A Galician about the Valiant Conqueror of Valencia – Praise of James I the Conqueror in the Song of Pero da Ponte

Abstract

In this paper we present an analysis of the song O que Valença conquereu by the Galician-Portuguese troubadour, Pero da Ponte, dedicated to King of Aragon, James I the Conqueror, composed on the occasion of his conquest of Valencia in 1238. Within the Galician-Portuguese poetic tradition, references to the Crown of Aragon were not frequent, and when they did appear it was usually in a satirical/humorous context. In this article we present the state of research on Pero da Ponte’s potential links with the Aragonese court, and we situate his work in relation to the realities of both the Galician-Portuguese and Occitan poetic traditions. We present a detailed genre analysis of the song, pointing out the need to unify the genological terminology and offering a different perspective on the formal layer of the composition we are studying. We also make a comparison between how the Occitan-speaking troubadours portrayed James I in their works and how Pero da Ponte did, showing how the content of the work, the poetic devices used by the troubadour and the overall tone of the song place it in the group of poems dedicated to King of Aragon.

Keywords

• Galician-Portuguese lyric
• troubadours
• Crown of Aragon
• Catalonia
• James I the Conqueror
• Pero da Ponte