SOURCE: Garcia, Michel. “In Praise of the Cancionero: Considerations on the Social Meaning of the Castilian Cancioneros.” In Poetry at Court in Trastamaran Spain: From the Cancionero de Baena to the Cancionero General, edited by E. Michael Gerli and Julian Weiss, pp. 47-56. Tempe, Ariz.: Medieval & Renaissance Texts & Studies, 1998.

In the following essay, Garcia concentrates on the importance of evaluating cancionero verse in collective form as poetic anthology.

Nothing could be more timely than this collection of studies, now that Brian Dutton's compilation of cancioneros (1990-91) is finally completed, and now that—thanks to him—we have an exceptional opportunity to make an in-depth study of the entire corpus of fifteenth-century court poetry. My intention here is not merely to pay personal tribute to our late colleague but to recognize an exceptional fact: it is rare that a scholar has an opportunity to review the whole of a...