Collections of traditional Spanish ballads were made in the early seventeenth century; some recorded directly from singers, others reworked by educated poets. So popular were these that Court poets composed ballads of their own. Most such poetry circulated in manuscript among a small côterie of wits and fellow poets, and it often contains references to contemporary events and people, gossip, sideswipes at institutions and individuals, and allusions to other writings of the time. The traditional popular associations of the ballad also led to many poets combining in their poems the language of the street alongside that of polite society and the schoolroom.
The purpose of this volume is to discuss some of the problems encountered by anglophone students and teachers of literature when they turn to the Golden-Age ballad and to offer informed guidance on how such poems might be read. The poems discussed (works by Lope de Vega, Luis de Góngora, Francisco de Quevedo and Salvador Jacinto Polo de Medina) have been chosen with such difficulties in mind and a strophe-by-strophe prose translation is provided for each, followed by a detailed critical analysis.

Edited by NIGEL GRIFFIN, CLIVE GRIFFIN, ERIC SOUTHWORTH and COLIN THOMPSON, all of Oxford University.
OTHER CONTRIBUTORS: Oliver Noble-Wood, John Rutherford, Ronald Truman.