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Ovid, Alfonso X, and Juan Rodríguez del Padrón: two Castilian translations of theHeroidesand the beginnings of Spanish sentimental prose

1980; Liverpool University Press; Volume: 57; Issue: 4 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/1475382802000357283

1469-3550

Olga T. Impey,

Comparative Literary Analysis and Criticism

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image sizeBSS Subject Index: ALFONSO X, KING OF CASTILE & LEÓN [ALFONSO EL SABIO] (1221–1284)IMITATION OF MODELSOVID/OVIDIO [PUBLIUS OVIDIUS NASO] (43BC–17AD)RODRÍGUEZ DEL PADRÓN, JUAN (1390?–1450)SENTIMENTAL ROMANCE/SENTIMENTAL NOVELSIERVO LIBRE DE AMOR [J. RODRÍGUEZ DEL PADRÓN]TRANSLATION/TRANSLATIONS — THEORY & PRACTICE Notes * I should like to express my gratitude to Professor Alan Deyermond, who read an earlier draft of this article and made many valuable suggestions. 1. Among the excellent, thorough studies that have been published in the last decade, the following are of particular significance: Regula Langbehn-Rohland, Zur Interpretation der Romane des Diego de San Piedro (Heidelberg 1970); Keith Whinnom, introduction to Diego de San Pedro's Obras completas, I and II (Madrid 1971 and 1973) and his book, Diego de San Pedro (New York 1974), in which erudition and insight go hand in hand. In Dinko Cvitanović‘s La novela sentimental española (Madrid 1973), the monographic studies devoted to Juan Rodríguez del Padrón, Diego de San Pedro, and Juan de Flores are followed by an overview of the sentimental romance. Although the term ‘sentimental romance’—as Alan Deyermond has pointed out in ‘The lost genre of medieval Spanish literature’, HR, XLIII ( 1975), 235 and 242–49—does not present any particular problem in English, it is subject to confusion and imprecision when translated into Spanish. 2. César Hernández Alonso, Siervo libre de amor (Valladolid 1970); besides chapter two of La novela sentimental, which contains a detailed analysis of Juan Rodriguez's work, Cvitanovic devotes many pages (226–69, 299–305, 321–24, etc.) to the Siervo libre; in his introduction to the edition of the Siervo libre de amor (Madrid 1976) prepared by Francisco Serrano Puente, Antonio Prieto broaches some complex aspects of composition in this romance. Martin S. Gilderman, Juan Rodríguez de la Cámara (Boston 1977), offers a brief survey of Juan Rodriguez's work; see also Armando Durán, Estructura y técnicas de la novela sentimental (Madrid 1973), particularly pp. 19–24, 32–35, 42–44, and 49–52. 3. M. Menéndez Pelayo, Orígenes de la novela, II (Madrid 1962), 12. 4. Rudolph Schevill, Ovid and the Renascence in Spain (Berkeley 1913; repr. 1971). With reference to the Siervo libre de amor and the Italian love stories of the fifteenth century, Schevill (117) makes this point: ‘The Spanish tone is chivalrous, monarchic, aristocratic, romantic in the conventional sense; the Italian is bourgeois, democratic, realistic, and a better expression of humanism and the early Renascence.’ 5. María Rosa Lida de Malkiel, ‘Juan Rodríguez del Padrón: Vida y obras’, NRFH, VI (1952), 323. 6. Prieto, introduction to Siervo libre, p. 11; for a summary of the controversy concerning the Italian origins of the Spanish sentimental romance in general and the Siervo libre in particular, see Cvitanović, pp. 43–54 and 117–19. 7. The influence of Alfonso's works—especially of his translations of Latin poetry—on the poetry of the Marqués de Santillana and Juan de Mena was examined by Lida de Malkiel in ‘La General estoria: notas literarias y filológicas, II’, RPh, XIII (1959–60), 1–30. In her article ‘Juan de Mena's Ovidian material: an Alfonsine influence?’, BHS, LV (1978), 5–17, Margaret A. Parker, following the path opened up by Lida de Malkiel, re–examines thoroughly the traces of Alfonsine phraseology and interpretation in Juan de Mena's Coronación. With respect to the historical writings, it seems to me that Pérez de Guzmán in his Generaciones y semblanzas is deeply indebted to Alfonso's narrative technique. 8. In speaking of Alfonso as author and writer, I include all those who collaborated with him in the preparation and editing of the General estoria and the Estoria de España. 9. General estoria. Primera parte, ed. Antonio G. Solalinde (Madrid 1930), 156a 12–15. Subsequent references to the General estoria are to this edition of Part I, and to Part II, 1 and 2, ed. Solalinde, Lloyd A. Kasten, and Victor R. B. Oelschlàger (Madrid 1957–61). 10. The only available edition of the Bursario is that included by Antonio Paz y Melia in Obras de Juan Rodríguez de la Cámara (Madrid 1884), 197–313. Prieto, in a ‘Noticia bibliográfica’ to the edition of the Siervo libre (58), mentions that a new edition of the Bursario is in course of preparation by Francisco López Estrada. 11. Alfonso's Libro de las dueñas contains eleven Ovidian epistles. For their distribution in the General estoria, see J. R. Ashton, ‘Putative Heroides Codex AX as a source of Alfonsine literature’, RPh, III (1949–50), 275, n. 1. 12. See Lida de Malkiel, ‘Juan Rodríguez del Padrón’, 336. 13. Alfonso's versions are by no means free of erroneous renderings; on the whole, however, he manages to overcome the difficulties inherent in translation by resorting to frequent paraphrasis. 14. The indiscriminate invocations of ‘Dios de los cristianos’ and of the pagan divinities, which are so frequent in Alfonso's translations (PCG, 39b–43b), make it difficult to accept the opinion of Lida de Malkiel, who sees in ‘la yuxtaposición de elementos cristianos y paganos. . . otro rasgo típico del Otoño de Edad Media’ (‘Juan Rodríguez del Padrón’, 319). 15. A certain laxity in Alfonso's translations of Heroides 7 and 14 was noticed but not explained by J. R. Ashton in his dissertation, ‘Ovid's Heroides as Translated by Alphonso the Wise’ (University of Wisconsin at Madison 1944), 77. 16. This quotation and all subsequent ones are from the edition of the Heroides by H. Bornecque (Paris 1928). 17. Regarding the relationship between l'amour courtois and l’amour conjugal in Chrétien de Troyes, see Moshé Lazar, Amour courtois et fin’amors dans la littérature du XII siècle (Paris 1964), 199–252. 18. The intensification of grief (i.e. an amplification of the original text) occurs in several versions of the epistles: ‘E assi commo fuy en tierra, eche las manos en los uestidos, e rompi me toda’ (GE, II, 1, 425b 15–18), for example, has no correspondence in Heroides 10. 19. The percontatio ad seipsum and other rhetorical devices used by Alfonso in his explanaciones are mentioned by Francisco Rico in Alfonso el Sabio y la General estoria (Barcelona 1975), 186–87. 20. ‘La General estoria: notas literarias y filológicas, I’, RPh, XII (1958–59), 13. 21. For the treatment of the Dido story in the Roman d'Eneas, see Rosemarie Jones, The Theme of Love in the Romans d'Antiquité (London 1972), 33–42 and Irving Singer, ‘Erotic transformations in the legend of Dido and Aeneas’, MLN, XC (1975), 767–83. For the same story in Spanish literature, see Lida de Malkiel, Dido en la literatura española. Su retrato y defensa (London 1974). 22. See my article, ‘Los amores de Dido: un dechado literario de prosa cronística alfonsí’, forthcoming in RPh. 23. Paz y Melia, in the introduction to Juan Rodríguez's Obras(xxx), not only indicates some of the principal flaws in the translation, but also expresses his doubts whether the Bursario is in fact Juan Rodriguez's version. In view of the fact that, in many instances, the phraseology used in the translation coincides with that of the literary letters—those of Madreselva, Troilus, and Briseida—and of the Siervo libre, it seems reasonable to conclude that the Bursario is indeed the work of Juan Rodríguez. This was also the opinion of Lida de Malkiel in Juan Rodriguez del Padrón: Vida y obras', p. 335, n. 23. For further comments on this thorny problem, see Schevill, Ovid and the Renascence in Spain, 117–18, and Charles Kany, The Beginnings of the Epistolary Novel in France, Italy, and Spain (Berkeley 1937), 49–50. 24. For some reason, no one, to the best of my knowledge, has followed up the brief observation Lida de Malkiel made on certain similarities between Alfonso's and Juan Rodriguez's translations of Heroides 4 in ‘La General estoria: notas literarias, II’, 2. 25. I list below a number of other striking coincidences, setting in italics those phrases that are similar in both translations, but for which a corresponding passage is lacking in the Latin original: 26. Lida de Malkiel, ‘La General estoria: notas literarias, II’, 10–11. See also Parker, ‘Juan de Mena's Ovidian material’, 16. 27. The introduction to Heroides 2—Phyllis' letter to Demophon—added by Juan Rodríguez (Bursario, 202) is a summary of chapters [xviii] and [xx] from the General estoria (II, 2, 224–228); the preamble to Heroides 9—Deianira's epistle—is summed up in the Bursario (235), chapters [cdxxvii]–[cdxxix]; and the introduction to Heroides 4 and 10— Phaedra's and Ariadne's epistles—represent an outline of GE, II, 1, chapters [ccclxxxiii], the beginning of chapter [ccclxxxiv], and chapters [cccxxxii], [cccl]-[cccliv], 28. According to Charles Kany, The Beginnings of the Epistolary Novel, 50, the Bursario ‘performed a great service in making Ovid's epistles a part of Spanish Renaissance fiction.’ 29. ‘Juan Rodríguez del Padrón: Vida y obras’, 330; see also Prieto, introduction to Siervo libre, 31. 30. For Juan Rodríguez's pretence that this letter was written by Ovid, as well as for the reminiscences of the Heroides and the juxtaposition of various sources—La Yliada en romance of Dares and Dictis, ‘Leomarte’, and Heroides 3— see Lida de Malkiel, ‘Juan Rodríguez del Padrón’, 332–34. 31. The Spanish mediaeval romances, in which the beloved is a doncella and not a married woman, depict love with a certain severidad, recato, and sentimiento de honor, as S. Gili Gaya points out in his preface to Diego de San Pedro's Obras (Madrid 1950), xviii. Sensual love in these romances is more implied than vividly described. 32. It is possible that the image of a plaintive, love-sick hero resulted from the blending of the Ovidian characterization of a woman in love and that of the troubadour poetic tradition of the enraptured male lover. 33. It is strange that Schevill finds ‘no evidence … of any influence of the erotic works of Ovid’ in the Siervo libre (Ovid and the Renascence, 115), and that Kany ( The Beginnings of the Epistolary Novel, 50) shares Schevill's opinion. 34. Keith Whinnom called attention to a terminological difficulty with respect to the classification of mediaeval prose fiction, and especially of the tratado, which, he believes (see his introduction to the Cárcel de amor, 48), ‘se empleaba en aquella época para designar a las obras que actualmente se llamarían “novelas”, palabra que no llegó a tener su acepción moderna antes del siglo XVI; y puesto que el empleo de tratado también produciría confusión, no disponemos de un vocablo más adecuado’. Whinnom expresses a similar opinion in his book Diego de San Pedro, p. 145, n. 1: ‘it is obvious that in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries the term tratado was used in a very loose and unspecialized sense, and that it is much more accurately translated as “story”, “romance”, or even “novel”.’ The looseness of the term, in my opinion, is also reflected in the prologue of the Bursario, where Juan Rodríguez refers to the Heroides as a tratado: ‘Ouidio renouo aqueste tratado, que era a todos ignoto’ (198). 35. All subsequent citations from Siervo libre de amor are taken from the Clásicos Castalia edition, with an introduction by Prieto, henceforth abbreviated as SLA. 36. I prefer the term ‘embedding’ or ‘embedded’ to ‘interlaced’ wherever only two stories are involved. 37. I agree completely with C. Henández Alonso (Siervo libre de amor de Juan Rodríguez del Padrón, 40) that the Siervo libre has a cyclic structure (‘estructura concéntrica cerrada’). For an opposing viewpoint, see Gregory Peter Andrachuk, ‘On the Missing Part of Siervo libre de amor’, HR, XLV (1977), 71–80. 38. ‘Juan Rodríguez del Padrón: Vida y obras’, 330. 39. In some instances, as in that of the flight of Ardanlier and Liessa to the woods, where they live in ‘un secreto palacio’, it is difficult to distinguish the Ovidian motif from similar motifs in the romans courtois of Chrétien de Troyes: Tristan and Iseut seek refuge in the woods, Cligès and Fénice in the ‘palais secret de Jehan’. See also Lida de Malkiel, ‘Juan Rodríguez del Padrón: influencia’, NRFH, VIII (1954), 20–25. 40. Estructuras y técnicas, 23: ‘El sentimiento que une a Juan Rodríguez con la misteriosa dama es erótico, como el de Fiammetta, mientras que el que une a Ardanlier y a Liessa, reforzado a su vez por el que une a Ardanlier con otros personajes femeninos de la novelita, especialmente con la infanta Yrena, es propiamente sentimental, como el de Lucretia’. 41. Moshé Lazar's contention that the love expressed by the troubadours in their lyric poetry is essentially adulterous (‘la fin’ amors adultère est une conception commune a tous les troubadours sans exception’, Amour courtois, 54) and impregnated by a ‘sensualité ardente’ (68) is very convincing. 42. Only in a few of the lais of Marie de France—Eliduc, for example—and some of the first romans of Chrétien de Troyes—Erec is a good example—is love restrained by and made subordinate to an ethical or chivalric principle. In most of the romans courtois, passion is the most conspicuous characteristic of love. 43. How much this conception of love was influenced by Alfonso's Partida II, titulo vi, ley ii, which provides reasons for loving a queen (‘compaña en sabores’, ‘los fijos’, etc.) is difficult to say. 44. By focusing on loyalty and chastity in wedlock, Alfonso and Juan Rodríguez move away from the established tradition of courtly love, in which loyalty is seen as an attribute of the lover, not of the spouse. 45. It is this new male sensibility that allows Fernando's sentimental, plaintive letter to Isabel la Católica to seem perfectly natural and in no way out of place (apud Whinnom, ed., Diego de San Pedro, Obras, II, 33). 46. It would seem that Juan Rodríguez enjoyed breaking with the conventions of fin’ amors. In Ardanlier's apparently courtly relationship with Yrena, he is ‘requestado de amor de la infante Yrena’ (my italics), who, instead of being his señora, becomes his ‘cativa’, his ‘prisyonera’ (SLA, 87). The situation reverses that of the first, autobiographical story of the Siervo libre de amor, where the protagonist, acting according to the rules of courtoisie, is the ‘siervo’ of the lady. 47. La novela sentimental española, 119. In the introduction to the edition of the Siervo libre (31), Prieto is more cautious: he attributes to Juan Rodríguez only ‘el redescubrimiento de las cartas, en función narrativa como expresión de intimidad y proceso psicológico’. What is not clear, however, is whether Prieto has in mind some Castilian antecedents or whether he is referring merely to Ovid's Heroides. It is worth remembering, in this respect, that Charles Kany (The Beginnings of the Epistolary Novel, p. 36, n. 22) had already drawn attention to the letters included in the Amadís, the three parts of which were certainly written before the Siervo libre. To this one should also add the letter sent by the Empress Seringa to Roboán in the Libro del cauallero Zifar, and Alfonso's adaptations of the Heroides. 48. ‘Juan Rodríguez del Padrón: Vida y obras’, 322. 49. For mediaeval humanism in general, see Charles H. Haskins, The Renaissance of the Twelfth Century (New York 1957), 108–16; for the ‘humanismo vital’ of Alfonso, see Américo Castro, Glosarios latino-españoles de la Edad Media (Madrid 1936), lxv, as well as Antonio G. Solalinde, foreword to the General estoria. Primera parte, p. x.