Medieval Spanish literature

The Medieval Spanish literature is composed by the corpus of literary works written in medieval Spanish between the beginning of the 13th and the end of the 15th century. Traditionally, the first and last work of this epoch are the Cantar de Mio Cid, an epical poem the manuscript of which dates from 1207, and La Celestina (1499), a transition work to Renaissance.

By the end of the 10th century, the languages spoken in North Spain were very far from their Latin origins, and can assuredly be called Romance. Latin texts were no longer understood, as can be seen from the glosses used in Castile to explain Latin terms. Spanish oral literature was doubtless in existence before Spanish texts were written.

On the other hand, this is shown by the fact that different authors between the middle years of 11th century and the end of it could include, at the end of poems written in Arabic or Hebrew, verses that, in many cases, were examples of traditional lyric in Romance language, what is known as kharjas.

The earliests recorded examples of a vernacular Romance-based literature date from the same time and location, the rich mix of Muslim, Jewish, and Christian cultures in Muslim Spain, in which Maimonides, Averroes, and others worked. The Jarchas, dating from the 9th to the 12th centuries C.E., were short poems spoken in local colloquial Hispano-Romance dialects, known as Mozarabic, but written in Arabic script. The Jarchas appeared at the end of longer poetry written in Arabic or Hebrew known as muwashshah, which were lengthy glosses on the ideas expressed in the jarchas. Typically spoken in the voice of a woman, the jarchas express the anxieties of love, particularly of its loss, as in the following example:

Vayse meu corachón de mib.
ya Rab, ¿si me tornarád?
¡Tan mal meu doler li-l-habib!
Enfermo yed, ¿cuánd sanarád?

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