ABSTRACT
Ramón Menéndez Pidal’s pioneering essay “Sobre geografía folklórica. Ensayo de un método” constituted the first full-scale implementation of geographic methods in romancero studies. This chapter examines the explicit and implicit objections of those who have proposed alternative approaches to the study of the modern oral romancero. It demonstrates with supporting evidence from recent scholarship that despite the difficulties inherent in the use of both space and time factors, these two variables are nonetheless essential to any theory which purports to define the processes of transformation and reproductive mechanisms of the romancero and similar bodies of traditional folk literature in which the processes of creation and transmission are inseparable. The chapter provides sample analyses which illustrate how time and space as well as numerous interdependent, internal variables were integrated in a pilot program of computer-aided literary analysis specifically designed to facilitate exploration of the processes of variation in traditional ballad narratives.
