Not a record of events but a witness to how a Castilian audience of about 1200 imagined lordship, honour, exile, booty, the king's court and the frontier with the Moors. Its geography of Burgos, Valencia, Zaragoza and the Jalon, its picture of the Infantes of Carrion and the court of justice at Toledo, and its vocabulary of vassalage are the mental furniture of the Castilian knights who fought Alfonso VIII's wars in 1200. Composed, on the usual dating, within a few years of the start of 1200.
About this source
- Title
- Cantar de mio Cid
- Author
- Anonymous
- Written
- about 1200; the copyist Per Abbat's exemplar is dated 1207; the manuscript is 14th century
- Language
- Old Castilian verse
- Covers
- the career of Rodrigo Diaz, about 1081 to 1099, as remembered a century later
- Kind
- Poem
The date of composition is disputed between about 1140 and 1207; the colophon date of 1207 is the firmest fact. The Spanish Wikisource text could not be located at the expected titles.
Where to read it
Editions
- R. Menendez Pidal (ed.), Cantar de mio Cid: texto, gramatica y vocabulario, 3 vols (1908 to 1911); not located online in this pass (not freely online)
- Digital edition with transcription, English translation, audio and manuscript images (Washington and Lee University)
- Biblioteca Digital Hispanica record for the manuscript (Biblioteca Nacional de Espana, Vitr. 7-17)
Translations
- J. Ormsby, The Poem of the Cid: a translation from the Spanish (1879), English
- R. S. Rose and L. Bacon, The Lay of the Cid (1919), English; not located online in this pass (not freely online)