Note 4 — Chapter I · : The Sources of Spanish Romance

Throughout the whole Provençal-Catalan4 tract were held those romantic courts of love in which the erotic subtleties of its men and women of song were debated with a seriousness which shows that the art of love had entered into competition with the forces of law and religion, and had, indeed, become the real business of life with the upper classes of the country. Out of this glorification of the relations of the sexes arose the allied science of chivalry, no less punctilious or extravagant in its code and spirit. This spirit of Provençal chivalry gradually found its way into Castile, heightened and quickened the imagination of its people, and prepared the Spanish mind for the acceptance and appreciation of Romantic literature. But at no time was Castilian imagination passively receptive. It subjected every literary force which invaded it to such a powerful alchemy of transmutation that in time all foreign elements lost their alien character and emerged from the crucible of Spanish thought as things almost wholly Castilian.