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Introduction to the Source

The poem is copied in Madrid, Biblioteca Nacional de España, VITR/17/7, fol. 157r. This manuscript is a copy of the poetry collection known as the Cancionero de Estúñiga, ca. 1465. It has been digitized: http://bdh-rd.bne.es/viewer.vm?id=0000051837. It contains a compilation of mostly Castilian poems, including ballads, as well as a few Italian compositions. The authors included in this collection accompanied the king of Aragon, Alfonso the Magnanimous, in Naples in the mid-fifteenth century. 

Introduction to the Text

This poem is a serranilla, an evolution of the Provençal pastorela. Written in short verse (arte menor), serranillas narrate a courtly poet’s encounter with a mountain woman. This is the shortest of six compositions in the genre by fifteenth-century author Carvajal (or Carvajales). Very little is known about Carvajal’s life. His poetry is linked to the Neapolitan court of Alfonso the Magnanimous in Naples (r. 1442-1458) and to that of Alfonso’s son Ferrante (r. 1459-1494). In addition to his famous serranillas, Carvajal is also known for his literary epistles and ballads.

In this poem, the poet meets a monstrous mountain woman whom he describes in a grotesque fashion. It has been interpreted as a satirical rewriting of one of the serrana episodes of Juan Ruiz’s Libro de buen amor (stanzas 1006-21). The Libro de buen amor (1330/1343) is one of the masterpieces of medieval Castilian literature, a heterogenous, polysemous and oftentimes parodic text in which the narrator gives an account of his love life.

Further Reading

Carvajal. Poesie, edited by Emma Scoles. Edizioni dell’Ateneo, 1967.

• Critical edition of Carvajal’s poetry.

Gerli, E. Michael. “The Libro in the Cancioneros.” Reading, Performing, and Imagining the ‘Libro del Arcipreste’. U of North Carolina P, 2016. esp. pp. 194-203.

• Reassessment of Caravajal’s serranas in view of their intertextual relationship with the Libro de buen amor.

Marino, Nancy F. La serranilla española: notes para su historia e interpretación. Scripta Humanistica, 1987.

• Study of the serranilla genre, with attention to Carvajal’s poems in chapter 5.

Credits

Transcription by Eva Álvarez Vázquez, Translation by Eva Álvarez Vázquez, Introduction by Albert Lloret, Encoded in TEI P5 XML by Danny Smith