SOURCE: Whetnall, Jane. “Lírica femenina in the Early Manuscript Cancioneros.” In What's Past is Prologue: A Collection of Essays in Honour of L. J. Woodward, edited by Salvadore Bacarisse, et al., pp. 138-50. Edinburgh: Scottish Academic Press, 1984.

In the following essay, Whetnall studies the feminine lyric tradition—featuring the poetic laments of grieving, betrayed, and wronged women—in cancionero verse.

There is a small number of poems en boca femenina in the manuscript cacioneros that collect the lyric output of the first half of the fifteenth century.¹ They are so few and so unobtrusive that they have attracted little attention to date but I think they are worth examining as a group, for several reasons. In the first place, they purport to be the lyric expression of women, and women's songs have a particular importance in the history of Peninsular lyric. Secondly, although they are undeniably courtly...