Jorge Manrique'sCoplas, A Literary and Cultural Constant

It is my hope that this study has shown the enduring renown of the Coplas de la muerte de su padre which, five centuries after its first circulation, remains one of the most recognizable literary texts in the Spanish language, where it occupies a place as its most famous poem. One can say it was an instant classic (although that expression is an oxymoron), as it was rapidly disseminated in written and oral form from the time Jorge Manrique completed it and passed it on to others in the Castilian court. The poignancy of its message about fleeting life was surely made more acute by his own unexpected and premature death just months after its composition. Copies, glosses, imitations, and quotations began multiplying shortly thereafter, and their numbers were great by the end of the sixteenth century. Although the first literary critics of Spanish poetry in the eighteenth century generally disaparaged texts written before Garcilaso de la Vega's works, they nevertheless separated the Coplas from the majority of early poems, finding merit in its language and meter if not in its moving observations on life and death. Its place was assured in the literary canon that was beginning to form in the nineteenth century, an era when cancionero poetry began to command attention and respect. Once again the Coplas was singled out as a masterpiece of the fifteenth century, and serious scholarly work began about its sources, themes, and meter, as well as a consideration of the poet's life and era as reflected in the poem.