Note 12 — Chapter I · : The Sources of Spanish Romance

Alfonso XI composed a General Chronicle in the easy, flowing rhyme of the native redondillas, instead of the stiff, monkish Alexandrines then current in literary circles, and caused books to be written in Castilian prose on the art of hunting and the genealogy of the nobility.12 His relative Don Juan Manuel did much to discipline Spanish imagination and give fixity to Spanish prose in his Conde Lucanor,13 a volume of ethical and political maxims, the morals of which are well pointed by tales and fables drawn from history and classical literature. Juan II,14 although a weak and idle monarch, was a great patron of letters, wrote verses, associated with poets, and caused a large collection of the best existing Spanish verse to be made in 1449. But the spirit of his Court was a pedantic one; it strayed after Italian models, and he himself affected the Provençal manner. Despite such artificial barriers, however, Castilian speech continued to advance upon its conquering way. It had definitely become the language of Romance, and Romance, within a generation of this period, was to become the most powerful literary form in the Peninsula.