presence of a text.pdf

8/18/2019 presence of a text.pdf

1/16

The Presence of a Text: The Poema del CidAuthor(s): Thomas Montgomery

Source: MLN , Vol. 108, No. 2, Hispanic Issue (Mar., 1993), pp. 199-213

Published by: The Johns Hopkins University Press

Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2904632Accessed: 25-04-2016 17:31 UTC

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at

http://about.jstor.org/terms

JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted

digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about

JSTOR, please contact [email protected].

The Johns Hopkins University Press is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend accessto MLN

This content downloaded from 140.192.113.143 on Mon, 25 Apr 2016 17:31:08 UTCAll use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms


2/16

The Presence of a Text:

The Poema del Cid

Thomas Montgomery

Everybody knew exactly what I was talking

about.

Paul Simon

Nobody believes the claim made in our epigraph. Even if the speak-

er's assertions were trivial, and especially if they were not, each lis-

tener's interpretation was inevitably different from all others, de-

pending on cultural baggage, tacit presuppositions, vagaries of

common sense, experience, intelligence, perceptions of group inter-

action during performance-on factors innumerable and often im-

ponderable. Yet it is most important for a presenter working before

a group to achieve a consensus regarding at least some aspects of the

content or the form of his presentation. Without it he loses group

acceptance and fails as a performer.

An aid to success is the adept integration of ritualistic elements

into the presentation. Doing, even if only symbolic, does not err in

the way words can err, and the familiarity of ritual, defined as repeti-

tion of acts and words in a given kind of place, and on a particular

kind of occasion, by an authorized or self-authorized person, carries

an audience along.' A further effective mode of narrative presenta-

tion is to depict the characters of the tale-gods or epic heroes

especially-as themselves acting ritualistically. In this mode the

1 The concept of ritual adapted here is in accord with Cazeneuve 42-45. Ritual in

performance of the Poema del Cid is touched on by Gilman 11, clearly implied by

Castro, and mentioned by Miletich, "Oral" 184. Early religious functions of the

minstrel are noted by Men6ndez Pidal, Poesia 341, by Lord 66-67, 220-22, and in pre-

Christian Northern Europe, by Faulhaber 97.

MLN, 108 (1993): 199-213 ? 1993 by The Johns Hopkins University Press



3/16

2 THOMAS MONTGOMERY

characters are on display, perceived and known through their ac-

tions, externally-as performers-and they know each other in the

same way. The skillful presenter then has the opportunity to devise a

likeness between himself and his chief character or characters.

Homer "composes like his heroes"; he and Achilles, to the exclusion

of all others, share certain turns of phrase with each other (Martin

231, 235). By manipulating his narrative voice, the minstrel assumes

authority, and creates an absorbing atmosphere in which he joins

with his personages and his hearers to form a single community

(Castro 8, Zumthor 157). Even the reader distant in space and time,

despite the removes and the resulting skepticism introduced by the

printed word, senses the multidimensional presence implicit within

the text.

These general remarks might be applicable to a variety of literary

productions, but they are offered as particularly pertinent to the

less "writerly" epic, less influenced by the conventions that devel-

oped rather early in France, for example (by c. 1140), as narrative

songs come to be seen as entertainments, as imaginative variations

on one another.2 In Spain, the effects described are best repre-

sented by the Poema del Cid, which, though largely fictional, takes on

a persuasive aura of authentic history.3 The task here is to explore

the means by which that effect of authority is achieved, as observable

in the text itself. The method, since we cannot share the experience

or the assumptions of the medieval audience, is to compare the text

with others, those most apt for the purpose-the few epic or quasi-

2 Jean Rychner has maintained that some French epics later than the Roland are

more oral than it in character, citing their lack of coherence (14, 17, 55) and of

originality (126) as evidence. But readings of La Chanson de Guillaume, Le Couronne-

ment de Louis, and Doon de Mayence, all of the mid-twelfth century, some fifty years after

the Roland, can lead to another interpretation. Decadent touches in these chansons,

which prefigure the chivalresque novel, include, along with the defects noted by

Rychner, references by the jongleur to himself, sermons on the attributes of a good

king and on the good old days, court intrigues, a deal offered by the Pope to

Guillaume by which, if victorious, he can have all the wives he wants (Coronation

390-91), and a lengthy prayer begun by this same hero in the middle of a pitched

battle. Ong and Zumthor provide abundant criteria for identifying these elements as

post oral.

3 Some clarification as to the orientation of this study may be in order. It is taken as

non-controversial that the mode of presentation of medieval literature, especially

poetry, was normally oral, and that this poem, dealing with Spain's greatest hero, was

well known through repetition. These presumptions do not amount to an "oralist"

stance that would deny or downplay the effects of written adaptation of the poem. I

do maintain, though, that the written versions, except for the latest and least original

ones, were made by poets intimately familiar with oral tradition.



4/16

MLN2 1

epic compositions that bear the closest resemblance to the Poema.

What comes to light is a text in which certain modes of expression,

common elsewhere, are severely limited. A disciplined text that ex-

cludes distractions so as to intensify an effect of truth and imme-

diacy. A deceptively transparent text which in its directness seems to

omit too much, inducing modern translators to supply interrelation-

ships and motivations by means of paraphrase and grammatical

subordination, so as to create a structure of meanings more explic-

itly interdependent than in the original.4

Of the limitations peculiar to the language of the poem, the most

fundamental is the almost total suppression of metaphor as a stylistic

device-of any transferred lexical meaning based on resemblance.

This peculiarity might at first be attributed to oral composition, but

if there is a connection it is not a necessary or predictable one, since

much preliterate poetry makes free use of metaphor, simile, and

related tropes. A deliberate, doctrinaire prohibition of a class of

tropes is hardly likely, but a conscious distaste for phraseology de-

pending on imagined resemblances is plausible as an aspect of an

instinctive avoidance of distracting language. Such avoidance at the

stylistic level does not, however, rule out more abstract patterns of

resemblance.5 The poem offers models of behavior, for instance.

4 An expertly researched recent article by Walsh brings out another kind of omis-

sion to be observed in the poem, that of significant information, which was undoubt-

edly supplied through gesture as the minstrel performed. Walsh also attributes cer-

tain of the poem's geographical inaccuracies to the matching of symmetries of content

to alternating movements made by the performer as he recreated imagined space

around the audience. In a bolder surmise, Walsh sees the minstrel reproducing and

controlling scenes by use of his eyes. Walsh advances his views effectively, and the

presenter's role was undoubtedly crucial, but his actions would have been more

subject to variation than were his words, to judge by Zumthor, who brings out the

inexactness of the performer's movements in today's tribal oral poetry (155). Lord's

thorough description of the art of the Yugoslavian guslar is curiously silent on gesture.

Its effectiveness would depend on the size, make-up, and mood of the audience, on

lighting conditions, and on other circumstances difficult or impossible to orchestrate.

5 Among critics proposing figurative, usually metaphorical, interpretations for the

poem have been De Chasca, Grieve, Gwara, and most ingeniously, Burshatin ("Doc-

ile," "Moor"). More metonymically slanted, without making the distinction explicit,

are Castro, Smith & Morris, Bly, Deyermond & Hook, while Darbord deals partic-

ularly with the metonym. Symbolic overtones are undoubtedly present in the poem,

but it is risky to turn essential and pressing realities of existence, such as buildings,

horses, or Moors, into something else-symbols or abstractions that begin to take on a

disembodied existence of their own. The argument here is that things are above all

what they are, that transferred meanings remain secondary, and that the poem itself

compels this kind of reading by its own avoidance of interpretative elaboration. Its

aim is to duplicate an (idealized) experience, rather than develop images or concepts



5/16

2 2 THOMAS MONTGOMERY

Jakobson has implied that all verbal (and mental) associations are

either metaphorical, by resemblance, or metonymic, by nearness or

contact in space or time (or, in each case, by the opposite relation).

This powerful assumption provides a key to the peculiar idiom of

the Poema del Cid. Obviously, no narrative composition can be with-

out both dimensions, though in some cases a strong bias toward one

or the other may be identifiable. Here it is taken as principle that all

verbal constructs may be analyzed in terms of metaphor and meton-

ymy, operating together or separately.

Apt, original, colorful metaphor is of course a most effective tool

of expression, but it draws attention to itself and to the individual

who uses it, and it brings new problems to the task of judging the

truth value of an assertion. By presenting experience as conceived

through resemblances, it can easily make the author appear as the

creator or victim of ironies, caught in a network of discrepant self-

images-another distraction that can lead to unpredictable conse-

quences (Bauml 95). Such interference between audience and tex-

tual message may not appear important to the self-conscious writer

or to the showy entertainer, but they may be avoided by the presen-

ter intent upon conveying the concentrated, unequivocal message of

the anonymous though propagandistic epic. The few metaphors of

the Poema del Cid are unobtrusive, including cliches such as "treach-

erous dogs" applied to villains or "white as the sun" applied to wom-

en, and occasional expressions combining metaphor and metonymy

such as "my right arm" referring to a valued second in command, in

which the synechdoche (a class of metonym) "arm" is understood

through both tropes as a source of power, authority, and so on, and

pre-empts any need to introduce words denoting those abstractions.

Similarly, calling a man a "valiant sword" personifies (a metaphor)

the metonym "sword," contiguous to (not resembling) the man.

Again, the celebrated simile "like the nail from the flesh," glossing

the separation of family members, builds metaphoric sense on a

metonymic base. The poem's many uses of metonymy, from simple

tropes to the organization of scenes to larger narrative structure,

appear as authentic representations of habits of thinking (Mont-

attending that experience. Its language thus supports "performance, [which] figures

experience, but at the same time it is experience [and] does not call for interpretation"

(Zumthor 187-88; emphasis his). For the interdependent realities of economics and

war, which would surely occupy an audience's mind much more than possible symbol-

ic values, see Vincens Vives 118, Lacarra 165-66, and the excellent treatment by

Duggan 16-42.



6/16

MLN2 3

gomery, "Potentialities" 424-25) as well as poetic effects, and lend

vividness to the person or scene visualized, as in the three partial

metonymsjust cited, without interposing an additional visual image

between hearer and message. Avoidance of figurative elaboration is

extended to its congener abstraction, which also would divert the

focus from the progressing action of the poem. The hero does not

weep "because of" a stated fact; he weeps as he looks back at the

home he is abandoning.

To bring out these peculiarities, a contrast can be drawn with the

Poema de Ferndn Gonzalez (c. 1250), presumably based on a lost folk

epic but by a monk with a distinct weakness for symbolic intrusions

and interpretations. At one point, for instance, he recounts how,

during the night preceding a great battle against the Moors, while

the eponymous count is sleeping, a fearful portent appears in the

sky in the form of a gigantic, screaming, fiery "serpent" or dragon.

The count's men, demoralized by this apparent omen of defeat,

interrupt his sleep to describe it to him. He provides a rather lengthy

explanation which they accept tacitly: the Moors, astrologers and

magicians, have created the monster to frighten the Christians; but

since the latter are intelligent, they know that they need only fear

God (Catalan ed., str. 471-87).

The count, like the poem's author, assumes the role of teacher,

replacing what has been seen with what is to be believed. His knights,

like the poem's intended audience, accept the interpretation su-

pinely. They even follow his recommendation to go to sleep for the

rest of the night. The technique is directly opposed to that of the Cid,

which establishes quite different roles for the poem's personages as

well as for the poet and audience. The fundamental traits of the

serpent episode are simply absent from the earlier work: super-

natural or magical phenomena, explanation and interpretation, in-

dividual as opposed to collective opinion, manipulation of belief,

passive acceptance of authority (which, by the way, is elsewhere chal-

lenged and criticized in Fernan Gonzalez, as it never is in the Cid). All

these elements are extraneous or contradictory to the perceptions

gained by direct observation, which is the very source of the group

cohesion that underlies the power of the Poema del Cid. In this poem,

appearances, as perceived by all good people-admired characters,

minstrel, and audience-are truthful and are to be read meto-

nymically. Smiling means happiness, kneeling means humility, a

privileged seat means honor, a great beard means manliness; a gar-

ment askew, accompanied by other metonyms, means drunkenness.



7/16


Of the abstract words of our definitions, only "honor" is part of the

poem's vocabulary (Montgomery, "Palabras" 133-37). What you see

is-what you see: "to see" is also 'to understand' in the poem.

The interfering effect of calling an embattled knight a "beautiful

castle," as does Ferndn Gonzalez, is obvious, but brilliant metaphors

such as those of Gonzalo de Berceo (Guillen 16-20), also distract,

sometimes to create a new, higher reality to replace that of the senses

(see Lakoff & Johnson 145-54). Even confining our commentary to

epic texts, we find that all of them introduce artful symbolism much

more overtly than the Cid. A predictable occasion to do so arises in

the retelling of dreams. In the Chanson de Roland (ed. Bedier) and in

the lost Spanish epic of the Infantes de Lara (ed. Catalan; preserved

as adapted in the chronicles), birds and animals usually represent

the dreamer and his or her enemies, and the dreamed events call for

interpretation after waking. The Cid does contain a prophetic

dream, in which the archangel Gabriel appears to the hero, praising

him and predicting his success in war. But the archangel acts only as

the voice of divine authority, is not described, and uses no symbolic

language. His words are direct and require no interpretation. The

memory of this dream apparently resurfaces in the Mocedades de

Rodrigo (ed. Deyermond) of around 1360. Here the youthful warrior

who will become the Cid befriends a leper, who then appears to him

during the night as Lazarus, in white raiment (and in one version,

dispelling a distinctive odor). The apparition blows on the hero's

back to give him a chill, which will recur later in battle as a token of

invincibility. So, in this rather decadent text, symbol and magic are

confused. As a further distraction, in the battle, when the chill is

urgently desired, its tardiness in arriving creates suspense. The Ro-

land (which portrays "a social order whose matrix is literary" accord-

ing to Vance 62), provides another kind of contrast, this time with

the direct, metonymic signifier (as the lance for the knight), when

enemy emissaries carry olive branches, an act that, we are informed,

"signifies ('senefiet') peace and humility" (line 73). The author ob-

trudes gently to read the arbitrary sign for us, displaying his bent for

abstractions and definitions.

To complete the inventory of narrative procedures avoided by the

Cid, two may be mentioned briefly that are absent also from some of

the other epic works. While less clearly distinctive exclusions, they

also, if used, would interfere with the integrity of perception. Ferndn

Gonzalez and the Mocedades both begin with summaries of back-

ground history that supply a context of information but introduce



8/16

MLN2 5

perspectives other than those proper to the main story. Another less

disturbing source of diffuseness appears in shifts of attention to

characters who are not on the scene. Thus, Fernan Gonzalez comes

in for some unfavorable comment on the part of his vassals when

they are unable to locate him on the eve of a battle. In the Roland,

knights riding to battle think of the women at home. The prohibi-

tion against such distractions is partially relaxed in the Cid on occa-

sions when messages travel between present and absent figures, and

in one instance when the poet listens in briefly on the king of Moroc-

co (2499). Here integrity of stance is maintained by treating the alien

figure ironically, thereby holding to the viewpoint shared by the Cid,

his clan, the minstrel, and the community constituted by the

audience-what we might call, recalling Dunn (111) and with delib-

erate geometrical imprecision, the circle of four.

Up to this point the elements found lacking in the text would have

belonged to the poet's voice: the language, style, and content. Other

exclusions are projected into the experience of the personages

themselves, as portrayed by the text-specifically those who are pre-

sented favorably. The poet exercises a kind of power over their

senses that obviously works as a tool of mind-control over the audi-

ence.6 Most notable is their lack of fear (Bailey 159-61, 162-63), the

more striking because fear and self-doubt are major motives in the

more "writerly" texts. The general terror created by the serpent in

Fernan Gonzalez is a case in point. The unwillingness of his troops to

undertake armed conflict is a recurring problem for the count. He

spends much of his poem engaged in disputatious dialogue, with

God on the one hand and with his cohorts on the other, concerning

the merits of his cause and the possibility of gaining victory. He is

himself often assailed by doubts and thereby isolated from those

same interlocutors-from everyone. In the Roland, Charlemagne's

knights repeatedly voice concern about the prospect of a shameful

death in battle. No sense of shame is ever acknowledged in the Cid,

even by the Infantes de Carri6n, who project or blame their defi-

ciencies on others, recognizing in themselves nothing more serious

than an earlier misjudgment: "Catamos la ganancia e la perdida no"

(2320). The poems retaining stronger traces of their popular origin

ascribe correspondingly greater bravery to their personages. The

Mocedades contrasts the brave with the reluctant, as when the king

6 For another kind of mind-control practiced by the poem, see Montgomery,

Rhetoric.



9/16


delivers a rousing pre-battle harangue that meets with silent inac-

tion on the part of all those present, until Rodrigo appears on the

scene. A primitive, impulsively reckless bravery marks the Infantes

de Lara and carries them to their destruction, but the virtue of

prudence is offered as an alternative in the person of a wise counsel-

or whose warnings they scorn. In the Cid, prudence and valor are

not in conflict, and while well-justified doubts may arise as to future

fortunes, self-confidence never flags among the admired characters.

This poem, like the others, shows the destructive effects of fear in its

portrayal of conflicts within the individual as well as divisions within

the group. Still, the cautionary stances of the other poems are tran-

scended by the Cid, in which the poem gains authority by bringing to

his audience the wholeness of spirit prevailing among the fearless

clan of heroic figures, leaving no room for doubt or faltering on the

part of his hearers.

This principle comes out with some complexity in a contrast

drawn with the two misfits, the Infantes de Carri6n. When faced

with danger they express fear plainly enough, but by indirection:

" jNon vere Carri6n " (2289, also 2322), in an ironic metonym allud-

ing to their property and accordingly to their social class. The divi-

sive effects of fear now infect the narrative. The two relatives by

marriage of the Cid become objects of scorn among his followers.

His authority is thereby threatened and duplicities are generated,

producing ruptures in the group's cohesiveness that must be healed.

The developing situation recalls the Roland, in which the emperor

cannot control private disputes and feuds that lead to tragic destruc-

tion and failure. A symptom of the contentious atmosphere of this

poem is the number of insulting words, culvert 'ignoble man,' bricun

'rogue,' malvais hor de put aire 'evil man of vile origin,'fols 'foolish',

fels, felun 'villain,' vil 'vile.' The reader who comes to the Roland

already knowing the Cid is surprised to find words like these in an

epic. Traditional expressions of insult are used in the Cid as part of

formal challenges, but there is only one denigrating word compara-

ble to those cited. As a curious reflection of French influence in

Spain and in Spanish epic, with the mixed reactions it provoked, the

word follon 'foolish braggart' is applied to a "franco," the foppish

Count of Barcelona (see also West). It has a French ring, with its

resemblance to fol and felun. With this exception, the Cid presents

personal defects through appearance and action, not by means of

descriptive adjectives.

The Cid and his men appear immune not only to the fear of battle,

but to its harsh effects: the terrible fatigue that overcomes combat-



10/16

MLN2 7

ants in other poems, the heat, and of course the injuries. The few

members of the Cid's force who become casualties are not given

names. The Roland provides the sharpest contrast, with its thou-

sands who weep and swoon in the midst of battle, and its heroes who

are grotesquely mauled before finally being dispatched. The Infan-

tes de Lara legend shows vivid appreciation of some of the cruel

realities of war. When the first of the seven brothers has been killed

in a battle, the survivors have to clean the dust off their faces before

they can identify each other and know who was lost. They succumb

to the enemy when they become too weary to lift their swords. The

Cid speaks graphically of blows and wounds suffered by the enemy,

but violence touches the hero's followers in refined or distilled form,

even literally. Enemy blood drips from the heroic swordsman's el-

bow, but the verb used is destellar, applied in other early medieval

sources to honey from the comb, to myrrh, and to thejuice of leaves

(Menendez Pidal, Cantar 2:625), hardly comparable to the sticky,

dirty gore of the battlefield. Physical suffering is recounted in poign-

ant detail only when the hero's daughters are beaten and left for

dead in a wild place by their wretched husbands. Here the language

remains restrained, reflecting the sober fortitude of the women, and

the effect in strengthening consensus is powerful, built at the same

time on identification with the victims and the distinction of gender.

But scenes of brutality, like those of the terror and butchery of war,

are not allowed to divert attention from the overriding message of

collective concern and collective success.

Enough examples have been cited, it is hoped, to indicate that the

Poema del Cid uses an expressive mode that is consonant, on the one

hand, with a concept of the hero, and on the other with a way of

relating to an audience, that are both radically unlike those of the

other poems. Analogies with those works that have caught the atten-

tion of some critics appear as relatively superficial.7 The Poema's

manner is largely a function of the author's intense awareness of the

conditions and exigencies of oral presentation. Through avoidance

of a number of habits and devices that would draw attention to the

performer and his ego, and away from the message, the poem holds

to an exceptional integrity of view to create a powerful presence.8

7 Comparable warlike action in the Cid and Ferndn Gonzalez, for instance, or the

presence of the church, or shared verbal cliches, indicate that the two authors lived in

the same world, not that they took the same view of it.

8 "View" is an unsatisfactory term, but "viewpoint," which its implication of person-

al perspective, would be worse. A modern discussion must of course depend on

abstractions, a mode of expression largely alien to the style of thought represented by



11/16


But the poem goes a step further along the same path. The pre-

senter not only develops a special understanding with his audience

and a close identification with his hero. As will be shown below, he

makes the hero another performer, with his own set of collaborators,

an admiring audience of his own from which secondary performers

may emerge as needed to occupy or share the attention of the min-

strel's hearers.

The point may be best brought out by a comparison. In Ferndn

Gonzalez, as in most didactic literature, all characters speak with the

same voice, that of the author, uttering his words, giving his view-

point and opinion. If they differ among themselves, it is only to

demonstrate that one of them is right and the other wrong. The

tone, vocabulary, and syntax of author and characters are the same.

The audience is expected to accept the author's pronouncements

tacitly. They, along with the hero's vassals, are to benefit from his

reading of the serpent, which was in turn derived from certain pre-

cepts. As a conveyer of information and of interpretations that,

though probably not original with him, bear the stamp of an individ-

ual mind, he takes on the role of eminent authority on his material.

His isolation is bidirectional: he refers to absent happenings, and

does not fully identify himself with the performer who is to read his

poem before the intended audience.

By contrast, the Cid minstrel is a presence who brings to life a

known story and makes it also a presence. The term "material" is not

appropriate to his dynamic medium. If he manipulates it he does so

discreetly, sensitive to the beliefs of the audience, who have learned

the story as he has, through repeated presentations. Of a variety of

excerpts that would illustrate aspects of his technique, one will be

chosen to bring out the complementarity of ritual and consensus.

The passage in question presents the Cid and his men in a hostile,

alien land, garrisoned in a captured castle, besieged by a large,

threatening army of Moors. Their situation may be considered des-

perate, calling for a desperate solution. But it is not so presented. A

meeting is held to publicize a decision already known, since it was

inevitable under the circumstances, and for another purpose not

openly stated, to build morale and common agreement. Everyone is

free to form his own opinion, which, not paradoxically, will be that of

the poem, and especially prone to inaccuracy when aimed at essentializing a remote

complex of perceptions. As can happen in scientific investigation, the instrument of

observation or act of observation distorts the observed object.



12/16

MLN2 9

the group, for here as always the Cid's followers concur in his deci-

sions. As they are free to agree, so is the minstrel's audience. The

circumstances will be reviewed in two complementary speeches, in

summary form, and with some overlap in content, as a ritual enact-

ment would review representationally the essential conditions lead-

ing to the next action. The audience will take part.

A cabo de tres semanas, la quarta querie entrar,

Mio Cid con los sos torn6s' a acordar:

"El agua nos an vedada, exir nos ha el pan,

que nos queramos ir de noch no nos lo consintran;

grandes son los poderes por con ellos lidiar,

dezidme, cavalleros, c6mmo vos plaze de far."

Primero fabl6 Minaya, un cavallero de prestar:

"De Castiella la gentil exidos somos aca,

si con moros non lidiaremos, no nos daran del pan.

Bien somos n6s seiscientos, algunos ay de mas,

en el nombre del Criador que non passe por al;

vayamoslos ferir en aquel dia de cras."

Dixo el Campeador: "A mi guisa fablastes;

ondrastesvos, Minaya, ca aver vos lo iedes de far."

(665-78)

So ends the conference; the "first" rejoinder is also the last. The

two performers have said what any of their company would say, the

second echoing the first line by line. Only in his last remark does

the Cid give any sign that he is directing the ritual. As to freedom of

response, a detail of phraseology is significant. In line 670, "c6mmo

vos plaze de far" has been rendered by translators as "what you

consider best." The original says more. Plazme is the normal formula

of assent to a request: 'it pleases me,' therefore 'I am pleased to do

so.' Its opposite, the formula of refusal, is "no quiero." The Cid

correctly expects his men's desires and acts to be one. The minstrel's

expectations of his audience are analogous.

Speaking and acting are again conceived as a unity in a memora-

ble negative example. The Infantes face trial for their crime against

the Cid's daughters. The accusation and the defense rest on the

opposing values of two social groups. The Infantes claim their act

was justified by a difference in rank. The poem's value system reas-

serts itself in the set of challenges, culminating when Pero Ber-

mudez, who has kept secret the cowardly flight of the elder Infante

before Valencia, now breaks his silence and concludes: "lengua sin

manos, ~cuemo osas fablar?" (3328) Truth is in action; the meto-



13/16

21 THOMAS MONTGOMERY

nyms brutally expose the non-integrated character. Now, if this were

a dramatic scene, the Cid and his group would have to be amazed

and outraged by this revelation of a well-kept secret, and a distrac-

tingly complex set of interactions within the group would be im-

plied. The audience, too, would disintegrate into a number of indi-

viduals trading impressions. In the stylized presentation of the

poem, however, this recounting of an incident already known to the

minstrel's audience simply blends in to reinforce the consensus.

For today's reader, what impresses in such a passage is not so much

the value system, admirable though it is, but rather the force of the

expression. We see a literary effect as we may see artistic excellence

in a ceremonial mask, apart from the primary intention of its maker.

The minstrel's art form, with its conventions of presentation, had

functions analogous to those of the mask. The stylized language,

poetic, archaizing, with its own tense system, full of repetitions and

linguistic parallels, is, with the music, part of a ritualistic medium

conferring a peculiar presence and authority to the minstrel and his

message. For his part, the hero of the poem, as performer, becomes

a master of words as of deeds, and so wholly successful as a leader of

men and upholder of values. The success begins with and is shared

by the minstrel, who in turn could not have created such a figure

without the support of a knowledgeable and demanding audience.

The acceptance of the minstrel and his medium as authoritative is

not a matter of conjecture. They were respected, if grudgingly

(Menendez Pidal, Poesia 301), by chroniclers who took the text as a

historical source and adapted it in their prose accounts, sometimes

without significant changes. Many a modern reader has willingly

seen the epic fictions as truth.

If we are taken in by the poet's rhetoric even without the authen-

ticating presence of the performance, we are faced finally with the

image of the minstrel as illusionist. That he was no stranger to the art

of illusion is evident in his treatment of the Cid, who achieves most of

his triumphs by capitalizing on his adversaries' mistaken apprehen-

sion of circumstances. The poet's manipulative skill, as seen in a

number of mechanisms considered in this paper, produces one of its

best effects by undermining the distinctions separating the three

grammatical persons. The third of these, that of narrative, a "non-

person" in the analysis of Benveniste (209), is assimilated to the "I"

and "you" of the time and place of performance in a form antitheti-

cal to drama: a presence of words, not of distinct speaking figures.

The ritualized language is like the mask of authority in traditional



14/16

MLN211

cultures, an artifact that reduces some aspects of reality to accentu-

ate other aspects, that embodies a power handed down across gener-

ations, that assimilates the identities of audience, performer, and

narrative personages, the ruling metaphor that controls all others.9

As an artifact, it carries truth that transcends the need to convince.

The best performer lets it speak, becomes one with it as it comes to

life in his voice.

Tulane University

9 "[In] traditional civilizations the figurations of the mask introduce the wearer

[and] its spectators at once into the mythical universe to which they aspire" (Zumthor

157). It would be tempting to quote Zumthor in extenso, given the remarkable sweep of

hisjudgments. The perspectives advanced in this paper are probably more in accord

with his than with those of any other critic. Still, this study is quite independent of

him, and is offered as essentially different in its use of the text as a point of departure,

in its comparative method, in its aim of concreteness, and in conclusions on points

such as the stylized mode of expression and its effects, the distillation of language, the

characters as performers, and the nature of performance.

WORKS CITED

Bailey, Matthew James. "Words and Meaning in the Poema del Cid and the Poema de

Ferndn Gonzdlez, Diss. Tulane 1989.

Bauml, Franz H. "The Unmaking of the Hero: Some Critical Implications of the

Transition from Oral to Written Heroic Epic." Harald Scholler, ed. The Epic in

Medieval Society. Aesthetic and Moral Values. Tubingen: Niemeyer, 1977. 86-99.

Bly, Peter A. "Beards in the Cantar de mio Cid: Structural and Contextual Patterns."

Forum for Modern Language Studies 14 (1978): 16-24.

Benveniste, tmile. Problems in General Linguistics. Trans. Mary Elizabeth Meek. Coral

Gables: U of Miami P, 1971.

Burshatin, Israel. "The Docile Image: The Moor as a Figure of Force, Subservience,

and Nobility in the Poema de mio Cid." Kentucky Romance Quarterly 31 (1984):

269-80.

. "The Moor in the Text: Metaphor, Emblem, and Silence." Critical Inquiry 12

(1985): 98-118.

Castro, Americo. "Poesia y realidad en el Poema del Cid" [1935]. Semblanzas y estudios

espanoles. Madrid: Insula, 1956: 3-15.

Catalan, Diego, ed. Reliquias de la poesia epica esparola.... 2a ed.... ed. Ram6n

Menendez Pidal. Madrid: Gredos, 1980. Poema de Ferndn Gonzdlez. 39-176. Los siete

Infantes de Salas. 177-224.

Cazeneuve, J. "Le Principe de la repetition dans le rite." Cahiers Internationaux de

Sociologie 23 (1957), 42-62.

La Chanson de Guillaume. Ed. Duncan McMillan. Paris: A. &J. Picard, 1949-50.

La Chanson de Roland. Ed. Joseph Bedier. Paris: L'Edition d'Art H. Piazza, 1960.

DeChasca, Edmund. El artejuglaresco en el Cantar de Mio Cid. Madrid: Gredos, 1967.

The Coronation of Louis. In Guillaume dOrange: Four Twelfth-Century Epics. Trans. and

ed. Joan M. Ferrante. New York: Columbia UP, 1974. 63-139.



15/16

212 THOMAS MONTGOMERY

Darbord, Bernard. "Les Objets et leurs fonctions dans le Cantar de Mio Cid." Iberica (U

de Paris-Sorbonne) 3 (1981): 99-111.

Deyermond, A. D. Epic Poetry and the Clergy: Studies on the Mocedades de Rodrigo.

London: Tamesis, 1968. Paleographic ed. of the poem, pp. 222-77.

& David Hook. "Doors and Cloaks: Two Image-Patterns in the Cantar de mio

Cid." MLN 94 (1979): 366-77.

Doon de Mayence, chanson de geste. Ed. M. A. Pey. Paris: F. Vieweg, 1859. Reprint

Nedeln, Liechtenstein: Kraus Reprint, 1966.

Duggan, Joseph J. The Cantar de mio Cid. Poetic Creation in its Economic and Social

Context. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1989.

Dunn, Peter N. "Levels of Meaning in the Poema de Mio Cid." MLN 85 (1970): 109-19.

Faulhaber, Charles B. "Neo-Traditionalism, Formulism, Individualism, and Recent

Studies on the Spanish Epic." Romance Philology 30 (1976-77): 83-101.

Gilman, Stephen. "The Poetry of the Poem and the Music of the Cantar." Philological

Quarterly 51 (1972): 1-11.

Grieve, Patricia E. "Shelter as Image-Pattern in the Cantar de Mio Cid." La Cor6nica 8

(1979): 44-49.

Guillen, Jorge. Language and Poetry. Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 1961.

Gwara, Joseph S.,Jr. "Equine Imagery in the Poema de Mio Cid." La Cor6nica 12 (1982):

9-20.

Horrent, Jules. "La Prise de Castej6n." Le Moyen Age 69 (1963), 289-97.

Jakobson, Roman. "Two Aspects of Language and Two Types of Aphasic Distur-

bances." Roman Jakobson and Morris Halle. Fundamentals of Language. s'Graven-

hage: Mouton, 1956. 53-82.

Lacarra, Maria Eugenia. El Poema de Mio Cid: Realidad hist6rica e ideologia. Madrid:

Jose Porrua Turanzas, 1980.

Lakoff, George & Mark Johnson. Metaphors We Live By. Chicago: U of Chicago P,

1980.

Lord, Albert B. The Singer of Tales. Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 1960.

Martin, Richard P. The Language of Heroes: Speech and Performance in the Iliad. Ithaca:

Cornell UP, 1989.

Menendez Pidal, Ram6n, ed. Cantar de Mio Cid. Texto, gramdtica, vocabulario. Madrid:

Espasa-Calpe, 3 vols. 1954-56.

. Poesiajuglarescay origenes de las literaturas romdnicas. 6a ed. Madrid: Instituto de

Estudios Politicos, 1957.

Miletich,John S. "Oral Aesthetics and Written Aesthetics: The South Slavic Case and

the Poema de Mio Cid." Hispanic Studies in Honor of Alan D. Deyermond. Ed. John S.

Miletich. Madison, 1986. 183-204.

. "Repetition and Aesthetic Function in the Poema de Mio Cid and South Slavic

Oral and Literary Epic." Bulletin of Hispanic Studies 58 (1981): 189-96.

Montgomery, Thomas. "Las palabras abstractas del Poema del Cid." Cahiers de Lingui-

stique Hispanique Medievale 16 (1991): 124-40.

."The Poema del Cid and the Potentialities of Metonymy." Hispanic Review 59

(1991): 421-36.

. "The Rhetoric of Solidarity in the Poema del Cid." MLN 102 (1987): 191-206.

Ong, Walter J. Orality and Literacy: The Technologizing of the Word. London: Methuen,

1982.



16/16

MLN213

Poema de Mio Cid. Ed. Ian Michael. 2a ed. Madrid: Castalia, 1980.

Rychner, Jean. La Chanson de geste, essai sur lart epique des jongleurs. Geneve: Droz,

1955.

Smith, Colin y J. Morris. "La fraseologia fisica del lenguaje epico." Colin Smith.

Estudios cidianos. Madrid: Cupsa, 1977. 219-89.

Vance, Eugene. "Medievalism and Models of Textuality." Rev. art. of Brian Stock, The

Implications of Literacy. Written Language and Models of Interpretation in the Eleventh

and Twelfth Centuries. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1983. Diacritics 15 (1985): 55-64.

Vicens Vives, Jaime. An Economic History of Spain. With the collaboration of Jorge

Nadal Oiler. Trans. Frances M. L6pez-Morillas. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1969.

Walsh,John K. "Performance in the Poema de mio Cid." Romance Philology 24 (1990-91):

1-15.

West, Geoffrey. "A Proposed Literary Context for the Count of Barcelona Episode of

the Cantar de Mio Cid." Bulletin of Hispanic Studies 58 (1981): 1-12.

Zumthor, Paul. Oral Poetry: An Introduction. Trans. Kathryn Murphy-Judy. Min-

neapolis: U of Minnesota P, 1990.

presence of a text.pdf

Documents