From voice to verse: A comparative and contextual study of the Decir «seÑor rey, vuestra noticia» by Ruy PÁez de Ribera

Abstract

Ruy Páez de Ribera’s decir «Señor rey, vuestra noticia» and the border ballad «Ben Zulema y Narváez» (IGR 0786) both recount the same counter raid on the outskirts of Antequera that took place on May 1, 1424, known as the Batalla de la Matanza. We can assume that testimonies of the event were circulating orally, and that the poets likely based their writings on these oral texts, since the extant prose accounts post-date the poems. By comparing the two poetic texts, we note that differences in prosody and in narrative selection allow us to reflect on the process of poetic composition of Ruy Páez de Ribera, and how genre and authorship transformed the perception of the events. The decir moralizes the animality of battle, the outcome of which, according to prose histories, resulted not from the bravery of soldiers but rather from animal instinct, since the stolen cows stampeded and scattered Granadine forces. The decir transforms this untidy history into a thesis about order expressed as regular and symmetrical prosody and lexicon that reflects the humanism of 15-century court poets. This paper proceeds in four main sections: a reading of order in this poem, a study of the decir, a comparison with the ballad and a consideration of the material context of the subject matter of the poems.