Isolation and Reintegration in Spanish Christian Poetry of the 13th Century. Peculiarities of Christ and Mary

Abstract

In medieval literature, it is possible to find an ambivalent attitude towards marginal characters that fluctuates between rejection, due to fear, and acceptance, since the marginalized are potential subjects for the practice of many Christian virtues. Thus, this article analyzes such an ambivalence focusing on the tension between the individual and the community, since individuals suffer isolation processes that tend to be resolved with their reintegration into society. The corpus for this analysis consists of the poetic production of Gonzalo de Berceo and the Libro de los tres reyes de Oriente. The structure of the article presents a typology of these processes, by considering two factors: first, the virtuous or sinful character of marginal individuals and their communities, and second, the volition or obligation that characterizes the isolation of each character. When combining these factors, four categories of isolation can be proposed: a) obligatory sinful, b) voluntary sinful, c) obligatory virtuous, and d) voluntary virtuous. Through the exposition of some occurrences in the corpus that serve as exemplary cases in each category, this article proposes an analysis of Christ and Mary, two exceptional characters who, despite sharing many features and being foundational to the ambivalent ideological approach of marginality in these texts, undergo processes that deviate from the proposed paradigm. The objective of this paper is to identify, within the framework of the general analysis, the place that these two characters occupy in the corpus and the characteristics that make their isolation and reintegration processes so peculiar.