SOURCE: Montgomery, Thomas. “The Presence of a Text: The Poema del Cid.” MLN 108, no. 2 (March 1993): 199-213.

In the following essay, Montgomery discusses the authority of the narrative voice in the Cantar de mio Cid, noting that as the poet creates an aura of authentic history through his fictional tale, he himself becomes a leader of men and upholder of values.

Everybody knew exactly what I was talking about.

—Paul Simon

Nobody believes the claim made in our epigraph. Even if the speaker's assertions were trivial, and especially if they were not, each listener's interpretation was inevitably different from all others, depending on cultural baggage, tacit presuppositions, vagaries of common sense, experience, intelligence, perceptions of group interaction during performance—on factors innumerable and often imponderable. Yet it is most important for a presenter working before a group to achieve a consensus regarding at least some aspects of the content...