CULTA lyric: characteristics and EXAMPLES
Within literary genres, the lyric It is one of the most important in creative production in the history of Hispanic literature. By using poetry, rhyme and meter, the lyric was present both in the books and in the lyrics that accompanied the ancient troubadours. In this lesson from a teacher we will discover you on what consisted, in particular, cultured lyric with its characteristics and examples.
To answer for the meaning of the cultured lyric, we must first know what is lyric. Well, this is defined as a literary genre that uses verse or prose in order to convey the feelings and emotions of the author. A) Yes is intended to inspire certain sensations in the reader through musicality and rhythm. The lyric is usually subdivided into two types:
- The popular lyric: it is transmitted orally and has an unknown author. They are usually adopted by the people in traditions, songs or stories within social traditions. Although they were composed by an individual author, they are used in a general way without knowing the name of their creator.
- The cultured lyric: this type of lyric if it has an author who recognizes and signs the work. Within Castilian, it arose in the courts of medieval kings by the knights who composed sonnets, songs or hymns.
Another crucial point of difference between these two subtypes of the lyric is the type of language that they employ. While popular lyrics make use of informal language, which can be repetitive and colloquial, the cultured lyric uses a formalism and rare terms called cultism.
Now that we know what lyric is and its subtypes, let's delve into the main characteristics of cultured lyrics. As mentioned in the previous section, arose in the Middle Ages with the poetry of the troubadours and in the courts of kings in order to communicate an emotion or evoke a feeling. In this case, the cultured lyric is not narrative, since it does not seek to explain a story, its characters and circumstances.
The cultured lyric expresses itself through poems that vary in itsmetrics and verses, always rescuing a cultured language loaded with Latinisms. In this way we find six different types of compositions in this genre: eclogue, elegy, ode, pastorela, romance and sonnet. Among its predominant themes we find courtly love, death and religion.
We could summarize the characteristics of the cultured lyric in the following points:
- It is created by a known author who signs the work.
- Use cultured language.
- It developed in the Middle Ages
- It has six types of compositions.
- It is not narrative in nature.
- Use verse, not prose.
Talking about the examples of the cultured lyric is not, as such, simply mentioning authors who used it in the Middle Ages or later centuries, it is also delving into their types of composition. For this we will rescue three of the six forms of the cultured lyric: the eclogue, the elegy and the sonnet.
Eclogue
It is a lyric poem that focuses on love and romantic themes in natural and pastoral contexts. We can rescue an example of one of the main exponents of this type of cultured lyric, Garcilaso de la Vega:
"With so much meekness the crystalline
Tajo in that part I walked
that the eyes could the way
just determine who she was wearing.
Combing her hair of fine gold,
a nymph of the water dwelt
the head stuck out and the meadow pleasant
full of flowers and shadows. "
The elegy
It usually focuses on the pain and loss of a loved one. Although this example is not from the Middle Ages, it is a sample of the influence of cultured lyrics on Spanish literature of the 19th and 20th centuries. This is the case of the poem "On the death of a son" by Miguel de Unamuno:
"Hug me, my good, we have died
the fruit of love;
hold me, desire is covered
in furrow of pain.
On the bone of that lost good,
that went to all go,
the cradle will roll from the well-born,
of the one to come.
Barter in singing the woes of your tears,
death will sleep;
rhyme in dirge your tenacious brokenness,
life will return. "
The sonnet
Perhaps the most popular in our days, or the most remembered of the cultured lyric. It's a minor art poem that became popular in Spain with varied themes, but always following the metric and minor structure. Another poem by Garcilaso de la Vega could be classified within this type:
"While rose and lily
the color is shown in your gesture,
and that your ardent, honest look,
with clear light the serene storm;
and as long as the hair, that in the vein
the gold was chosen, with swift flight
for the beautiful white collar, upright,
the wind moves, scatters and messes up:
take hold of your joyful spring
the sweet fruit before angry time
cover the beautiful summit with snow.
The icy wind will wither the rose,
everything will change the light age
for not moving in his habit. "
López, L. (2011). Some cultured lyric poem.
Ramírez, M. (s.f.). Lyric.
