11
The first extant text in which Argentina appears is EE. In Najerense, Garci Fernández has only one wife: there is an excellent discussion of this version of La condesa traidora in Salvador Martínez, «Tres leyendas heroicas de la Najerense y sus relaciones con la épica castellana», Anuario de Letras, 9 (1971), 115-77, at pp. 118-30. We do not have enough evidence to decide whether Argentina is a late addition to the epic (perhaps the result of the process of gemination so often found in folk narrative), or whether the author of Najerense omitted her as unconnected with either Garci Fernández's death or his descendants.
12
«The Chronicle Texts», pp. 109-10.
13
Estudios épicos medievales (Madrid: Gredos, 1954), p. 187.
14
For a learned and fascinating discussion of other Germanic analogues to elements of the Siete infantes (the resemblance to Kriemhild is not included), see von Richthofen. Estudios épicos, pp. 151-91.
15
The picture is confused by differing readings in the MSS of EE. As is well known, Diego Catalán has shown that Menéndez Pidal's base MS for this part of the Estoria is late and factitious, and the published PCG is thus not a wholly reliable guide to EE as Alfonso planned it. A variant, apparently from the earlier and more reliable versión vulgar (a printing error has removed the sigla for the MSS involved), reads: «Et ella estonces fizo en él justiçia qual tovo por bien assí quel' mató con sus manos mismas». Chalon (pp. 551 and 555) agrees with the suggestion made in 1951 by Lindley Cintra that the details of the vengeance in the versión regia of EE come from a reworking of García. He does not consider the possibility -in my view, the probability- that the absence of details from the versión vulgar and from chronicles based on it may reflect the toning down of erotic or bloodthirsty elements by some chroniclers (I discuss this point below).
16
Historia y epopeya, p. 94. Cf. La leyenda de los infantes de Lara, p. 34.
17
Women in the Medieval Spanish Epic & Lyric Traditions, Studies in Romance Languages, 13 (Lexington: Univ. Press of Kentucky, 1975), p. 72. Sponsler's discussion of this subject is rather disappointing: she does not, for instance, mention Teresa in PFG or Sancha in García, and the Sancha of Siete infantes is described as «a kind, forgiving woman»
(p. 25).
18
A. D. Deyermond and Margaret Chaplin, «Folk-Motifs in the Medieval Spanish Epic»,PQ, 51 (1972), 36-53.
19
Jack M. Sasson, «Some Literary Motifs in the Composition of the Gilgamesh Epic», SP, 69 (1972), 259-79, at p. 279. Roger M. Walker, «The Role of the King and the Poet's Intentions in the Poema de Mio Cid». in Medieval Hispanic Studies Presented to Rita Hamilton (London: Tamesis, 1976), pp. 257-66; Walker gives references to earlier studies on this theme.
20
Albert B. Lord, The Singer of Tales. Harvard Studies in Comparative Literature, 24 (Cambridge, Mass., 1960), especially chap. 3.