page_title: Juan Alfonso de Baena
section_title: Cancionero de Baena
hierarchical_section_title: Juan Alfonso de Baena / Work / Cancionero de Baena
caption_attribution_description: English: Image of "Cancionero de Baena" (Juan Alfonso de Baena). Español: Imagen del "Cancionero de Baena" (Juan Alfonso de Baena).
context_page_description: Juan Alfonso de Baena was a medieval Castilian poet and scribe in the court of Juan II of Castile. Baena, who was a converso, is best known for compiling and contributing to the Cancionero de Baena, an important medieval anthology composed between 1426 and 1465 containing the poems of over 55 Spanish poets who wrote during the reigns of Enrique II, Juan I, and Enrique III, and Juan II.
context_section_description: Cancioneros, or songbooks, were compilations of lyrical poetry most popular during the second half of the 14th century and the first half of the 15th century, though they first appeared in Iberia as early as the beginning of the 13th century in Galicia. In Iberia, these songbooks were originally compilations of Galician courtly poems and eventually broadened in both scope and language. According to Yirmiyahu Yovel, the poems contained in the Iberian cancioneros used “unadorned language and simple rhyme, the poems dealt, sometimes irreverently, with current events, people, social habits, and institutions, and they also served their authors to quarrel, flatter, defame, and supplicate." In this way, cancioneros could serve as an insightful or even critical looks into the social and political realities of the royal courts and preserved vast amounts of medieval Iberian court poetry.
  	The particular Cancionero in question, the one compiled by Baena, consists of 576 poems composed by 56 poets. These poems were written between the beginning of the Trastámara reign in the mid 14th century to the mid 15th century, which included the reigns of Enrique II (1369-1379), Juan I (1379-1390), and Enrique III (1390-1406), and Juan II (1406-1454). Some sources date the Cancionero from 1426 to 1430, while others believe it is from the mid 1440s. If Baena was the only one who added poems to the anthology, this would place its compilation during the earlier dates. However, according to Alberto Blecua’s and Vicente Beltrán’s research, it appears that some poems were added to the Cancionero by other compilers after his death, making later dates a possibility for the completion if not the genesis of the anthology. Therefore, the best compilation dates for the Cancionero are between 1426 and 1430 for Baena’s personal contributions and between 1449 and 1465 for the later additions. The Cancionero was compiled during the reign of Juan II while Baena was working in his court, and, consequently, dedicated the songbook to the king. Cancionero de Baena is the oldest Castilian example of this kind of songbook. The Cancionero contains many of Baena’s own works, including some of his satire and poetical letters, for which he is known.
  The Cancionero de Baena signals a transition from Galician-Portuguese to Castilian as the prestige language of court poetry in Iberia, as the previous such anthologies had been written in Galician-Portuguese. Baena’s cancionero did more than record Castilian court poems in the style of the Galician-Portuguese troubadours, however. Baena also included poems from less prestigious origins than the royal court and even some more serious “intellectual poetry incorporating symbol, allegory, and classical allusions in the treatment of moral, philosophical, and political themes.” Indeed, Baena’s compilation cannot be said to be systemic anyway, as it includes an indiscriminate number of genres and themes. This, in and of itself makes it important as it demonstrates a more complete view of medieval Castilian literature. Canciones de amor, poetic debates, and moralizing texts make up the three main genres of the anthology. Canciones de amor are love poems based on the Provençal canso form. Poetic debates are the poems mentioned previously that pit two poets against each other in “dialogues between two or more poets in which the respondent must follow the meters and rhymes of the initial poem.” These poetic debates were represented chiefly by Baena’s inclusion of his own work in the compilation and the inclusion of Villasandino’s. Finally, the moralizing texts are “reflections on mortality, fortune, and the fall of the great, and the vanity of human life apart from God.”
  Baena’s prologue to the Cancionero de Baena, called the Prologus, is also of literary note. It is the first prologue of an anthology to also serve as literary criticism. In fact, Baena’s prologue inspired a tradition of theoretical introductions in Castilian in the following years. In this prologue, Baena asserts that poetry is a courtly pastime with “intellectual and 
caption: The Surviving 15th Century Manuscript of Cancionero de Baena
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