There is no one, correct way to read Jorge Manrique's Coplas por la muerte de su padre, no inherent, specific meaning that we can discover by studying its internal structure and the connections between its various parts; nor can we arrive at its meaning by examining its intertextual relationship with previous literary works, or by tracing how its ideas on death, dying, and the eternal life are associated with a medieval tradition or how they anticipate a Renaissance trend. In the impossibility of absolute knowledge of the meaning of the Coplas, this book will explore instead the ways in which successive generations of readers – and individual readers within them – have engaged with the text, starting with the era in which it was first circulated, around the time of Manrique's own death in late April, 1479. Since that time the famous poem has without interruption attracted the attention of different kinds of readers, from exacting academics, to students of literature, to the most casual lovers of poetry, to those seeking consolation on the death of a loved one. In its own place and time, each of these reading publics has had its own reason for approaching the Coplas, and its own set of expectations.

The fame of the Coplas, its prominent place in the Spanish literary tradition, and its internationalization through the study of that literature outside of Spain and many Spanish-speaking countries, has had the result of converting both the poem and its author into cultural icons.