Cantiga de amigo

(, ) or (Galician–Portuguese spelling), literally "friend song", is a genre of medieval lyric poetry, more specifically the Galician-Portuguese lyric, apparently rooted in a female-voiced song

Characteristics#

What mainly distinguishes the is its focus on a world of female-voiced communication. The earliest examples that survive are dated from roughly the 1220s, and nearly all 500 were composed before 1300. are found mainly in the Cancioneiro Colocci-Brancuti, now in Lisbon’s Biblioteca Nacional, and in the Cancioneiro da Vaticana, both copied in Italy at the beginning of the 16th century (possibly around 1525) at the behest of the Italian humanist Angelo Colocci. The seven songs of Martin Codax are also contained, along with music (for all but one text), in the Pergaminho Vindel, probably a mid-13th-century manuscript and unique in all Romance philology. Stylistically, they are characterized by simple strophic forms, with repetition, variation, and parallelism, and are marked by the use of a refrain (88% of the texts). Even Mendinho, author of a single song, has been acclaimed as a master poet.

Types of cantigas#

Tençon is a lyric and satiric which uses dialogue.

Samples#

Below are two by Bernal de Bonaval (text from Cohen 2003 , tr. Cohen 2010).

Bibliography#

Mercedes Brea & Pilar Lorenzo Gradín, A Cantiga de Amigo, Vigo: Edicións de Galicia, 1998.
Rip Cohen, 500 Cantigas d’amigo: A Critical Edition, Porto, Campo das Letras, 2003. https://jscholarship.library.jhu.edu/handle/1774.2/33843
Rip Cohen, The Cantigas d’amigo: An English Translation. JScholarship, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, 2010. https://jscholarship.library.jhu.edu/handle/1774.2/33843)
Peter Dronke, The Medieval Lyric, Cambridge, D.S. Brewer, 1968.
Giuseppe Tavani, Trovadores e Jograis: Introdução à poesia medieval galego–portuguesa, Lisbon, Caminho, 2002.