ABSTRACT
Students of Spanish literature have always known what experts in the relatively new field of popular culture are repeatedly emphasizing: the common denominator of taste is not low by definition. This chapter presents an examination of the theme of love in the jarchas and in cante flamenco reveals thematic bonds between the manifestations of popular poetry, bonds which cannot be due to mere concidence. It discusses that a psychological examination of the jarchas cante flamenco suggests that the subject investigation, the people of the region know as al-Andalus and later as Andalucia , is one and the same entity viewed at two different of its historical development. The jarchas cannot be understood apart from the moaxajas in which they appear. One quintessential theme of all love poetry is jealousy, and it may certainly be true that some of the parallels between jarchas and cante are due to coincidence.
