«Triste estaba y muy penosa»: sobre la formación del romancero erudito y sobre los ciclos de romances

Abstract

In this article I analyze the printed tradition of the Trojan queen’s ballad «Triste estaba y muy penosa», taking into account the different versions published in chapbooks and ballad songbooks. I intend to show that the longest version of this ballad, edited in ballad songbooks, was inspired by the Crónica troyana, since the episode of the betrayal of Aeneas and Antenor appears in both texts. In the second part of the article I discuss how the formation of the cycles of cultivated ballads (ciclos de romances), such as the Trojan ones, could have taken place during the construction of the ballad songbooks as a genre.

Keywords

• Hecube
• cultivated ballads
• ballad songbooks
• chapbooks
• Crónica troyana (1490)
• spanish literature