31
El concepto de España en la Edad Media, 2nd edition (Madrid: Instituto de Estudios Políticos, 1964), p. 323. Lacarra suggests political reasons for the poet's choice (pp. 36-40).
32
For a somewhat more extensive discussion, see my «Death and Rebirth of Visigothic Spain», p. 356.
33
The hero's men think he is dead; the threefold occurrence of «muerto» in st. 321-22 strengthens the resemblance.
34
This is also, as Zamora Vicente points out in his note to st. 444, a formula in legal malediction clauses (see also David Hook, «On Certain Correspondences between the Poema de Mio Cid and Contemporary Legal Instruments», Iberoromania, n. s., XI (1980), 31-53, at 50). There is clearly a convergence of influences here.
35
Nepaulsingh suggests (p. 88) that God's displeasure is caused by Fernán González's surrender rather than the King's treachery and violation of sanctuary. He points out that the Count had said in st. 444 that anyone who surrendered to the Moors would go to Hell. Surrender to a Christian king, however wicked he may be, is in a different category, and the figural references that follow show that Fernán González is not the object of God's wrath.
36
«"Commo voz de pauon" en El libro de Alexandre y en el Poema de Fernán González», Meridiano 70 (Austin, Texas), no. 4 (Spring, 1977), 25-33, at 31-32.
37
The poet adds (st. 593) that the church is still split, and will remain so until the Last Judgment («fasta la fin complida»). This may be aimed at pilgrims: Cirueña is just south of the Camino Francés.
38
Carolyn Bluestine, «Heroes Great and Small: Archetypal Patterns in the Medieval Spanish Epic» (unpublished doctoral thesis, Princeton University, 1983), suggests (pp. 229-30) that «this time Fernán González has overstepped the bounds of the permissible» ' and that henceforth he «will receive aid only from human helpers».
39
Bluestine refers to Fernán González's prison as a «figurative tomb» (p. 230), and comments on its mythical connotations (pp. 280-81 n. 86), but does not mention its figural aspect.
40
The Singer of Tales, Harvard Studies in Comparative Literature, XXIV (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1960), p. 206.