ABSTRACT
Santillana’s “serranillas” have been acclaimed by most critics as some of the best examples of his poetic skill. This chapter argues that the “serranillas”, as compositions dealing with some kind of amatory adventure, belong, in the context of medieval Spanish poetry, to a genre of their own, half-way between the so-called “poesia de tipo tradicional” and courtly love poetry. It postulates the existence of two types of love lyric in fifteenth-century Castille: one, “de tipo tradicional”, a form of poetry infused with emotion and natural sentiment appertaining to the realm of the country; another, “poema cancioneril”, appertaining to the court. One factor contributing to the realism of the “serranillas” is the description of the setting, which, although seeming idealized or stereotyped at times, is accompanied by exact geographical location in all but one of the compositions.
