Essay On Christianity In Spain

Words: 539
Pages: 3

Spain was flourishing culturally and idealistically when the Muslims were residing in the region. However, Christianity was also a significant culture that impacted the era. Even one Christian Spanish king was willing to allow a Muslim area to remain intact for the sake of culture. With this peaceful dynamic, Islam and Christianity in Medieval Spain were equally remarkable in their achievements, especially in the field of romantic literature.
In the realm of poetry, both Muslim and Christian areas of Spain had creative ways describing love with words on a page, yet both are polar opposites. In Muslim romantic poetry, the writer would be explicit in imagery and depictions of erotic love. Ibn Quzman’s “Muwashshah” is an example of this blatant
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Rather, these poems used the common tongue of the citizens of the Northern areas of Spain. These poems are collectively called Cantigas. Some of the more romantic Cantigas were written by traveling poets called Troubadours. These poems were often accompanied by music to stir up the hearts of the listeners of these musical bards. In “Cantiga de amor”, Dom Dinis, a Portuguese Troubadour, uses more emotion through the speaker to express the speaker’s trouble gaining the attention of the female he admires. Lines such as “I see myself dying for you now/ for you know that I never told you/how my love for you was killing me: (Dom Dinis 3-5) express the suffering love of the speaker to his desired lover. This put the courted female in a higher regard compared to the erotic objectification of the woman in Ibn Quzman’s poem. Dom Dinis also expresses that courtship is under fate, expressed in the line “God knows well that I had/no fear of another lady”(6-7). The speaker tries to convince the lover that God inspired him to court her and give the speaker the audacity to pursue her. This sort of romance is expressed creatively, even with the moral boundaries for what can be expressed in the Christian