The Song of the Cid (Penguin Classics) A Dual-Language Edition with Parallel Text - Softcover

Anonymous

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0143105655 ISBN 13: 9780143105657

Publisher: Penguin Classics, 2009

Synopsis

From a legendary translator: a magnificent new rendering of Spain's national epic

Venture into the heart of Islamic Spain in this vibrant, rollicking new translation of The Song of the Cid, the only surviving epic from medieval Spain. Banished from the court of King Alfonso, the noble warrior Rodrigo Diaz, know as the Cid, sets out from Castile to restore his name. In a series of battles, he earns wealth and honor for his men and his king, as well as fame and admiration for himself. But it is in rescuing his daughters from their ill-suited marriages that the Cid faces the ultimate challenge to the medieval heroic ideal.

For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.

About this title

About the Author

Burton Raffel (1928–2015, translator) was a Distinguished Professor of Arts and Humanities Emeritus and Professor of English Emeritus at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette. He translated many works, including Cervantes’s Don Quixote, Rabelais’s Gargantua and Pantagruel (winner of the 1991 French-American Foundation Translation Prize), Chrétien de Troyes’s Arthurian Romances, Balzac’s Père Goriot, and Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales. His translation of Beowulf has sold more than a million copies.
 
María Rosa Menocal (1953–2012, introducer) was the Sterling Professor the Humanities and Director of the Whitney Humanities Center at Yale. She wrote The Ornament of the World: How Muslims, Jews, and Christians Created a Culture of Tolerance in Medieval Spain and co-authored The Arts of Intimacy: Christians, Jews, and Muslims in the Making of Castilian Culture.

Reviews

Spain’s national epic relates the exploits of the warrior Rodrigo Díaz de Vivar (c. 1040–99) after Alfonso VI, king of León and Castile, banishes him for reasons unknown. In exile, he gathers an irresistible raiding party that conquers or exacts tribute from cities in its line of march. Because he sends a whopping portion of the proceeds to Alfonso, he gradually mollifies the monarch. Rodrigo’s campaigns are commonly represented as part of the Reconquista of Muslim-occupied Spain by Christian forces. But a Muslim lord is among Rodrigo’s most ardent supporters; only Muslims who resist are scorned; and Rodrigo’s honorific, el Cid, is a Hispanization of the Arabic sayyid—leader. The poem’s real mission, María Rosa Menocal’s invaluable introduction explains, is to portray the ideal Spanish hero: courageous, honest, generous, and unshakably loyal to the king. Raffel, a venerable translator of Western Europe’s earliest literary masterpieces, offers a sturdy, engaging version of a work far more fascinating than the Christian triumphalist propaganda piece it commonly has been assumed to be. --Ray Olson

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Edition details

• Publisher: Penguin Classics
• Publication date: 2009
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0143105655
• ISBN 13: 9780143105657
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 254
• Editor: Menocal Maria Rosa