is replacing, making it a compelling device in the context of illegitimacy. It is a means of calling attention to what is not there as much as it is a substantive, replacing device. It is also a means of flagging up the trickery of the present time and the difference between reality and appearance; lodged in its etymology is a connection with the face from the Greek noun prosopon meaning “face” or “person” and poeiein “to make”. Paul de Man, discussing Wordsworth, writes that prosopopeia is “the art of delicate transition […] gradual transformations occur in such a way that ‘feelings [that] seem opposite to each other have another and finer connection than that of contrast’” (1979, 926). In this sense, it seems like an apt carrier of the fluid dynamic of presence and absence inherent in illegitimacy and in this play. The line “¡Ay, dulces prendas, por mi mal halladas!” works on contrasts between “dulce” (sweet) and “mal” (sad), the visible and the non-visible, and the present and the departed. However, within the broader discourse of the play its inherent paradoxes reveal themselves, such as the “prenda” is sweet but painful, present but absent. This illustrates that our categories of experience, particularly where memory is concerned, are inherently mixed up and overlapping, part real, part imagined. Applied to the specific context of illegitimacy, this illustrates the difficulty in drawing a line between engaño and desengaño, ser and parecer, and the way in which the play’s truth is to denote the very elasticity of truth and legitimacy, that there are “degrees of verifiability

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and reliability” (Robbins 2007, 8). In Garcilaso’s poignant meditation on memory in Sonnet X, the “dulces prendas” are addressed by the speaker as if they were alive and sentient. Lope carries the motif of the prenda directly over to his play, where it serves as a metaphor for the Infantes once they are dead, and later as a substantive for Mudarra and Clara as living continuations of their dead kin. The prenda is used here in the context of prosopopeia insofar as the dead Infantes are being addressed, and as objects, and so, more generally, it becomes a means of bridging the worlds of the living and the dead, the present and the absent, so that the boundaries between them are not always clear. Lope’s prendas, in the context of the stage, draw attention to their own status as missing objects. The very nature of a pledge or token is that it is tangible, retained, and substantial but in this play it speaks a double lack, since the prendas are not only a means of referring to the Infantes in death, but are themselves immaterial. The bodies of the Infantes are instead fractured and dispersed throughout the play in a wider discourse about objects, such as tokens, rings, stones in particular, and about traces and remnants, pedazos and despojos. This raises a wider question of what goes and what is left behind, the role of memory and legacy, and even the boundary between the physical and the epistemological, best encapsulated in the blindness of Bustos, where the condition of not seeing and not possessing is explored. The frontier looms large in the play, not as the space of difference we might expect it to be, but rather one of contact and crossovers where the Muslims are nominally enemies, but are in practice vital in showcasing the moral backsliding of the Velásquez faction. Even though one might assume that the Muslims are used towards the end of the play to legitimise Mudarra by difference, since he insists on being known as a Christian, an important sense of contact and influence remains, which serves an even greater distinguishing function for the bastard hero. The setting is important, therefore, in breaking down the sorts of binary oppositions that are inherently limiting to an understanding of legitimacy. The play opens, on a smaller scale, to protracted and elaborate festivities which have lasted for seven weeks. This coming together in celebration creates the expectation of close kin relations but they are in fact so entangled in “envidia” (663, 665) (envy) that closeness merely enables acute divisions to occur, a point encapsulated by the match at the tablado between Alvar Sánchez, Lambra’s nephew, and Gonzalo, the youngest of the Infantes which culminates in Gonzalo killing Alvar.

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Kinship exists as a language, a discourse, within which the bonds between flesh and blood relations are freely articulated. Faced with Lambra’s anger at the affront against her honour, for example, her husband Ruy describes the Infantes as his “honrados sobrinos” (669) (honourable nephews) and goes on to explain how vengeance has no place between kin members, who ought to practise forgiveness instead: No es justo tratar venganzas entre deudos, no Dios hizo leyes de satisfacción sino de perdón y olvido. (669) (It is not right to exercise vengeance among family, nor did God create laws concerned with satisfaction but concerned with forgiveness and forgetting.)

Similarly, when Bustos brings his sons to Ruy to be punished, Ruy responds that as his sister’s sons, and his nephews, they serve pardon rather than punishment (670). This discourse is, however, contradicted by action; Ruy betrays the Infantes by setting them up for an easy defeat by the Muslims at Almenar, and their father Bustos by sending him with a spurious letter to Almanzor asking the Muslims to kill him. The language of family loyalty is a deceptive cover for all manner of disloyal thoughts and intentions. It is also willfully misappropriated; when Ruy justifies his betrayal of Bustos he claims that his love for Lambra overrides loyalty to his kin and does so by suggesting a familial bond between betrayal and love: que la traición y el amor por opinión de hombres cuerdos desde el principio del mundo contrajeron parentesco. (672) (betrayal and love in the opinion of wise men since the beginning of the world were related to one another.)

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Similarly, we see Ruy become an almost oxymoronic treacherous brotherin-law: “traidor cuñado” (674). The fact that kinship is exposed as mere discourse also gives rise to dramatic irony; when the Infantes are being led unwittingly to their deaths at Almenar, they stress their blood relationship to their uncle, “que los Infantes de Salas | vuestra misma sangre son” (676, also 679) (for the Infantes of Salas | are your very same blood), who responds by calling them beloved nephews, “sobrinos queridos” (676). The breakdown of kinship works in parallel with the flexibility of language. The term sangre (blood) is subject to a double usage in the play which shapes a central tension between the physical blood that sullies Lambra’s honour—“¡Esta es su sangre, ésta es, | ésta es su sangre, Rodrigo!” (669) (This is your blood, this is, | this is your blood, Rodrigo!)—and sangre understood as the blood ties that define family belonging. The spilt blood on Lambra’s brial (mantle) draws attention to blood as substance, recalling Roland Greene’s description of how the sixteenth century started to invest blood with “a conceptual relation to the everyday that is not dependent on either the theory of the humours or the other abstractions” (2013, 111). This material aspect of blood is further evident when Estebáñez is killed while sheltering beneath Lambra’s mantle, creating a visible mark of disgrace that has taken no account of Lambra’s noble birth, nor the fact that she is the Infantes’ aunt: […] pero ninguno iguala tal desconcierto como matar un hidalgo que amparaba mi brial; que por la sangre real debiera tenerme en algo, ya que no por ser tu tía. (667) ([…] but nobody comes close to causing such shame as that of killing a nobleman sheltering under my mantle; my royal blood should count for something, were I not also your aunt.)

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Physical blood has visibly insulted the blood of social rank and family bonds. The mark of blood on her garments “sangre en mis tocas” (668) reminds us of the female reproductive cycle, which is directly referenced in the play when, in order to prevent the angry Infantes from striking Estebáñez who is sheltering beneath her mantle, Lambra declares that she is pregnant, “Mirad que podréis herirme | mirad que preñada estoy” (667) (Be careful you do not hurt me | take care for I am pregnant). Ruy later confirms that the pregnancy is just visible, “ya principios veo” (671) (I can just see the beginnings), but no child is ever born, nor is it mentioned again. Estebáñez being murdered under Lambra’s clothes sees male blood spilt, and reminds us of “the different values associated with women’s blood and men’s blood” wherein “the blood of war is men’s bloodshed” and “women’s bodies may become pregnant, and pregnant bodies do not belong on a battlefield” (McCracken 2003, 21–22). Lambra blurs these boundaries; her apparent pregnancy is invoked in a highly political context where real blood and blood as symbol of kinship and valour merge. The lack of a child also places her squarely between these categories and primed to take offence on both fronts. It also, more distantly, connects with all those other real or potential selves who drift in and out of illegitimacy narratives, the second selves and doubles, ghostly and inconcrete identities like the child who is never mentioned again in Cervantes’s novela, La fuerza de la sangre. The language of kinship becomes elastic and ironic, and is appropriated to serve the individual motivations of Lambra and Ruy. This is evident in the way Ruy Velásquez downgrades the relationship he shares with the Infantes, referring to them as “villanos hijos de Bustos” (680) (peasant sons of Bustos) and “Los villanos de mi honor | hechos del moro pedazos” (681) (peasants of my honour | torn to pieces by the Muslim). This suggestion that they are ignoble and base, accompanied by Ruy referring to them being rent apart by the Muslims, provides a compelling early allusion to the theme of pieces, traces, and remnants which suggests their physical vulnerability at this point. In fact, this heralds them being literally rendered into pieces when beheaded, as well as the decisive fracturing of the bonds of kinship through Ruy’s planned ambush at Almenar. As the Infantes become associated with a language of baseness and breakage, Ruy and Lambra seek conversely to aggrandise their actions by claiming that they are enacting a second version of Count Julian’s vengeful liaisons with the Muslims in the lead-up to the 711 conquest: “esta venganza te ha hecho | segunda Cava en España” (680) (this vengeance has made you

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| a second La Cava in Spain); “y está cierto | que otro conde don Julián | rinde a tu servicio el pecho” (672) (and I am sure | that another Count Julian | renders service and tribute to you). Their attempts are, nonetheless, obstructed by the way Lope invites the Muslims’ perspective on the betrayal which highlights Ruy and Lambra’s disloyalty to their kin. Even though the Muslims will take strategic advantage of the situation to gain a foothold in Castile, they explicitly state their abhorrence of what Ruy has done. Almanzor announces “Las traiciones agradezco, | y no pago al traidor, que le aborrezco” (676) (I am grateful for the betrayals, | and not pleased with the traitor, whom I abhor), while Galbe directly connects betrayal with a lack of nobility, “no es noble el que hace aqueste trato doble” (678) (he who carries out this double dealing is not noble). The pre-emptive reference on the part of Ruy to the Infantes as pedazos not only alludes to the severance of heads, and of kinship bonds but also conditions the audience to consider traces and legacies. In Lambra’s eyes, the youngest Infante Gonzalillo bears no resemblance to his father, but when Bustos brings his sons to be punished by Ruy he refers to them all as “venas […] de la cabeza” (670) (veins of the head). While this reminds us of the blood that they do physically share, the symbolic weight of the reference is dominant and its associations with the language of the body politic irresistible. The impression, therefore, is that the effects of the punishment will extend far beyond the family sphere. When Bustos is later shown the severed heads of all seven sons by Almanzor, his distraught reaction can be understood in the context of one who has lost his entire legacy; not one son remains to him, only broken pieces, “vuestros despojos” (683). It is here that Bustos speaks the line, “¡Ay, dulces prendas, por mi mal halladas” (683), which is then repeated verbatim by Almanzor who describes Bustos’s plight, and then a further time by Bustos here (683), and once more as a stand-alone line at the end of Act Two, of which it provides the final words (684). Bustos’s address to the seven heads of his dead sons employs the technique of prosopopeia that Herrera noted in Garcilaso’s original sonnet insofar as he personifies the prendas and addresses them as if they were alive and sentient, but there are complicating factors. Bustos does not come across a pledge, like Garcilaso’s lover, but the actual dead bodies of his sons. The lifeless heads are then addressed as prendas and personified via this metaphor so they go through a transition from living beings to objects (prendas ) to personification of those objects. The effect of this process is to render the Infantes’ lifelessness even more obvious; they are now heads without bodies, non-persons

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being personified in a different form. This is evident when Bustos later refers to them in purely metaphorical, object terms when Lambra comes to see him: “Si es de mis prendas queridas | restitución” (690) (If it is for my dear tokens | recompense). De Man’s assessment, via Wordsworth, of the latent threat in prosopopeia rings true in this situation: “the symmetrical structure of the trope implies […] that the living are struck dumb, frozen in their own death” (1979, 928). Bustos, and the audience, enter what de Man calls “the frozen world of the dead” (928), where the Infantes’ alternative status as prendas , material but not sentient, is all we can see. The risk that the motif of the prenda ossifies the Infantes is countered by the discourse in which it is situated. The physical void is filled initially by Bustos and his vengeance; his own life stands as a defiant trace of his lost offspring, “que no morir es por vengaros luego” (683) (me not dying is so I can avenge you later). Moreover, Lope builds up a series of references to the natural world in connection with the Infantes’ deaths. They are led like lambs to the slaughter by Viara, to a pine forest where they are easy prey and find a “selva de lanzas” (682) (forest of lances) awaiting them. This is partly an inversion of the locus amoenus but the natural world becomes more than just the backdrop to the dreadful events; auguries and omens, like the strange behaviour of the birds (678), and blood-red clouds crowning the sun (678) illustrate that nature is partparticipant in, part-trace of the murders. This is further illustrated when some of Gonzalo’s armour falls into a nearby stream; nature is a participant in his death but also a faithful guardian of his memory. The motif of the prendas is consistently connected with natural metaphors for the Infantes too; they are, in the words of Bustos, “plantas mías, sin razón cortadas! […] verdes robles […] flores, a la siesta desmayadas” (683) (my plants, cut down without reason […] green oaks […] flowers, weakened in sleep). The language of plants, trees, and flowers reinforces the genetic connection between the Infantes and their father, the notion that they are offshoots of some larger life force, and indeed a greater generative process, is the subtext of all of these references. Though cut off in their prime, they are part of something that regrows. The association between the Infantes and themes of traces, legacies, and continuations is never more apparent than in Lope’s representation of the next generation, the ultimate trace of the dead seven. Soon after the news of his sons’ deaths, Bustos is informed by Arlaja, Almanzor’s daughter who attends Bustos in prison, that she is pregnant with his child,

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whom she refers to as his living image: “¿Qué te diré, si tengo un bien que darte, | que ha de ser viva imagen de quien eres?” (684) (What shall I tell you, if I have a gift to give you | that will be the living image of you?). Bustos tells her to baptise that child, and that if the child is male, it must be sent to Castile on coming of age; he gives her a ring to pass on to the child to verify its identity. When Mudarra, their son, is later informed of his illegitimacy and seeks his biological father, the ring duly reappears as a token of truth, a “seña” verifying Mudarra’s identity as belonging to the Lara bloodline: “te conozca por las señas | si no se lo dice el alma” (686) (I recognise you by the signs | if not for my soul telling me); “Yo me llevo este anillo para señas | de que soy de la sangre de los Laras” (686) (I take this ring as a sign | that I am from the bloodline of Lara). This object provides a concrete physical trace of Mudarra’s identity in a context in which his illegitimacy is represented in highly subjective terms. The setting in which he discovers that he is illegitimate is a chess game with Almanzor, during which a ballad about Abenámar is being sung. The setting forms an interesting link with the focus of gaming at the tablado at the start of the play, and evokes the indeterminacy we would link with games per se, given that they are a combination of rules and pure chance. The game actually inspires Almanzor to tell Mudarra he is a bastard; when he thinks Mudarra is outplaying him, he abruptly orders him to leave, “Vete, bastardo de aquí” (685) (Get out of here, bastard). Mudarra’s innate skill is undermined by this brutal allusion to his illegitimacy, which is rendered all the more cruel since Mudarra apparently has no idea he is not well born: y de ese agravio a mi engaño apelo, porque he creído que era yo tan bien nacido como tú. (685) (and from the affront I appeal to my deceit, because I believed that I was as well born as you.)

The fact that a ballad is also being sung, and one about the Muslim character Abenámar at that, is highly significant. This famous ballad, versions of which are discussed in Chapter 3, would have been well known to

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Lope’s audience. It adds to the sense of frivolity and fun before things take a serious turn, just like the marriage fiestas in Act One. Moreover, the protagonist of the ballad, Abenámar, embodies fluidity of identity, just like Mudarra does; he is of mixed ethnic and religious identity: De las torres de Jaén está mirando Abenámar el campo de los cristianos atrevidos a cercarla. Por capitán de ellos viene Martín Enríquez de Lara, hombre que llegó con ellos a la vega de Granada. Cobarde le tiene al Rey una cautiva cristiana, y entre el amor y la honra dice, sin sacar la espada: “¡Al arma, al arma, al arma! ¡Salgan mis lanzas, mis adargas salgan!” Mas luego dice a la cristiana bella: “Sólo tus ojos pueden darme guerra.” (685) (From the towers of Jaén Abénamar is watching the Christians on the battlefield daring to lay siege. The captain of them all is Martín Enríquez de Lara, a man who arrived with them at the plain of Granada. The coward that is the king has a Christian woman captive, and between love and honour he says, without drawing his sword: “Take arms, take arms, take arms! Let my lances be drawn, let my shields ride out!” But then he speaks to the beautiful Christian: “Your eyes alone can spark a war for me.”)

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In Lope’s version above, Abenámar watches the approaching Christian armies from a vantage point on the towers of Jaén. Unfolding below and around him is a scene of brewing conflict but the king, described as a coward, appears more concerned with his female Christian prisoner and the only conflict he is interested in is the one provoked by her beautiful eyes. The fusion of the amorous and the warriorly is exaggerated enough to be at least partially comic, but the ballad also serves as a stark reminder of female power and illustrates a systematic blurring of categories, out of which the culturally hybrid figure of Abenámar emerges as inactive and serene, full of potential while the ineffectual king’s attention is occupied elsewhere. What is more, the conscious referencing of music here and throughout Act Three establishes it as an invaluable mnemonic trace in the play; repetitions, chorus lines, and ballads also serve as haunting recollection of the Infantes’ plight. Once Almanzor has called Mudarra a bastard, illegitimacy moves between the categorical and the subjective. In the eyes of Almanzor, Mudarra is resolutely illegitimate, in terms of his blood line and his religious identity: ¡Bárbaro extraño de nuestra sangre y nobleza, y de nuestra misma ley! (685) (Barbarian, stranger to our blood and nobility and to our very law!)

When Mudarra processes this information, however, he simply does not know who he is any more: “no sé quién soy” (685). In response, Mudarra’s mother anchors his identity in the fame of the Infantes: No es posible que no sepas que los Infantes de Lara fueron muertos a traición en campos de Arabiana. (686) (It is impossible that you do not know that the Infantes of Lara were betrayed and killed in the Arabiana fields.)

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She also admits her desire for a man who was “gloria y honor de su patria” (glory and honour of his country), indicating that Mudarra’s identity is grounded in repute and legacy. This gives Mudarra the confidence to challenge Ruy Velásquez, who belittles him with the diminutive “bastardillo” (little bastard) and refers to him as child of his own infamy: “hijo[s] de su misma infamia” (694). Mudarra’s response is to repurpose the usual subjectivity with which words and desires are associated in order categorically to affirm his legitimacy. In his eyes, words constitute a wedding, and the will of two souls is a marriage: En mi tierra no se usan más bodas que las palabras; que en mi ley es matrimonio la voluntad de las almas. (694) (In my country the only wedding they need is words; for according to my law marriage is the will of souls.)

While Mudarra learns of his true status, we discover that his father Bustos has gone blind: Cegaron en su presencia mis ojos, mis regocijos hicieron fin en su ausencia, porque de ojos a hijos hay muy poca diferencia. (687) (In my presence they blinded my eyes, my joys came to an end in their absence, because between eyes and sons there is little difference.)

The connections between ojos and regocijos (joy) and ojos and hijos are a sad confirmation of the end of vital physical connection with his sons. They also serve to highlight the boundary between the empirical, object world and the domain of perception and seeming. What cannot be seen must be perceived. It would appear that we run into the familiar binaries

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of engaño / desengaño (illusion/disillusion) and ser / parecer (to be/to seem) but, as we shall see, Lope does question the brittleness of these binaries: what the eyes see and the heart feels are eventually to be united in Mudarra. Before we get to this stage, physical traces and tokens fill Act Three. We discover that Lambra has been throwing seven stones at Bustos’s window at dawn every morning to remind him of the slaughter of his sons: Siete piedras penetrantes tira a esas ventanas antes que salga el sol, por memoria de aquella trágica historia. (687) (Seven piercing stones she throws at these windows before the sun comes up, in memory of that tragic story.)

Bustos can tolerate the first six stones but the seventh, which represents Gonzalo, causes unbearable distress: “rompo el silencio llorando” (687) (I break the silence with tears). These cruel, mnemonic objects breach the boundary between the physical and the emotional, the tangible and that which is internally felt; six stones breach his chest, the seventh his soul: “las seis me pasan el pecho, | pero la postrera el alma” (688) (six of them pierce my breast, | but the last one pierces my soul). The casting of the stones is accompanied by Páez the musician singing the ballad En campos de Arabiana (In Arabiana Fields ) which evokes a more distant, and arguably more positive, layer of memory, one where the Infantes exist in the collective memory. Shards of memory, which the stones represent, spawn similar pieces and traces, parts of a whole, but parts which can either indicate absence and expiry, or point towards regeneration. Bustos’s grey hair becomes a synecdochic reference to his pain. His silvery hair is a symbolic currency of time and suffering: “pago en plata de canas | moneda que siempre corre” (688) (I pay with the silver of grey hair | currency which always flows). While the canas hint at his advancing years and the proximity of his own death, the term despojos, meaning remnants or remains, suggests that the evidential domain, connected with eyes and objects, is not as ephemeral as it might at first appear. Bustos circles around the concept of not being able to see. On one hand, it is

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positive, a “ceguedad dichosa” (687) (fortunate blindness) since he can no longer see Ruy or Lambra, and in fact he wishes he could not hear her tyranny either. However, his equation of “ojos” with “hijos” means that the death of his sons totally darkens his world. Nevertheless, there is real fortune to his blindness, as suggested by the fact that time and tears can herald rebirth and recreation, no matter how small or unpromising: Despojos del tiempo no faltarán; que otras tantas nacerán regándolas con mis ojos. (688) (Remnants of time will not be lacking; for others like them will be born watered with my eyes.)

Moreover, the removal of Bustos’s eyes removes the simple equation of seeing with understanding. Anything that remains in the physical world can never be seen by him, but in a sense this liberates his perspective. Conversely, Ruy Velásquez, who can see, suffers from a persistent mental image of the Infantes’ deaths, which dogs his mind: Traigo presente a mis ojos la muerte de mis sobrinos y sus ardientes despojos. (693) (I see before my eyes the death of my nephews and their burning remains.)

The trace—here in the forms of piedras, canas, despojos, and even music— is therefore able to manipulate both presence and absence through its fluid relationship with the material, object world. The physical trace is never more evident that in the resemblance between Mudarra and the youngest Infante, Gonzalillo. When Lope meets Mudarra at the frontier, he is taken aback, totally stunned by the similarity. Later, Lope will tell Clara that Mudarra is the very image of her father, “no se ha visto retrato semejante” (689) (I have never seen

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such a portrait). The emphasis upon facial similarity in particular establishes a clear connection with Gonzalillo—Mudarra is virtually a physical personification of him—but it simultaneously flags an absence. As the characters impart Gonzalillo’s face to Mudarra, it becomes ever clearer that he is not Gonzalillo. The audience is now conditioned to looking at faces, not least the horrific image of the seven “de-faced” heads of the Infantes, and to seeing them for what they are: lifeless forms. The face is a façade, without a being. The resemblance goes deeper than the superficial, however; Mudarra is attached to his kin in a more innate fashion. When Mudarra offers proof of his identity through the ring, Bustos states that there is no need for it, since he feels the connection more profoundly: Con la sangre lo declara con más fuerza. ¡Ay, prenda mía, para tanto bien hallada! (692) (Blood declares it with greater force. Oh, token of mine, so happily found by me!)

This is a seminal moment insofar as the words of Garcilaso’s sonnet are reversed; “por mi mal halladas” is converted to “para tanto bien hallada” and the prenda is converted from a memento of pain into a tangible object of joy. Bustos’s sight is also restored (692). When Bustos embraces Mudarra he knows instinctively that this is his son, “has hecho por mis entrañas | una extraña novedad” (you stirred within me | a strange awakening), and Mudarra completes this with a legitimising public label, calling himself “Mudarra González” (692). Physical tokens, such as the ring, and the motif of the prenda, are rendered redundant in a context where the object world is secondary to that of instinct and impression. Bustos’s eyes only ratify what his heart already knows. It appears that Clara too forms an impression of Mudarra based entirely on what he seems to be, rather than any evidential basis, “Quien eres me pareces” (You are who you seem to be), she tells him (690). This innate connection is further developed in the recurrent stress on nature in Mudarra’s statements of identity and purpose. Just as nature was connected with the prenda earlier in the play to create a double level of tracing and memory, so it reappears here to assert the fact that Mudarra is the branch from the trunk of his kin. He refers to himself as an offshoot of Bustos on

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various occasions, “siendo de Bustos rama | he vengado a mis hermanos” (695) (being a branch of Bustos | I have avenged my brothers), and a living reincarnation of the youngest Infante, “Yo haré que ese Gonzalo a vivir vuelva” (687) (I will ensure that Gonzalo comes back to life). The physical domain, by which he is the “retrato de Gonzalillo” (687, 689) (portrait of little Gonzalo) is only the outward confirmation of a more meaningful trace that emanates from within. The ratification of Mudarra’s identity through both the object world and an intangible domain of impression and instinct renders him a version of the second self described by C. F. Keppler. He is the return of Gonzalo, organically connected and facially alike, if we take his allusion to himself as a “retrato” at its word. In such terms, we perceive that illegitimacy is also a comment on the “knifeblade of incalculable fineness” between the future, present, and past (Keppler 1972, 162). Lope’s depiction of the next generation also extends to Clara, the daughter of the youngest Infante Gonzalo and Constanza. Her mother Constanza, who appears relatively infrequently, is a representative of loyalty and truth; she warns Gonzalo before he sets out to Almenar of a possible betrayal connected to Lambra and, in the wake of this, continually speaks out about the infamy and treason of the Lara clan. Constanza, as her name suggests, is the model of devotion to Gonzalo, and even gives him a ring as a physical token of this, but her constancy is undercut by Gonzalo’s fate. Gonzalo’s dying speech initially accuses her of absence, before he realises that she simply cannot be aware of what is happening to him, and that to accuse her of “deslealtad” (disloyalty) is against every instinct of his soul: ¿Dónde estás, señora mía, que no te duele mi mal? ¿Dónde estás, que no te duelen estos miserables casos? […] ¿No te dice el alma el mal que estoy padeciendo agora? O no lo sabes, señora, o eres falsa e desleal; pero deslealtad en ti, que la presuma no es bien; callar el alma también, será porque vivo en mí. (681)

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(Where are you, my lady, that my suffering does not hurt you? Where are you, that you are not hurt by these miserable affairs […] Does your soul not tell you of the suffering that I am undergoing now? Either you do not know about it, lady, or you are false and disloyal; but disloyalty in you, it is not right even to presume it; the soul should also be quiet because I live within me.)

It is here that we learn that they are married, “Yo soy tu primer amor, | tu esposo, Constanza, fuí” (I am your first love, | your husband, Constanza), and Lambra later refers to this as a secret marriage, by which Constanza is pregnant, “de Gonzalo está preñada | y allá en secreto casada” (681) before sending her off to a convent in Burgos. The loyal wife, who would ordinarily be present, sharing in her husband’s pain and triumph, is thus separated from her husband and becomes another one of the play’s traces, as Gonzalo’s speech makes clear: Yo me acuerdo que en pensar que apartaban nuestras vidas, de mis pequeñas heridas compasión solas tomar. (681) (I remember that in thinking that our lives were separating, from my small wounds I took lonely relief.)

Their daughter Clara is a notable beauty and first appears dressed as a man, in recognition of her absent father, “en traje de hombre | que nació ya muerto | su padre” (689) (in men’s clothes | for when she was born | her father was already dead). Rooted in the natural world by virtue of both her location and her language, Clara states that she is free but, in the same breath, alludes to the sad stories of love that her mother has bequeathed to her, and her unwillingness to experience love as a result (689). Her freedom is tempered by the legacy of her mother’s sad experience, and visibly contradicted by her sartorial tribute to her absent father.

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The sense that Clara is free only by dint of being somehow incomplete is confirmed when Garcí Fernández steps into become her father and protector. It is also evident in Bustos’s designation of her as a kind of token, a prenda, in the same vein as the dead Infantes: “no me ha sido el cielo tan escaso | que no quedase de mi sangre prenda” (695) (heaven has not been so unforthcoming | as to leave me without a token of my blood). She is someone lacking and superficially uprooted yet, at the same time, profoundly anchored in the family context, and indicative of progress and procreation. The union of Clara and Mudarra weaves together the two regenerative strands of the narrative and brings the concept of legitimacy to the forefront once more insofar as their love has a legitimising function: “amor, que hace legítimos bastardos, | las sangres junta y matrimonio intenta” (690) (love, which renders bastards legitimate, | joins blood and attempts marriage). In Mudarra’s case, legitimacy remains bound up in questions of ethnicity and religion. Thus, Mudarra is happy to be considered a bastard, so long as that renders him Christian and allows him to continue adhering to Christian law (686): y de bastardo estoy tan consolado que, por ser cristiano, el ser bastardo apruebo. (686) (I am consoled with being a bastard since, being a Christian, I approve of being a bastard.)

Mudarra is baptised at the end of the play and Garcí Fernández becomes his “padrino” (godfather) in a symbolic act of fatherhood that overwrites the illegitimacy of his birth. Mudarra’s last words in the play “yo soy cristiano” (696) (I am Christian) leave no doubt as to how he sees himself as finally legitimate. Muslim identity could, in this light, be seen as a kind of temporary one, almost a disposable cover for his Christian core, “presto veréis que el árabe turbante | y el africano capellar desvío” (690) (soon you will see that I bypass the Arabic turban | and African cloak). However, to say that Mudarra drops his Muslim identity and becomes Christian, and therefore legitimate, is to ignore the play’s obsession with traces, both as items and objects within the play, and as a means of reading it. It is also to ignore Lope’s cautious approach to strict binaries and his means of challenging them through insistence upon what is held back, or carried forward, from one state to another. Despite his Christian rhetoric,

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Mudarra himself refers to being “entre cristiano y moro” (692) (between Christian and Muslim) and of dual ethnicity and lineage: Del Rey de Córdoba soy sangre por mi madre Arlaja; por Bustos, son mis hermanos los siete Infantes de Lara. (694) (Through my mother Arlaja I am blood of the King of Córdoba; through Bustos, my brothers are the seven Infantes of Lara.)

The characteristics associated with that hybridity are profoundly positive, and include his comparison with the Saracen Rodamonte, “otro africano Rodamonte” (695). In fact, this double “trace” in Mudarra’s identity— part Christian, part Muslim—operates to his distinct advantage on both sides.11 Mudarra’s own particular brand of illegitimacy both explores the fine integument between the past, present, and future, and presents creative versions of truth and propriety which critique the closed, envious world in which the play begins.

“La mocedad de Roldán”: Breaking and Making the Bastard La mocedad de Roldán (henceforth Roldán) concerns the birth and early years of the French epic hero Roland. Popular legends about Roland were long in circulation in France and Spain, prompted perhaps by the thirteenth-century text Enfances Roland and the ballad tradition which draws widely on Carolingian material. Lope most likely adapted later texts written in Italy, for example I Reali di Francia or Le prime imprese del comte Orland (1572), the latter of which was translated into Spanish in 1594.12 In Act One of Roldán, the Infanta, daughter of the French Emperor and sister of Carlos (Charlemagne), is due to marry the prince of Hungary the following day but has already secretly married Count Arnaldo and is about to give birth to his child. The Infanta and Arnaldo arrange to meet and run away together during masked fiestas but Arnaldo is spotted and is forced to tell the prince and Carlos that he is running off with a married woman, concealing the fact that it is the prince’s wifeto-be. The prince even gives him his own horse but realises later, when

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he cannot locate the Infanta, who the woman really was. Roland is born in the countryside outside of Paris. In Act Two, some twenty years have now passed. Roland is a young man living with his mother in a rural hamlet where his mother works with her hands. The count has gone off to fight the Muslims but is a captive in Biserta. Roland is desperate to know who his father is and his mother’s silence on the matter infuriates him and adds to his already extreme and violent behaviour. When conflict breaks out among peasant communities and the town of Villaflor takes on Roland’s locale of Villarreal, Roland is elected leader and takes his role seriously, successfully opposing an invasion. Because of the carnage this involves, Roland and his mother leave for the royal court and she tells him about his father and the secret marriage. Roland has an audience with the emperor asking for assistance to secure the release of his father, and the emperor, impressed by him, agrees to allow Roland to enter his service. In Act Three, Roland is established at court as close confidante of Prince Carloto, son of Carlos. He is in love with Doña Alda. Count Arnaldo turns up at court looking for his son but is imprisoned for supposedly stealing a gold chain that Roland actually gave him. When Roland steals a plate of food from the emperor’s table to give to his mother the emperor orders that the woman be brought to court. He recognises her as his daughter, and they all realise who Roland is. Arnaldo reveals his identity and is pardoned. The play ends with the emperor giving thanks for such an honourable grandson. The play explores illegitimacy in terms of breakage and reconstitution. The opening scene, focussing as it does on two marriages—one secret but already yielding a child, the other anticipated eagerly in public but never to be—places bonds, vows, and ties on centre stage, already revealing how precarious they can be. While the emperor speaks of the “lazos” (bonds) of marriage that will make the prince like his own son (1955b, 1429), the already married Arnaldo can speak only of his marital “lazos” in a context where they both inviolable and jeopardised by the imminent obligation of marriage to the prince: “juró de ser mi mujer | con lazo inviolable y fuerte […] Pues ¿cómo se ha de casar?” (1430) (she swore she would be my wife | with an unbreakable and strong bond […] So, how can she marry?). Looming over Act One are threats to the lovers: the danger of being exposed, the pain of possible separation, and the more urgent physical pain of childbirth. Peligro (danger) and dolor (pain) are consistent reminders of possible severance, whether by death or capture, such as in the Infanta’s letter where she describes her impending labour:

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mi peligro considera: que hoy tengo un grave dolor y que es del parto me altera. (1431) (I consider the danger to me for today I have a terrible pain and am afraid it is labour.)

This is a pain later described as the worst pain a human being has suffered: “mayor dolor | que ha sentido pecho humano” (1439). The first Act is, however, all about creation too. In the midst of the Infanta’s turmoil about her marriage to the prince, her brother Carlos tells her that he has had a son, Carloto, who is a source of joy and a valuable addition to the family line. Carlos ties together the marriage and the birth in such a way as to highlight the forces of creation and destruction pulling against one another in this act: Famoso será este día, dando a Francia un generoso heredero, y a ti esposo como el Príncipe de Hungría. (1431–32) (This day will be remembered, when France was given a generous heir, and you a husband like the Prince of Hungary.)

In ironic acknowledgement of the juxtaposition of these events, the Infanta responds that she is more joyful about Carlos’s son than about marrying the king: que tengo más regocijo, Carlos, de que tengas hijo que de dar al Rey la mano. (1432) (I feel more joy, Carlos, that you have a son than in giving my hand to the king.)

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The Infanta’s reaction to the news also highlights the potentially unifying, stabilising force that a child can represent, against this backdrop of secrecy and suffering. She describes how a child unites the blood of two people (1432), a theme Carlos continues, but to dramatically ironic effect, when he elaborates on how a child brings harmony and stability to a marriage: “es entre los casados cierto el trato, | la paz segura, y el amor perfeto” (1431) (between the married couple, agreement, | certain peace and perfect love are assured). With the Infanta about to run away by night and enter the throes of childbirth in the mountains, Carlos’s contented vision of the birth of a sun-like child, “un infante como el sol” (1431), forms a stark contrast with her impending nocturnal flight. The tension between the secrecy and separation that defines the Infanta’s experience of childbirth and the expectation that this ought to be a happy and unifying family event is expressed neatly in a recurrent play on the words partir, to leave, and parir, to give birth. Lope uses the verb partir in association with the Infanta and Arnaldo’s predicament, which will inevitably see them flee, but also potentially be separated by distance or death, such as when the latter laments: Si a partir voy condenado, sea mi muerte la partida, de tanto bien apartado. (1430) (If I am condemned to leave let my death be the parting, the separation from so much good.)

We also see parir discussed in close proximity to this when Carlos teases his sister that she will want a child once married: “que después venga a parir un deseo” (1432) (for them a desire is born). His wife, Galiana, is also repeatedly referred to as having given birth, “parida” (1432), emphasising how defining this experience is for her, and for his own marriage. While her brother knits his family close together, the Infanta is associated with distance and deviancy. This contrast comes to a head when Arnaldo states: Desa manera, señora, dos partos os causan pena: partir de la propia agora, y parir en tierra ajena. (1434)

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(In this way, lady two departures cause you pain leaving your home right now, and giving birth in a foreign land.)

The Infanta’s double experience of parto, playing on the first person of partir, and the noun for childbirth, stresses the isolation of her experience. We see the terms similarly juxtaposed when alguaciles spot Arnaldo and the Infanta at night on the verge of escape. Although the sheriffs admit that some strange goings-on are occurring that night they accept the excuse that Arnaldo is a sculptor, and even make a joke about how well he has “sculpted” a child: “A fe que esculpiste bien; | no pudo hacerse mejor” (1435) (By my troth you sculpted well; | it could not have been done better). One alguacil comments on how he has seen a servant flee on horseback, “subió y partió como un rayo” (1435) (he got up and left like a bolt) while the other emphatically notes that a woman is about to give birth there: “allí está una mujer que quiere parir allí” (1435). What they are piecing together with partir and parir is Celio leaving with the horse that was supposed to convey Arnaldo and the Infanta, and her imminent labour, affirming how out of kilter the situation is. This is confirmed at the end of the act when Arnaldo describes the Infanta giving birth with similar wordplay: y con dolores de parto, partí con mi esposa, Celio, partida el alma a pedazos. (1439) (and with labour pains, I left with my wife, Celio, my soul split into pieces.)

Parir and partir are again interwoven. The fruit of this secret marriage equates to separation, rendering into pieces. In direct contrast to Carlos’s speech about how marriage is like drinking in a soul with the same breath, “beberse el alma con el mismo aliento” (1432), the new life from this marriage corresponds to a broken soul. Much of the play’s discourse of breaking and making also concerns appearance and disguise, costumes and masks, with the inevitable consequence of conditioning the audience to think about similitude and

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difference. Against a backdrop of a splendid masked celebration in which the great and the good of the court roam Paris in elaborate costume by night, Arnaldo exploits the noise, chaos, and darkness to escort his secret wife away from the city. The focus on disguise serves to highlight the irony of subterfuge taking place, making the courtiers seem distracted, even frivolous, in their costumes. Carlos, for example, announces that he will go disguised as a Muslim, given his love for the palaces of Toledo and “la hermosura africana” (African beauty), a suggestion that he may have had a Muslim lover when in service of King Galafre (1432–33). The other men discuss their costumes and colours and look forward to traversing the streets of Paris in disguise: “¡hola, máscaras, y enciende! | Desempedremos las calles” (1433) (don your masks and light up! Let’s take to the streets!). As a result of this celebration, the city is filled with candlelight, something Arnaldo and the Infanta fear greatly as the means by which their escape will be exposed. The large candles, hachas, carried by the revellers become a double image of disguise and of exposure. Arnaldo refers to how the lights will be his funeral candles: “todas las luces que ves | serán hachas de mi entierro” (1434). When the prince and Carlos come across Arnaldo at night they are described as masked, with feathers and candles: “vestidos de máscara, con muchas plumas, y hachas” (1436). Much emphasis is placed on the candles at the point where Arnaldo’s identity is revealed—“pasan con hachas y a pie” (they pass on foot with candles), “Llegad las hachas” (1436) (bring the candles)—but it is not the candlelight that exposes him. He reveals himself to Carlos and the prince, pretending that he is with a married woman. In a moment of extreme dramatic irony, the prince asks him if he wants candles before Arnaldo tells him ominously about his secret love affair, “Amores secretos son, | que no los podéis saber” (1436) (This is a secret love affair, | you cannot know about it). The prince’s candle could have exposed his own fiancée but Arnaldo prevents him from doing so with what is actually the truth: that this is a secret tryst that the prince cannot discover. The fact that the superficial disguises of the fiestas, impersonation for fun, expedite the falseness of a real individual is emphasised at the end of Act One. Realising what has taken place, the prince describes Arnaldo as a German traitor, to which Carlos adds that even Ulysses was not capable of such deceit (1438). Disguise has been the context for a betrayal of stunning proportions to occur. Arnaldo’s ironic lack of the obvious trappings of deception is later highlighted when the Infanta describes to Roland how nobody found her and Arnaldo once they had run away because “la razón

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fue estar tan cerca” (1449) (the answer was so close). Hiding in plain sight is the nature of Arnaldo’s deception. When he and Celio come to the court looking for Roland, dressed in prisoners’ clothes, they are reassured that nobody will recognise them, since their clothes are so shabby, “mucho nos aseguran los vestidos […] En que son tan ruines” (1454) (Our clothes protect us a lot […] they are so tattered). Not exactly a disguise, but serving as one, these garments permit Arnaldo once again to be in close proximity to the truth being out, without being exposed. The nature of his betrayal is always to be himself, to lie like truth.13 Clothing features consistently throughout the play as a means of reflecting on Roland’s identity as a bastard child negotiating likeness and difference. Not only is he born in a context of material disguise and real deception but we discover, from Arnaldo’s description of his birth, that he was born and wrapped in his father’s short cloak and a few torn pieces of his father’s shirt: no en rica holanda empañado, no con mantillas de grana y cubiertas de oro y raso, sino en mi solo herreruelo, y en tres o cuatro pedazos que corté de mi camisa. (1439) (not wrapped in fine Holland cloth nor with a deep scarlet shawl covered with gold and satin but just in my short cape, and in three or four pieces that I cut from my shirt.)

These modest, torn garments symbolise an identity that is cleft, as well as the obvious fact of his nobility having to be concealed in poorer garments than his parents might desire. The pieces of his father’s shirt are also important visual symbols of a relationship with his father that is sundered from birth. Once Roland is a young man, at the point where he leads the band of peasants against their rival faction, he is described as well-dressed. His better clothing is now external evidence of his natural tendency towards military prowess, and his inherent nobility: “Cuando yo nací, nació | conmigo el ser capitán” (1444) (When I was born, being Captain | was born with me). In Act Three, however, once he is established at

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court, Roland displays an attitude of menosprecio de corte (contempt for the court), pining for his former peasant garments and simple life, free from flattery and deceit: ¡Ay, aldea querida, ay, mi traje villano, donde seguro deste mal vivía! (1453) (Oh, dear village, oh, my peasant clothes, where I was born protected from this evil!)

Caught between court and country, his identity remains fluid. Clothing is also a motif closely associated with his mother. If clothing accentuates the composite nature of Roland’s identity, in his mother’s case her working with cloth is a means of fabricating a stable and secure life for her son. Felicio describes how she came to the mountains and found a means to live by the work of her hands by making fine garments to sell in Paris: manos que labran cosas que se llevan a vender a París por peregrinas: y labrando en holanda tan bien, Flérida. (1445) (hands which make things that are taken to be sold by pilgrims in Paris: and working with such fine Holland cloth, Flérida.)

He compares this with her “working badly” with flesh, making a monster, on account of Roland’s antisocial behaviour: “labráis tan mal en carne, que habéis hecho | al cielo un monstruo y a la tierra un diablo” (1445) (you work so badly with flesh, that you have created | a monster for heaven and a devil for earth). The Infanta refers to her handiwork again when explaining to Roland the circumstances of his birth, emphasising how poor she was, and how she was unable to make as fine garments as she would have liked to be able to sell: me viniese a aquesta aldea donde labrando he vivido tú sabes con qué pobreza

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porque como no tenía oro, holanda, plata, o seda, no podía hacer labores del precio que yo quisiera. (1449) (I came to this village where I worked in order to live in a state of poverty you know well for since I did not have gold, linen, silver, or silk, I could not carry out work for the price I wanted.)

The correspondence between his mother’s handiwork and the forging of an identity for Roland in a context beneath his nobility recurs when Arnaldo reminisces to Celio about Roland’s birth, describing how they wove a cradle from osier shoots: “ésas son las mimbreras, una cuna | que en cuatro varas de peral tejimos” (1454) (those are the osiers, with which | we wove a cradle around four rods from a pear tree). The verb tejer, again from the field of weaving and sewing recalls their need to create an identity for Roland quite removed from society. The Infanta’s association with clothes and sewing is repeated when Carloto is made to wait while Roland visits a woman who Carloto assumes is his lover. Roland, protecting his mother’s identity, describes her as a woman who washes, starches, and sews his clothes: “Mujer que me cose y lava, | hace labor y almidona” (1455). Finally, in the play’s climax, the Infanta tells her father the emperor how she subsisted, “Yo viví de mi labor | hasta agora en esa aldea” (1462) (I lived from my labour | until now in that village). Washing and weaving become synonymous with the forging of an alternative identity, one based on honest industry and in keeping with the life of the aldea, but one which nevertheless is temporary and insubstantial. They also serve as a reminder of the correspondence between weaving, making and the creation of narrative. A narrative, a text, a play, is a kind of woven product made of interconnected words, sounds, motifs, and other linguistic and figurative patterns. Monica L. Wright describes how, in the context of twelfth-century French romance, “the textual structure of romance is related to textile […] By this, I do not mean that the relationship between text and textile is simply metaphoric: it actually describes the relationship between the thematic and the formal and between the

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actions of characters and the process of composition” (2009, 3). The creation of clothed identities takes us to the intersections and obfuscations of the literary text itself. Roland’s identity as an illegitimate child is frequently described in Roldán as determined by a state of being partial, lost, and in search of something. Roland’s path to discovering who he really is is a journey but one which, for a large part of the play, seems lacking in direction. The name that is given to the child, Roldán, is firm evidence of a sense of flux which defines him. At the end of Act 1, we discover the meaning behind it: Y como rouler en Francia es rodar, y fué rodando, luego que nació, Roldán nos pareció bien llamarlo. (1439) (And just as rouler in France means to roam, and I was roaming, when he was born, Roland seemed like a fitting name for him.)

Rodar here means to roam, to go around, to wander all over.14 This is confirmed at the end of Act Two, when Roland states “Roldán me llamo, | porque rodando nací” (My name is Roland, | because I was born roaming) and to the emperor, “Pues he rodado hasta vos, | ya no quiero rodar más” (1451) (Since I have roamed as far as you, | I wish to roam no further). Fluctuant and mobile his identity may be, but he is also searching for a missing piece. Roland describes himself often as a half or a part of something, such as a piece, “rica pieza” (1451), or a broken part of a whole: No soy sino Carlos roto: Carlos soy por presunción, y roto por nacimiento. (1452) (I am none other than broken Carlos: I am Carlos by presumption, and broken by birth.)

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When probing his mother about his father’s identity he paints a long composite picture, a retrato, of his father’s identity—“haré un retrato […] él era un hombre galán, | fuerte, robusto, bizarro” (1442) (I will paint a portrait […] he was a handsome man, | strong, robust, gallant)—from which he deduces his own identity to be a kind of portrait of this portrait: Y este hombre que veis aquí, fué, sin duda, original, de quien soy retrato igual, y efecto de quien nací. (1442) (And this man that you see here, was, without a doubt, the original, of which I am an exact copy, and his issue by birth.)

Roland’s incompleteness can also be assumed from what others say. Felicio alludes to him as part-devil, “medio diablo” (1445), while the Spanish ambassador draws close parallels between Roland and Bernardo del Carpio, seeing traits of the Spanish hero in Roland, a comparison Roland dislikes since he regards it as an affront to his own exceptional identity: Quién es ese Bernardillo que conmigo comparáis? Español, ¿sabéis que habláis con Roldán? (1453) (Who is that Bernardo character with whom you compare me? Spaniard, don’t you know that you are talking to Roland?)

Here we see the return of the character Bernardo, of whom Lope considered himself a relation, which creates a window into Lopean subjectivity: a character is being compared to a character with whom Lope compared himself. This reminds us of Lope’s ability to reveal himself in his literature as “a series of masquerades, intersecting personae and acts of contingent self-creation” (Samson and Thacker 2008, 7).

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Towards the end of the play, Roland speaks to the emperor and admits frankly to being lost. Their exchange is couched in a kind of capitulation on Roland’s part to a sense that he has been doomed to be lost since birth: Emp. Rol. Emp. Rol.

(Emp. Rol. Emp. Rol.

Muy perdido andáis. Desde que nací. Ya no me veis. Ni aun a mí; perdíme sin ser nacido. ¡Par Dios, señor, el que nace para desdichas, no había de nacer. (1459)

You are totally lost Since I was born. You no longer see me. Nor myself; I lost myself before I was born. By God, my lord, he who is born to suffer misfortunes, should never be born.)

He is literally unsure where to place himself, where to settle, in a context where he is surrounded by the emperor’s kin: Carlos y Carloto están, siendo uno hijo, otro nieto, sirviéndoos, ¿y yo, señor, me he de sentar? (1459) (Carlos and Carloto are a son, and the other a grandson, serving you, and I, lord, shall I sit down?)

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Only at the very end of Act Three, at the moment where the Infanta, and by extension Roland’s, identities are revealed do we see the parts of a whole come together, as family connections are re-established and Roland is discovered to be at the very centre of a nexus of kin relations: Emp. Car. Carloto. Rold. Emp. Car. Carloto

Roldán, que es mi hija advierte. Roldán, que es hermana mía. Roldán, mira que es mi tía. Pues, ¿qué soy yo desa suerte? Tú, mi nieto. Y mi sobrino. Y mi primo.

(Emp. Car. Carloto. Rol. Emp. Car. Carloto

Roland, this is my daughter. Roland, she is my sister. Roland, she is my aunt. Well, what am I in all of this? You are my grandson. And my nephew. And my cousin.)

Roland’s penultimate comment is to call this an “¡Extraño enredo!” (1461) (strange muddle). This muddle, this apparently alienating entanglement of identities, is revealed—in keeping with the play’s emphasis on the material—to be a kind of weft, a cloth made of many threads, denoting how attached, and how complete Roland, and his narrative, have been all along. Pieces and traces might be detached and subsidiary parts of identity, indicative always of the gap between part and whole, but one of their positive functions is to offer a different point of view, one of the cast aside, one from the margins, as well as to revalidate that perspective. All the plays discussed above are concerned with frontiers, where the bastard’s centrist loyalties and peripheral freedoms are played out. In Casamiento the frontier between the kingdoms of Alfonso el Casto, Castile and Leon, and France comes into view; in Mocedades the border between Catalonia and Castile is highlighted at the outset before the Muslim frontier looms large for the remainder of the play. In Mud, the historical setting of the

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Alfoz de Lara in Castile is juxtaposed with the territories of Almanzor, a setting Juan Udaondo Alegre describes as a “contexto fronterizo” (2010, 1039) (border context). In Roldán, we are conscious both of France and its borders, the “margen de Andaya” (margin of Hendaye) as Roldán puts it, as well as the various nations represented at the Parisian court: Hungary, Germany, and Spain. There is also internal displacement; rejection from court, refuge in countryside and aldea, which allows us to see the centre from outside in. In the context of the theatre this is doubly pertinent. The theatre too is part of a whole; more is always seen than meets the eye. In historical plays in particular, it simultaneously offers a view from, and of, the centre, as Steven Mullaney describes: Its [the Elizabethan popular stage] place on the horizon or threshold of culture brought it into alignment with much that its own period found strange and unfamiliar, and that alignment provided the stage with an anamorphic point of view: an ability not merely to see its own culture through the glass fashioned and provided by the dominant order, but also to view that order through its various cultural Others. The result is not so much a subversive drama as one rich in oblique commentary on its own times –on the relationships that prevailed between residual, emergent, and dominant values. (1988, 131)

Pieces and traces are also to do with making and re-siting, as much as breaking and displacement. In a culture in which there was, as Stephen Greenblatt put it, “an increased consciousness about the fashioning of identity as a manipulable, artful process” (2005, 2), Lope’s bastard heroes are continually being broken and re-forged but only because there is, at their core, a set of personal qualities which refuse to be annihilated, and are open to reinvention and recreation. Bravery, loyalty, and knightly prowess shine through shadowy worlds of secrecy, betrayal, lies, and envy. Sometimes these figures are not known or recognised for who they truly are, but the version of their self which emerges is stronger for the journey it has taken, and for the losses, displacements, and disappointments it has absorbed along the way.

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Notes 1. ‘La bâtardise acquiert droit de cité sur la scène du xviie siècle […] la tragi-comédie l’aborde, ébauche un procédé de développement’ (Baudin 1932, 23). 2. On account of it not being based on epic characters, and for the length of the chapter, I do not discuss El castigo sin venganza here. 3. Unusual circumstances of conception, birth, and childhood are common in mythical narratives. Joseph Campbell in The Hero with a Thousand Faces (1993) refers to the destined child suffering “a long period of obscurity […] a time of extreme danger, impediment, or disgrace […] what he touches is a darkness unexplored” (326–27). Lord Raglan’s Hero of Tradition also includes an unusual conception narrative and the spiriting away of the hero at birth, only for him to return as a man to his future kingdom (2003). 4. Alison Findlay’s research into Renaissance drama amply demonstrates this point (1994, 6). Schmidgen attributes the rise of the illegitimate hero to the eighteenth century, citing a new literary appreciation of the bastard after Daniel Defoe’s transformation of the figure in his literary works, and the weakened association between the bastard and the subversion of national and social order after the Glorious Revolution of 1688 (2002, 136–37). A notable shift from negative views of the bastard in the sixteenth and early seventeenth-centuries to the re-emergence of the bastard hero in the eighteenth is confirmed by Lisa Zunshine, who describes how most sixteenth- and early seventeenth-century literary texts on this theme “conclude with the triumphant expulsion of the malevolent bastard from the community” while “most of the eighteenth-century supposed bastards (particularly females) turn out to be legally born foundlings who wind up reintegrated into the social order” (2005, 19). 5. On the metatheatrical status of the theatre, see also earlier studies by McCrary (1979), Hornby (1986), and Larson (1994); the latter contains further bibliography on the subject of the comedia and metatheatre. 6. On the limiting qualities of the binary oppositions of ser/parecer and engaño/desengaño, see Robbins (2007, 8). 7. Henceforth page numbers are provided. 8. I borrow the term “scenic level” from Manfred Pfister (1977, 7). 9. See Pfister (1977, 129) on the contexts in which monologues tend to appear, including disrupted communication, diverging codes, and different referential contexts. 10. On Lope’s sources, see Kirschner and Clavero (2007, 112–13). See Menéndez Pidal (1971, 128) on the novel effect of Lope’s use of chronicles. Manuel Cuenca Cabeza notes that the original title of the play was El bastardo Mudarra y los Siete Infantes de Lara (1990, 19).

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11. Amy Wright points out that Mudarra’s role as administrator of justice is possible precisely because he is a hybrid figure (2002, 208). 12. For further description of Lope’s sources, see Menéndez Pelayo (1970, 308–15). 13. See Shakespeare’s Macbeth: “To doubt th’equivocation of the fiend | That lies like truth” (verses 41–43); Mullaney also describes how, in the context of Renaissance drama, “Treason lies, but it lies like truth—as it must do” (1988, 118). 14. Rouler in French also has the sense of “to go”. It is unlikely that either term means “to roll” in this context.

Works Cited Alfonso, X. 1955. Primera crónica general de España que mandó componer Alfonso el Sabio y se continuaba bajo Sancho IV en 1289, ed. Ramón Menéndez Pidal, 2 vols. Madrid: Gredos. Assmann, Aleida. 2011. Cultural Memory and Western Civilization: Arts of Memory. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Baudin, Maurice. 1932. Les Bâtards au théâtre en France de la Renaissance à la Fin du xviii e Siècle. The Johns Hopkins Studies in Romance Literatures and Languages, 21. Baltimore, Maryland: Johns Hopkins Press. Biet, Christian, and Christophe Triau. 2019. What Is the Theatre?, trans. Jason Allen-Paisant and Joanne Brueton. Abingdon: Routledge. Campbell, Joseph. 1993. The Hero with a Thousand Faces. London: Fontana. Cuenca Cabeza, Manuel. 1990. La leyenda de los Infantes de Lara en el teatro español. Córdoba: Publicaciones del Monte de Piedad y Caja de Ahorros de Córdoba y Universidad de Deusto. de Herrera, Fernando. 2001. Anotaciones a la poesía de Garcilaso, ed. Inoria Pepe and José María Reyes, Letras Hispánicas, 516. Madrid: Cátedra. de la Vega, Garcilaso. 1996. Poesías castellanas completas, ed. Elias L. Rivers, Clásicos Castalia, 6. Madrid: Castalia. De Man, Paul. 1979. Autobiography as De-Facement. MLN 94 (5): 919–30. de Ocampo, Florián. 1541. Las quatro partes enteras de la Crónica de España que mando componer el serenissimo rey don Alonso llamado el Sabio: vista y emendada mucha parte de su impresión por el maestro Florian Docampo. Zamora: Agustín de Paz y Juan Picardo. de Vega, Lope. 1955a. El bastardo Mudarra. In Obras escogidas, ed. Federico Carlos Sainz de Robles, 3 vols., 3, pp. 661–96. Madrid: Aguilar. ———. 1955b. La mocedad de Roldán. In Obras escogidas, ed. Federico Carlos Sainz de Robles, 3 vols., 3, pp. 1428–62. Madrid: Aguilar.

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Conclusion: The Legacy of Illegitimacy

It seems fitting, by way of conclusion, to address the legacy of illegitimacy, its afterlife so to speak. That might risk imposing on a protean thing a weight of meaning that is potentially stifling but both legacy and illegitimacy are two-way temporal concepts. Illegitimacy is made from the substance of the past (in its worst and most traditional sense the “sins of the father” revisited on the son) so past-ness is always part of its identity but, as with all legacies, so too does it look ahead and define itself by a future imagined version of itself. It is judged both by past and future standards at the same time. In this respect, illegitimacy is inseparable from time and from memory. It is out of synch with time, and with a traditional understanding of the “correct” pattern of the major events of human life (marriage before conception and birth), but it succeeds in laying the blame for this partly at the feet of a mutable world, and partly at that world’s own set of standards. Being out of time turns out to be very timely indeed. Throughout this book we have seen illegitimacy associated with an entire semantic and imaginative field of apparent incompleteness: pieces, parts, remnants, memories, forebears, gossip, half-talk, rumour, darkness, secrecy. Illegitimacy has also emerged as excessive, a double version of a thing, sometimes a second self reaching backwards and forwards in time, sometimes monstrously disproportionate. We have seen its placelessness, its capacity to exist betwixt and between, to occupy the middle but, accompanying that, its paradoxical combination of movement and © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 G. Hazbun, Reading Illegitimacy in Early Iberian Literature, The New Middle Ages, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-59569-2

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stasis. It is a concept caught in the making, hence we continually see the mechanics of its fashioning, including through textual metaphors such as weaving, sculpting, dressing, and piecing together. Much of the book has been concerned with quantification and configuration, the relationship of parts and wholes, the extent to which something is complete or not. Time and again, the quality of an identity—its purity, its perceived goodness, its legitimacy—has been shown not to correspond to quantity as wholeness, but to be glimpsed in diminished, divorced pieces of something that was once more complete or that has the potential to be so again in the future. It is here that literature and illegitimacy complement one another since the inevitable partiality of the text, of language—whether that be the gaps and creative leaps we associate with oral literature, the way the theatre gestures to its own theatricality, or the slippery narrative of the novela—mimics the incompleteness of the theme it describes. There is, however, something more complete about the literary legacy of illegitimacy. Exploring illegitimacy by means of the literary text may be inevitably partial but literature, writing in particular, confers upon it something immortal too, which is particularly evident in the oft-cited figure of “the bastard”, a traditionally hard definition of illegitimacy built on historical references and post models which, on closer examination, displays softer contours. We also see this in the close association between illegitimacy and fame, and particularly in the way in which fame relies on a re-evaluation of achievement in more secular terms. Truth, propriety, and standards of behaviour are not forged in the law code or the pulpit, although they might claim as much, but in literature’s fluid system of producing meaning: “The concept of God’s eternal judgement and record that directed man’s actions and reckonings to this final ‘account’ now had to compete with the books of men who created their own system of memory and recognition” (Assmann 2011, 37). The risk in studying illegitimacy has always been its capacity to be so many things at one time that it might just become too many things, an uncontrollable set of standards and associations that is as broad and as infinite as identity itself. Illegitimacy has the potential to be endlessly elsewhere, just as literary identities do: everyone’s story is different from their reality. However, if the medieval and early modern texts show us one single immutable truth about illegitimacy, it derives precisely from its capacity to be beyond, to be more, to gesture to a life that extends beyond this one, whether that be in posterity or in sheer imaginative reach. Illegitimacy is fiction itself.

CONCLUSION: THE LEGACY OF ILLEGITIMACY

261

Work Cited Assmann, Aleida. 2011. Cultural Memory and Western Civilization: Arts of Memory. Cambridge: University Press.

Index

A abduction, 153, 154, 159 Abenámar (ballad character), 77, 104, 123, 127–135, 230–232 Adair, Richard, 2, 7, 93, 177 adoption, 10, 11, 14, 33, 75, 93, 149, 187, 190, 204 adultery, 3, 10, 18, 19, 29, 68, 93, 110, 121. See also Padilla, María de; Pedro I, the Cruel, King of Castile al-Andalus (Andalusia), 10 Alfonso I, King of León, 49 Alfonso III, the Great, King of Asturias, 9 Alfonso VI, King of Castile and Leon, 9, 49 in Cantar de Mio Cid, 15, 20, 23, 26, 27, 29, 31, 45, 46, 54, 97, 118 Alfonso IX, King of Leon, 8 Alfonso X, the Wise, King of Castile, 3, 8, 9, 19, 20, 47, 78, 79, 92, 137, 138, 222

Estoria de España, 8, 9, 20, 50, 78, 79, 138, 222 Siete Partidas , 49, 67, 92 Alfonso XI, King of Castile, 47, 68, 115 Alhambra, 128, 131, 134 almadrabas (tunny fisheries), 149, 183–186, 188, 191 Almanzor, 78–83, 86, 216, 222, 225, 228–230, 232, 253 Almenar, 81, 225–227, 237 Antolínez, Martín, 30, 32, 38 Arabiana, valley, 88 Armistead, Samuel, 20, 26, 27, 29, 34, 46, 54, 55, 67, 68, 77 Avengalvón, 39, 44 B baby. See under offspring Bailey, Matthew, 20, 31, 47, 49, 50, 53, 65, 69 ballads. See also Cancionero de 1550; Cancionero de romances sin año; frontier

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 G. Hazbun, Reading Illegitimacy in Early Iberian Literature, The New Middle Ages, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-59569-2

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264

INDEX

Abenámar, 77, 104, 120, 123, 127–135, 217, 230–232 A cazar va don Rodrigo, 84 A los pies arrodillado, 107 Bañando están las prisiones , 106 Con cartas y mensajeros , 98 En campos de Arabiana, 234 En corte del casto Alfonso, 100 En León y las Asturias , 105 En los reinos de León, 90 Entre las gentes se suena (Entre la gente se dice), 7, 116 Ese buen Diego Laínez, 25 Espinelo, 7, 77, 104, 120, 122–125, 127, 134 Estando en paz y sossiego, 102 Hueste saca el rey Orés , 138 La bastarda y el segador, 136 Las obsequias funerales , 108 Los altos omnes del reino, 103 Pártese el moro Alicante, 78, 80, 84 Por las riberas de Arlanza, 95 Reinando el rey don Alfonso, 93 Visión del rey Rodrigo, 130 baptism, 12, 114 Barahona, Renato, 154, 177, 178 Barcelos, Don Pedro de, 48 Livro de linhagens , 24, 48 barragana. See concubines bastard as double, 13, 16, 135 as filius nulius , 14 as hero, 7, 17, 25, 29, 36, 48, 201, 202, 204, 211, 214, 224, 253, 254 as label, 96, 206 as lucky, 18 as self-reliant, 216 meaning of term, 13 monstrous nature of, 214 strength of, 202 theatrical representation of, 15

uncanny, 16 Bénichou, Paul, 123, 131 Berenguela, Queen of Castile, 8 Bernardo del Carpio, 13, 17, 68, 76, 89, 90, 93–109, 135, 138, 139, 204–222, 250 betrayal, 39, 56, 60, 88, 98, 113, 115, 135, 213, 222, 225, 228, 237, 245, 246, 253 blindness, 224, 235 blood, 12, 52–54, 60, 70, 80, 82–84, 86, 89, 101, 104–111, 124, 135, 151, 152, 158, 163, 205, 208, 212, 213, 222, 225–228, 232, 239, 243 Borbón, Blanche of, Queen of Castile, 110 Boro, Joyce, 175 Boyd, Stephen, 191 breastfeeding, 175, 176 burla, 16, 99, 149, 180, 181, 191 C Calcraft, R.P., 151 Cancionero de 1550, 67, 84, 90, 127 Cancionero de romances sin año, 84 Cantar de Mio Cid, 15, 20, 23, 26, 27, 29, 31, 45, 46, 54, 97, 118. See also court Casalduero, Joaquín, 151, 184 Castile alcaldes de Castilla (Nuño Rasura and Laín Calvo), 51, 57, 61 history of, 47, 69 mother, 205 political control of, 11 throne of, 11, 58, 59, 119 Catalonia, 206, 252 Cava, La, 12, 228 Cervantes Saavedra, Miguel de Novelas ejemplares El coloquio de los perros , 146

INDEX

La fuerza de la sangre, 16, 143, 147, 149, 151, 163, 194, 227 La ilustre fregona, 7, 16, 143, 148, 183 La señora Cornelia, 16, 143, 147, 163, 164, 166, 178, 183 Charlemagne, 89, 105, 205, 211, 240 Chaucer, Geoffrey, 29, 67 childbirth, 157, 175, 241, 243, 244 Christianity, 9, 114, 129 Cid (Rodrigo Díaz), 13, 15, 23–45, 47, 48, 55, 63, 65, 67, 104, 105. See also Cantar de Mio Cid; Mocedades de Rodrigo as illegitimate, 13, 25, 41, 45, 54, 65 in Mocedades , 15, 45–47, 54 Clamurro, William, 186, 193, 195 clothes, 147, 148, 165, 179, 188, 220, 227, 238, 246, 248 concubines, 3, 9, 10, 19, 28, 49, 64 Córdoba, 78, 81 court, 7, 9, 23, 26, 28, 30, 31, 34, 36–38, 40, 41, 43–45, 51, 54, 59, 60, 67, 69, 94, 96–98, 100, 102, 103, 105, 122, 127, 205, 206, 215, 241, 245–247, 253 French, 89, 102, 105 in Cantar de mio Cid, 23, 26, 54 Crónica de 1344, 55, 78, 86, 136, 137 Crónica de Castilla, 24, 26, 27, 55 Cummins, John, 78 Cyprian, Saint, 78, 79 D death, 9, 49, 50, 60, 68, 79, 82, 89, 97, 108, 109, 111, 113, 127, 129, 136, 155, 162, 204, 208–210, 213, 218, 224, 226,

265

229, 234, 235, 241, 243. See also death of under fathers murder, 50, 79, 89, 229 sentence, 133 degeneracy, 5, 11 desengaño, 143, 203, 219, 223, 234, 254 Deyermond, Alan, 29, 46, 50, 52, 53, 63, 69, 77, 78, 137, 193 Dillard, Heath, 5, 9, 10 disguise, 17, 160, 196, 244–246. See also clothes dishonour, 12, 30, 40, 42–44, 123, 124, 155, 156, 179, 191 Doubleday, Simon, 9 doubles. See bastard Duggan, Joseph, 24, 26, 27, 45

E Ebbott, Mary, 5, 41, 68 elsewhere, 16, 29, 184, 185 Empson, William, 15 engaño, 59, 91, 125, 143, 164, 169, 170, 181, 203, 216, 220, 223, 234, 254 epic, 15, 16, 20, 36, 45–47, 50, 52, 53, 57, 66, 68, 69, 76–78, 80, 82, 98, 104, 105, 108, 109, 118, 123, 136, 204, 240, 254. See also epithets cantares de gesta, 78 of revolt, 15, 46, 57 epithets, 32–37, 41, 67, 104, 189, 205 eutrapelia, 146, 193 exile, 31–33, 37, 41, 42, 105, 207

F faces, 4, 23, 55, 61, 66, 124, 143, 153–156, 158, 160, 167, 175,

266

INDEX

176, 181, 187, 217, 223, 225, 236 Fadrique, master of Santiago, 110–119 fama, 17, 112, 168, 204, 207, 214. See also memory fathers, 2, 12, 19, 57–59, 138, 149, 158–160, 184, 191, 196, 204– 212, 216–222, 225, 228–230, 233, 235, 238, 241, 246, 248, 250, 259. See also Laínez, Diego; San Díaz, count of Saldaña patricide, 208 resemblance to, 158, 159, 228 Fernández, Garçí, count of Castile, 50, 58, 239 Fernando I, King of Castile and Leon, 45 Fernando III, King of Castile, 8 Fernando IV, King of Castile, 47, 68 folklore, 14, 34, 120. See also hunting; Thompson, Stith folk motifs, 29 Forcione, Alban, 151, 193, 194 fornezino, 5 fortune, 35, 95, 118, 121, 122, 126, 131, 153, 162, 235 Foucault, Michel, 119, 126, 130 France, 20, 59, 63, 64, 76, 97, 105, 115, 120, 138, 139, 201, 240, 252 Freud, Sigmund, 103 melancholia, 103 the uncanny, 159 Friedman, Edward, 153, 164, 182, 193–195 frontier, 76, 115, 120, 123, 127, 129, 135, 136, 138, 144, 224, 235, 252 Frye, Northrop, 14 Funes, Leonardo, 47, 48, 53, 63, 68, 69

G García de Santa María, Álvar, 128 García Gómez, Emilio, 86, 87 García, King of Navarre, 53 genealogy, 12, 47, 50, 51, 53, 59, 61, 62, 64, 66, 132, 163 González, Asur, 23, 26, 28, 45 González Echeverría, Roberto, 146, 152, 153, 159, 160 González, Fernán, 46, 47, 50, 52, 57–59, 61, 69, 80, 105 Gorfkle, Laura, 186, 191, 195 Gormáz, Count of, 60 gossip, 15, 16, 28, 31, 36, 76, 110–114, 116–119, 259 Granada, 76, 96, 127, 129, 131–134 Greenblatt, Stephen, 253 Greene, Roland, 12, 226 Gustioz (Gustos), Gonzalo, 78, 80–83 Gustioz, Muño, 24, 26, 28, 38, 43 H Harney, Michael, 28 Hart, Thomas, 67, 189 heresy, 1 Herrera, Fernando de, 223, 228 Hita, Pérez de, 127 Guerras civiles de Granada, 127 honour, 4, 20, 26, 34, 36, 43, 44, 108, 120, 122, 126, 143, 151, 153, 155–157, 170, 179, 196, 202, 213, 215, 220, 225–227, 233 code, 126, 135, 191, 196 hunting, 50, 54, 58, 84, 112, 113 I illegitimacy. See also bastard and fame, 45, 204, 217, 260 and honour, 8, 26, 135 and irony, 15

INDEX

and quantity, 15, 16, 150, 163, 260 and secrecy, 5, 15, 17, 31, 89, 90, 95, 259 and speech, 4, 5, 15, 31, 203 and time, 13–15, 17, 76, 79, 103, 107, 108, 110, 127, 149, 152, 204, 223, 259, 260 as extreme, 3 as fiction, 14, 16, 18, 144, 260 as imagined, 18, 208, 223, 259 as middle ground, 17, 149 as paradox, 79, 89, 207, 223, 259 as subjective, 4, 6, 206–208, 211, 230, 232 contradictory nature of, 15, 17, 31, 84, 109, 110, 135, 144, 150 creative interpretations of, 2 definitions of, 87, 260 double nature of, 15, 135, 190 fluidity of, 3, 8, 134 in Bible, 1, 2, 221 legacy of, 204, 259, 260 legal definitions of, 3, 36 symbolism of, 12 theatrical nature of, 5 incest, 1, 18, 93 infamy, 12, 30, 32, 44, 156, 233, 237 Infantes de Carrión, 40, 44, 45 inheritance, 7, 10, 19, 20, 39, 51, 54, 90, 127, 138, 139 Inquisition, Holy Office of, 12. See also limpieza de sangre intersectionality, 14 Isabel I, Queen of Castile, 11 Iser, Wolfgang, 18, 147, 150, 160 Islam, 129 J James, Saint, 24, 57, 61, 63 Jews, 7, 12, 113, 114, 119 Jimena (Ximena), sister of Alfonso II, 89–91, 210, 212, 213

267

Juan II, King of Castile, 11, 127–129 Julian, Count, 227, 228 K kinship, 76, 85, 222, 225–228 L Lacarra Lanz, Eukene, 46, 47, 52, 64, 68, 69 Laínez, Diego, 24, 48, 54, 55, 61, 64 Lambra, Doña, 79, 137, 222, 224–229, 234, 235, 237, 238 Lara, 85, 87, 230, 237 Rodrigo de. See Velásquez, Ruy Siete Infantes de, 17, 50, 76, 78, 129, 222 Lee, Christina H., 186, 190, 191, 195, 196 legitimacy. See also fama; limpieza de sangre; marriage; speech and language, 203, 216, 260 conflictive nature of, 51, 213, 215 definitions of, 14, 143, 205 moral, 7, 14, 36, 38, 123, 204, 205 performative nature of, 220 purity, 12, 260 relativity of, 217 symbolic nature of, 49, 63 León, 8, 49, 58, 60, 89, 90 lies, 32, 66, 95, 97, 99, 105, 112, 115, 116, 119, 131, 132, 135, 157, 169, 185, 187, 192, 216, 253, 255 limpieza de sangre, 12, 17, 213 Llerena, 7, 113, 117, 119 love carnal, 125, 126 familial, 225 for vassal, 134 spiritual, 126 Luna, Álvaro de, 127, 129

268

INDEX

Luna (castle), 216, 217

M Mackay, Angus, 11 Man, Paul de, 223, 229 marriage arranged, 34, 149 church, 7, 93, 176, 177 lawful, 3, 19, 93 secret, 92, 93, 95, 177, 178, 181, 238, 241, 244 vistas (meeting before marriage), 33, 37, 67 Martin, Georges, 52, 54, 69 McDougall, Sara, 2, 6, 8–10, 18, 19, 68, 93 McKendrick, Melveena, 144, 164, 172, 174, 175, 202 memory, 16, 17, 80, 83, 114, 124, 130, 145, 157, 204, 223, 224, 229, 234, 236, 259, 260. See also fama collective, 16, 88, 89, 132, 135, 234 Menéndez Pelayo, Marcelino, 46, 67, 255 Menéndez Pidal, Ramón, 46–48, 52, 75, 77, 86, 135–139, 254 Michael, Ian, 23 mills, 26, 27, 29, 45 Minaya Álvar Fáñez, 32, 35, 36 miracles, 65, 66, 151, 194 Mocedades de Rodrigo, 15, 20, 27, 45–48, 50, 52–58, 63, 66, 68 monasteries, 19, 20, 32, 36. See also Palencia San Pedro de Cardeña, 32, 36 Montaner, Alberto, 20, 26–29, 44, 67 Montgomery, Thomas, 31, 46, 48, 137 Morocco, 42, 91

mothers, 7, 10, 25, 32, 49, 50, 52, 60, 82, 83, 86–89, 92, 97, 106, 120, 121, 123–126, 129, 132, 135, 147–149, 158, 161, 171, 172, 175, 176, 181, 186, 190–192, 195, 205, 210, 211, 232, 237, 238, 241, 247, 248, 250. See also Sánchez, Aldara, mother of Fernán González Castile, 205 Muslim, 50, 52, 87, 120, 121, 124, 129, 241 Mudarra (González), 8, 13, 17, 78, 84–88, 129, 135, 137, 204, 222, 224, 230–237, 239, 240, 255 Mullaney, Steven, 253, 255 Muñoz, Félez, 40, 43 murder. See death Muslims. See also Abenámar (ballad character), Avengalvón battle with, 38, 61, 115 religion, 10, 12, 144 territory of, 37, 41, 49, 57, 126 Muza (Musa ibn Nusayr), 96, 138

N names, 7, 41, 50, 58, 68, 75, 80, 84–88, 120, 125, 127, 130, 149, 161, 171, 185, 186, 189–192, 196, 214, 217, 237, 249 change of, 187, 196. See also epithets Navarre, 8, 34, 49, 51–54, 58, 69, 115 Neill, Michael, 13, 214 nobility, 9, 26, 30, 56, 68, 83, 127, 157, 163, 228, 246, 248. See also Infantes de Carrión infanzones , 26

INDEX

O Ocampo, Florián de, 222 Crónica general (1541), 222 offspring. See also pregnancy fijo de barragana, 9, 19 fijo de ganancia, 9 filius nulius . See under bastard lost child, 7, 185 Ordóñez, García, 27, 28, 38, 40, 43 orphans, 7 P Padilla, María de, 114 Palencia, 50, 51, 63, 64 Paris, 241, 245, 247 Pedro I, the Cruel, King of Castile, 11, 69, 76 picaresque, 13, 148, 183, 185, 195 pilgrimage, 20, 61, 186 Poema de Fernán González, 46, 48, 49, 61, 69 Pope, 3, 8, 51, 63–66, 69 in Mocedades de Rodrigo, 63, 66 pregnancy, 157, 178, 227 twin, 120, 121, 123, 127 prenda (token, treasure), 204, 222–224, 228, 229, 236, 239 prison, 80, 81, 91, 99, 107–109, 188, 207, 208, 229 prosopopeia, 223, 224, 228, 229 prostitution, 1 R Ramiro, son of Sancho Abarca, 53 Ramiro I, King of Aragon, 8 rape, 1, 24, 64, 147, 149, 152, 153, 155, 158, 160, 191, 196 riepto, 30 Rodrigo, King of Visigothic Spain, 46, 48, 52, 54–56, 59–64, 66, 68, 69, 84–89

269

Rogers, Edith, 113 Rojas, Fernando de, 179 La Celestina, 179 Roland, 8, 13, 17, 89, 207, 211, 240, 241, 245–252 romancero. See ballads Roncesvalles, 50, 206 rumour, 16, 20, 26, 29, 31, 36, 41, 45, 48, 111, 112, 116, 117, 135, 259

S Sánchez, Aldara, mother of Fernán González, 52, 57 Sancho Aborta/Abarca, 50, 51, 53 Sancho Garcés, King of Navarre, 8, 69 Sancho IV, King of Castile, 47 Sancho Ramírez, King of Navarre, 52 San Díaz, count of Saldaña, 89, 90, 92, 93, 218 Santos, Francisco, 25 La verdad en el potro, 25 Savoy, Infanta of, 52, 56, 64 Schmidgen, Wolfram, 19, 215, 254 Schmitz, Ryan, 167, 173, 174, 181 sea, 4, 7, 37, 42, 120, 122–124, 126, 130, 185, 206 secrecy, 5, 15, 17, 31, 38, 89, 90, 94, 95, 100, 115, 156, 157, 165, 203, 216, 243, 253, 259. See also secret under marriage seduction, 64, 178 Seville, 11, 33, 41, 113, 115–117, 186 sex, 9, 93, 161, 163, 180 extramarital, 1, 2, 29 Shakespeare, William Hamlet , 201 King John, 201 King Lear, 201, 203 Macbeth, 255

270

INDEX

Richard II , 201 Troilus and Cressida, 201 sight, 35, 37, 69, 154, 155, 166, 170, 176, 209, 210, 220, 236, 246 speech, 4, 30, 31, 36, 38, 43, 55, 111, 115, 119, 163, 203, 205, 206, 219, 223, 237, 238, 244 in Cantar de Mio Cid, 15, 31 role in legitimising, 4 stage, 2, 13, 17, 18, 23, 31, 37, 42, 45, 63, 75, 78, 79, 87, 160, 161, 163, 165, 166, 169, 181, 182, 201, 203, 204, 206, 207, 209–212, 219, 220, 224, 234, 241. See also theatre Strohm, Paul, 12, 16, 36, 67 T Tarifa, 115, 116 Teijero Fuentes, Miguel Ángel, 172, 174 theatre, 11, 13, 15, 17, 160, 201, 202, 209, 211, 253, 254, 260 Golden Age, 202, 203. See also under bastard Thompson, Stith, 29, 146, 193 time, 9, 13–15, 17, 24, 30, 32–34, 36–38, 40, 47, 48, 50, 58, 61, 66, 67, 76, 78, 79, 81, 96, 100, 103, 107–110, 118, 124, 126, 127, 130, 132–135, 144, 146, 149, 150, 152, 159, 160, 162, 166, 168, 174, 175, 177, 178, 181, 182, 186–188, 195, 204, 209, 210, 223, 228, 234, 235, 239, 254, 259, 260 tornadizo (Jewish convert to Christianity), 114 trace, 13, 17, 31, 160, 184, 204, 221, 224, 227–230, 232, 234, 235, 237–240, 252, 253 Trastámara, Enrique de, 11, 13, 110

treason. See under betrayal truth and language, 114 making of, 31 post-truth, 14 twins, 120, 121, 123, 124, 127

U uncanny. See Freud, Sigmund usurpation, 1

V Vaquero, Mercedes, 46, 53, 57, 68 varraganas (barraganas ). See concubines Vega, Garcilaso de la, 222 Vega, Lope de El bastardo Mudarra, 8, 201, 204, 222, 254 El casamiento en la muerte, 201, 204 El castigo sin venganza, 201, 254 La mocedad de Roldán, 8, 17, 201, 211, 240 Las mocedades de Bernardo del Carpio, 201, 204 Velásquez, Ruy, 79, 222, 224, 227, 233, 235 veras , 16, 99, 180, 191. See also burla Vermú(d)ez, Pe(d)ro, 30, 38, 39, 55 Victorio, Juan, 52, 68, 69

W Walters, D. Gareth, 191, 195, 196 Weissberger, Barbara, 11 White, Hayden, 49 Williamsen, Amy R., 186, 191, 195 Williamson, Edwin, 186, 195, 196 Wiltrout, Ann E., 185, 189 Witte, John, 2, 20, 93

INDEX

X Ximena Gómez (wife of Cid), 32, 37 Y Yiacoup, Sizen, ¸ 129

271

Z Zaderenko, Irene, 46, 54, 64, 65, 68, 70 Zimic, Stanislav, 164, 167, 195, 196