Gonzalo de Berceo and the Miracle of Saint Ildefonso: Portrait of the Medieval Artist at Work
JT Snow - Hispania, 1982 - JSTOR
JT Snow
Hispania, 1982•JSTORRomantic Age, is that of the ingenuous and rude craftsman, a tinkerer with words, images,
and rhythms, dispossessed of most all Classical sophistication but laboring to keep alive an
aesthetic sense against the dawning of a better day (the Renaissance?). Fortunately, all this
myopia has cleared up-or is being cleared up-as scholars accumulate more information
about the historical Middle Ages and become more familiar with the lives of the people at all
social stations in the human hierarchy. One welcome result has been the re-evaluation of …
and rhythms, dispossessed of most all Classical sophistication but laboring to keep alive an
aesthetic sense against the dawning of a better day (the Renaissance?). Fortunately, all this
myopia has cleared up-or is being cleared up-as scholars accumulate more information
about the historical Middle Ages and become more familiar with the lives of the people at all
social stations in the human hierarchy. One welcome result has been the re-evaluation of …
Romantic Age, is that of the ingenuous and rude craftsman, a tinkerer with words, images, and rhythms, dispossessed of most all Classical sophistication but laboring to keep alive an aesthetic sense against the dawning of a better day (the Renaissance?). Fortunately, all this myopia has cleared up-or is being cleared up-as scholars accumulate more information about the historical Middle Ages and become more familiar with the lives of the people at all social stations in the human hierarchy. One welcome result has been the re-evaluation of the roles of art and the artist, roles we have had to reconstruct from chronicles, diaries, rhetorical treatises, literary texts, para-literary commentaries, and so on. It is never an easy task to perform for much is lacking to us no matter how deeply we delve. But we do, I believe, try to see and judge medieval works more in context now: that is, by standards and practices observed by artists and their public. In so doing, we have in part accomplished the feat of reeducating ourselves and have" discovered" many authors and texts formerly under-valued.
One such author is Gonzalo de Berceo whose literary worth has gradually appre-ciated from the time of the first modern edition of his works (1779)'through largely German and French critical schools of the nineteenth century and the poetic esteem of the members of the Generation of'98 in Spain, to the present when he has become the focus of many reappraisals in mono-graphic and article-length studies, new edi-tions, and special course work at Universi-ties. Outside hispano-medievalists, how-ever, the work of Berceo is little known, but there are signs that his work may be better known to hagiographers and com-paratists in the future. 2 Of Gonzalo de Berceo, we need only say here that he was a secular cleric of Berceo (Logrono) in Northeastern Castile, attached sometimes to the monastery of San
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