María Rosa Menocal argued for the hybrid origins and development of medieval Romance literature. She explored the cultural and social context of this hybridity as well as the reasons for its occlusion in modern scholarship. While her most...
moreMaría Rosa Menocal argued for the hybrid origins and development of medieval Romance literature. She explored the cultural and social context of this hybridity as well as the reasons for its occlusion in modern scholarship. While her most popular work explored the “culture of tolerance” of medieval Iberia, I argue that her main contribution lay in her appreciation of the medieval love lyric (as well as other similar cultural artifacts), the exploration of their hybrid or “mongrel” origins, and their enduring importance and impact in the present. Menocal’s style has a lyricism of its own, indivisible from its subject, which serves as a critique of the objectivist scholarship responsible for the occlusion of the lyric’s origins and as an argument for a continuity of practice between the lyric and its appreciation.
