Symbolic Hierarchy in the Lion Episode of the Cantar de Mio Cid
1962; Johns Hopkins University Press; Volume: 77; Issue: 5 Linguagem: Inglês
10.2307/3042662
ISSN1080-6598
Autores Tópico(s)Literary and Cultural Studies
Resumoture and for some revision of traditional estimates of their significance as literary characters. Thomas Hart emphasizes that the opposition between the Infantes and the Cid provides a kind of polarity around which the whole structure of the poem is organized, 1 and he sees the Infantes not as essentially comic figures, ridiculous both in their pride and in their cowardice, but as the instruments of an unreasoning force, a force identified by Hart with that malevolent fatalidad which Leo Spitzer has regarded as the real adversary of the Cid, both in his exile and in the atrocity of Corpes.2 More recently, Ulrich Leo has discussed the irrational cruelty of the Infantes in psychological terms, and though well aware of the circumspection with which such a method must be applied to a medieval text, he considers it the only one which can explain satisfactorily the motives for an act that leads ultimately to the young nobles' own destruction. The malady which obscures their reason is, according to Professor Leo, un egoismo 'introvertido' por causa de un ' complejo de inferioridad,' como hoy se dice, 8
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