The Songs of Holy Mary by Alfonso X, the Wise: A Translation of the Cantigas de Santa Maria

By Kathleen Kulp-Hill (Eastern Kentucky University)
2000 | 624 pp. | Cloth | 6 x 9 in | 978-0-86698-213-9 | MRTS 173
$55 | £48

How to Purchase

Few truly masterly works in literature, music, and graphic arts have been as sadly neglected as the thirteenth-century Cantigas de Santa Maria of King Alfonso X, "el Sabio" (1221–1284). This collection of 420 poems and songs was written not in Castilian but in Galician-Portuguese, an important spoken and literary language in the Middle Ages that is little understood today. Kulp-Hill's text is the first English translation of this important work. In the poems, a colorful panorama of medieval life unfolds, reflecting a vast array of historical, cultural, linguistic, folklorist, and aesthetic interests and information. The Cantigas contribute to the well-established medieval verse genre relating miraculous events attributed to Mary. This book should be of interest to a broad audience.

This book is currently sold out. It will be reprinted in July 2012. Backorders are being accepted now.

Reviews

"The value of this translation is incalculable to various areas of researchers-comparatists, linguists, folklorists, historians of literature, students of narrative techniques, motif indexes, and other areas of investigation."
—The Bulletin of the Cantigueiros