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Critical Cluster Story Weavers and Textual Critics Interpret the Poema de mio Cid Guest Editor Óscar Martín INTRODUCTION: A CRITICAL CLUSTER ON THE POEMA DE MIO CID Oscar Martin Yale University Since we are approaching the eighth centennial of the year 1207, a year around which much of the feuding polemics over the Poema de mio Cid (PMC) continue to revolve, diis Critical Cluster on the Cid, made possible by the support and patience ofthe general editor, George Greenia and the contributors, has been organized in an effort to highlight some contemporary critical tendencies on the PMC.1 The articles gathered here are, indeed, a good example of the vitality and, more often than not, controversy that has been associated with research on the poem. Some of the articles deal explicidy with traditional issues of the PMC's criticism such as the nature of its composition (oral or written) and, by extension, its authorship (popular or learned), its dating (although there is now wider agreement on 1200 as the most likely date), and whether the poem is just one version among many or is, in fact, a unique work that inaugurated a new epic model. The contributors do not simply raise these well-worn issues. Radier, they assume these problems implicidy, using them as templates to elaborate new critical approaches diat include other issues such as invented social classifications, canonicity and the place of the PMC in the epic Castilian tradition, the usefulness of Figurai readings in tracing the fabric of the poem's meaning, the poem's relationship to other epic traditions and literary genres, the discussion of mimetic versus symbolic geographical representations, die issue of fictionality, the role of publishing practices in studying the poem, the poem's relation to previous, parallel or 1 I wish to express my gratitude to Ryan W. Szpiech and Deirdre Casey for editing this introduction. U corónica 33.2 (Spring, 2005): 7-12 8 Oscar MarlinLa corónica 33.2, 2005 subsequent Cidian Traditions, and even die role ofmedieval technology in mediating between oral and written modes. This Critical Cluster has been conceived as a meeting point for different generations of medievalists, some ofwhom have spent many years diinking and writing on die PMC, while odiers are finishing their first interesting projects on it. Widiout a doubt, all ofdiem help to reshape traditional approaches while at the same time offering exciting new visions of die poem. In the first essay, Juan Carlos Bayo explores the thorny issue of the PMC's composition and its relation to other epics. He presents three key arguments. First, he maintains that the PMC is not the originator of the epic tradition in Castile. Second, he proposes that the poem is possibly related to die same tradition to which die fragment of Roncesvalles belongs. Finally, he concludes that it was not orally composed, but was, neverdieless, composed widi oral performance in mind, i.e, that the poem is a written text composed for oral diffusion (with deictic dissonance, no enjambmeiits, and versification based in intonational phrases). Regarding the enigmatic question of the PMC's audience, he admits a wide and varied public, including both the illiterate and die literate (in Latin); and signals a double role of die latter as both literate audience and literate composers (among which are includedjuglares which composed cantares de gesta). In contrast to Juan Carlos Bayo's essay, Joseph Duggan expands his well-known previous arguments defending die oral composition of die poem, die existence ofa twelfdi-century epic tradition surrounding die Cid, and the oral transmission ofdie PMC by singing^?/g/a/é>s before it was written down. He signals the characteristics of die poem, as we have it today, that indicate oral composition, citing non-Iberian examples of performances that shed light on certain aspects of the poem. Using this as a background, and reasserting his previous theory that the poem was composed by a juglar in Jalón around 1200, he centers on the transition from oral to written form, proposing the possible use of erasable wax tables as a way to record die epic poem following ajuglar's dictation. Duggan proposes die possibility of an intermediate...

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