Endings Lost and Found in the Poema de Fernán González

Inspired by the lost ending of the Poema de Fernán González and the question of its content, this paper argues that an ideology of judgement and salvation is evoked in the introductory stanzas of the poem which inheres in the body of the work, and may have reached completion in the lost conclusion. Attention is paid to the early description of the conversion of the poet's Spanish ancestors from estrangement from Christ to an acceptance of his law. The legalistic theme which underpins this narrative invites the theme of judgement into the heart of the poem, where it parallels the theological process of justification. The description of ancestral conversion also outlines stages of salvation, thus asserting the meaningful, teleological role of time in the poem and situating the career of the hero within an eschatological framework which attaches special importance to the attainment of moral, not just material, worth. I argue that in conflating legal and temporal discourses the poem represents the hero within a model of divine sonship, according to which he would have represented, conclusively, the culmination of the lost moral and territorial worth of the Visigoths, but also the prospect of the eternal heritage to come

Aesthetics · Art · Epistemology · HERO · Ideology · Judgement · Literature · Narrative · Parallels · Poetics · Poetry · Political science · Politics · Sociology · Teleology · Theme (computing · Archaeological and Historical Studies · Classical Studies and Legal History · Law · Medieval Iberian Studies · Philosophy

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