The singularity of Alfonso X's troubadour discourse

As we aim to show in this paper, Alfonso X's profane songbook stands out as his most personal production: in it, we can perceive the distinctive voice of a troubadour who adjusts himself to the European troubadour tradition's canons, while at the same time emerging as the visible head of a court that consolidates itself as the most dynamic space of the Peninsular troubadour lyric. For this purpose, we analyze how Alfonso's court accepted and opened itself to foreign literary currents that will soon influence his own work, the circumstances that explain why his poetry was written in Galician, and the singularities of his troubadour songbook. The latter presents a complex manuscript tradition and certain codicological problems, which till today raise debates among the critics, such as the establishment of its corpus. The study of his songs shows that Alfonso's troubadour discourse stands out due to the Author's mastery of the school techniques and to his acute and personal perception of the society and the historical events of his time.