Título de la obra:
Introduction to the Literature of Europe, in the Fifteenth, Sixteenth, and Seventeenth centuries,
vol. 1
Romantic Ballads of Spain
The Castilian poets of the
fifteenth
century have been collectively mentioned on a former occasion.
Bouterwek
refers to the latter part of this age most of the romances, which turn upon Saracen story, and the adventures of “knights of Granada, gentlemen, though Moors.”
Sismondi
follows him
without,
perhaps, much reflection, and endeavours to explain what he might have doubted. Fear having long ceased in the bosoms of the Castilian Christians, even before conquest had set its seal to their security, hate, the child of fear, had grown feebler; and the romancers felt themselves at liberty to
expatiate
in the rich field of Mohammedan customs and manners. These had already exercised a considerable
influence
over Spain. But this opinion seems
hard
to be supported;
nor
do I find that the Spanish critics claim so much antiquity for the Moorish class of romantic ballads. Most of them, it is acknowledged, belong to the
sixteenth,
and some to the
seventeenth
century; and the internal evidence is against it being written before the Arab wars had become a matter of distant tradition. We shall, therefore, take no notice of the Spanish romance-ballads till we come to the age of Philip II., to which they principally belong.