Historical Distortion and Propaganda Helen Sabina Hardy College

The Poema de Mio Cid’s (The Poem of My Cid) many examples of historical distortion and unexpected silences on the subject of figures who are known as having acted in the historical time period are evidence either of genuine misinformation concerning the life of Rodrigo Díaz – an unlikely occurrence due to the Poema’s contemporaneity to the events depicted – or of a tradition followed by other epic poets of employing the life of a popular figure in a narrative for the poet’s own purposes.[1] Each deviation in the Poema from what is historically verifiable about the life and circumstances of Rodrigo Díaz offers us a potential clue to the poet’s intention. The inclusion of themes which have their greatest relevance at the very end of the twelfth and beginning of the thirteenth centuries, such as the glorification of cupidity in warfare to attract fighting men to the Reconquest, the emphasis placed on legitimacy and thus the thematic parallels with the social and economic situation of Alfonso VIII of Castile, accords well with the dating of the Poema to shortly before the year 1207, and supports the notion that the only complete Spanish epic could well have been intended as a propagandistic work.

Geographically speaking, there is...