The Rhetoric of Solidarity in the Poema del Cid

The Poema del Cid presents its message in a manner that is compelling in its apparent simplicity. Many readers have felt the poem's force, yet the means by which it is achieved still invite systematic examination from a number of vantage-points. Appreciation of the work's persuasive techniques must center on the hero. His exemplarity, his power as a model of ideal attitudes and behavior, attracts the reader, as it did the original audience, because of the wholeness of his character, in which actions and feelings are so closely identified as to be scarcely distinguishable. This unity of characterization, reinforced by the poem's harmony of form and content, leaves little room for deviant interpretations of the work by individual hearers. The poem holds firmly before them the hero's steadfastness and the seasoned maturity that gives him the strength to meet any challenge or reversal, and so draws them into the orbit of his personality and his world of values. His feelings and goals-the proper goals of the warrior society of twelfth-century Spain-become theirs. Through this dual identification, the poem achieves deep human significance and fulfills a valuable educational function.' It conveys those feelings and goals not by means of commentary, reflection, or abstraction, but through action. Audience identification accordingly implies not inactive ad

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