Structure
In the text various episodes cross, each only weakly related to the others. The latest of the Hispanic epic poems, it appears to have been the last draft composed from diverse material, in as much chronicles as epics from oral tradition, perhaps even a proto-Spanish romance of El Cid. This is confirmed by the around dozen holes existing within the text, some very notable. In particular, a prominent one causes the interruption of the manuscript, which forces the conjecture of the ending based on the chronicles that transmit earlier versions of the poem.
By this way, there are various plot nuclei: the historical and genealogical introduction in prose, the tale of the most prominent events of the life of the epic hero Fernán González, the episode of the death of the father of Jimena and the arrangement of weddings, the ups and downs on the peninsula, the bellicose feats against Moors (against the Moor Burgos de Ayallón) and Christians (confrontation with the dispatch rider of the king of Aragon). In addition, the text accumulates ecclesiastic affairs of the local environment, how the crypt of Saint Antoninus was found or the relocation of the bishop Bernaldo to his Palentine see, along with military campaigns of universal importance, how the confrontation between Ferdinand and Rodrigo with all the extraparlimentary political powers of the time: king of France, emperor and pope. The concluding feeling is that of finding oneself facing a flood of material due to the many drafts of the gesta.
The initial lines of the prosed work are not credited to the author (as indicated by Victorio) instead to the scribe, because this scribe appears to have resumed part of the rhyming text which was being transcribed, and from these there is evidence of the remainders of the assonance that occur in the paragraphs in the prose.
According to Armistead, the ending should be the raising to emperor or "par to emperor" of the King Ferdinand among the other kings of the peninsula. Another possibility, supported by Deyermond, is that the ending is constituted by the homage to Bernaldo once restored to his episcopal see, an episode that goes well with the clerical and publicity character that the poem has according to the theories of the Anglo-Saxon Hispanist.
Read more about this topic: Mocedades De Rodrigo
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