El retrato femenino en la poesía medieval castellana. Cánones retóricos y rasgos poéticos

Abstract

The development of the old rhetoric rules like those of Cicero, Horace, Quintilian or Priscian in the medieval poetics (Vendôme, Vinsauf, Garlande), established very strict canonic laws for the literary portrait theories in the Middle Ages. As far as the feminine portrait is concerned we should begin by praising God and Nature, creators of female beauty, and, after that pass on to describe and enumerate the parts of feminine body from head downwards, because Nature, following the divine authority, moulds the woman'body from the head to the feet. The article demonstrates how in medieval Spanish Literature the portrait of queen Telactrix in the Libro de Alexandre and the hymn of praise to woman in the Razón de Amor, the portraits of Maria Egipciaca and the "dueña" in the Libro del buen amor and also the different portraits in the Marquis of Santillana's "serranillas" or that of Melibea in Fernando de Rojas's La Celestina follow the cultural canon of medieval latin rhetorics and poetics. However, the Italian textual variants introduced in the last portraits (Marqués de Santillana, Fernando de Rojas) bring the medieval feminine portrait closer to the Renaissance world, in a broader but less culture literary context (Cancioneros and Romanceros) that does systematically follow the descending order of the old canons.