What is the Cantar de mio Cid, and when was it written?

The Cantar de mio Cid

El Cantar de mio Cid

between 1140 and 1207. The Cantar de mio Cid is the great epic poem of medieval Spain and the first major work of literature in Castilian.

Where: Spain, Castile, Valencia

What happened

The Cantar de mio Cid is the great epic poem of medieval Spain and the first major work of literature in Castilian. Its 3,730 lines, in three 'cantares', freely retell the last years of Rodrigo Díaz de Vivar: his exile by King Alfonso VI, his conquest of Valencia and the marriage and humiliation of his daughters, ending in his vindication. Ramón Menéndez Pidal argued it was composed around 1140; most scholars now date it to the end of the 12th century or the first years of the 13th, and it was certainly finished by 1207, when a certain Per Abbat copied it, as the colophon says. Where it was written is also disputed: Burgos or the frontier zone of Medinaceli. Its verses have no fixed length and rhyme by assonance, as poems sung by jongleurs did.

Say it

El Cantar de mio Cid es el primer gran poema escrito en castellano.

The Cantar de mio Cid is the first great poem written in Castilian.

Why it matters

It is the first great text in the language and the source of Spain's best-known hero; its plain, concrete Castilian is still readable to a patient learner.

Read about it

Connected

Sources

  1. El Cantar de mio Cid: el gran cantar de gesta hispánico (Alberto Montaner) — Biblioteca Nacional de España
  2. Cantar de mio Cid: presentación — Biblioteca Virtual Miguel de Cervantes
  3. Cantar de mio Cid (portal) — Biblioteca Virtual Miguel de Cervantes