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Nancy E Marino, Jorge Manrique's 'Coplas por la muerte de su padre': A History of the Poem and its Reception (Woodbridge: Tamesis Books, 2011). xi + 214 pp. ISBN 978-1-85566-231-5. £55.00.
The intention of this book is, in the words of its author, 'to outline and consider the manners in which more than five hundred years of readers have contemplated Manrique's text, the literary, religious, or social value that they have found in it, the way in which other authors have engaged it in their own works, the scholarly debates that it has triggered, and other ways that it has been used and appreciated over the centuries. In short, the aim of this book is to show why and how Jorge Manrique's Coplas por la muerte de su padre has become the most recognizable poem in the Spanish language' (p. x). Nancy Marino has chosen (and I won't criticize her decision, given the magnitude of the bibliography on Manrique and his Coplas) to do this in a selective fashion. The result is a fascinating volume, in which the many ramifications of this poem's posterity are charted with precision and commented with rigour and amenity.
Chapter i, 'The author...