1
«Los versos 1-9 del Poema de Mio Cid: ¿no comenzaba ahí el Poema?», Thesaurus, 27 (1972), 261-92.
2
All of our quotations from the Cantar are taken from Ramón Menéndez Pidal's paleographic edition. We have regularized the word-division.
3
Hook, «The Opening Laisse of the Poema de Mio Cid», Revue de Littérature Comparée (in press).
4
See Deyermond, «Structural and Stylistic Patterns in the Cantar de Mio Cid», in Medieval Studies in Honor of Robert White Linker (Madrid: Castalia, 1973), pp. 55-71.
5
See Deyermond, «Patterns», pp. 59-60.
6
There is one pre-Cardeña mention of a gate which seems to have an almost entirely narrative function, with little or no symbolic value: «La oraçion fecha luego caualgaua;/ Salio por la puerta...»
(54-55).
7
Door and gate imagery is frequent in the Bible, usually indicating security («When once the master of the house is risen up, and hath shut to the door»
, Luke, 13. 25) or welcome («Open ye the gates, that the righteous may enter»
, Isaiah, 26. 2). On some occasions, however, the images are those of desolation: «All her gates are desolate»
(Lamentations, 1. 4); «She is broken that was the gates of the people»
(Ezekiel, 26. 2).
8
See Elizabeth H. Haight, The Symbolism of the House Door in Classical Poetry (New York: Longmans, Green, 1950), and Julio Rodríguez-Puértolas, Literatura, historia, alienación (Barcelona: Labor, 1976), p. 131.
9
A little later, the Jews give Martín Antolínez money with which to buy clothes: «daruos queremos buen dado/ De que fagades calças & rrica piel & buen manto»
(194-95). In contrast with the Cid, who makes a gift of clothes, they give the cash equivalent, thus showing at one and the same time their mercenary preoccupations and their lack of nobility, since the lavish disposal of garments was a prerogative of the noble.
10
A. C. Spearing rightly warns of the dangers of assuming that this type of similarity in medieval verse is necessarily deliberate (Criticism and Medieval Poetry [London: Edward Arnold, 1964], pp. 22-24). As Spearing says, this does not mean that one should abstain from evaluative criticism of any poem that uses a formulaic system. Each case must be judged individually, and the context of lines 1966-71 and 1987-90 suggests that the similarity in this case is deliberate.