The poem Aitac ezcondu ezpanagui (If father doesn’t marry me) of the Lazarraga manuscript: sources and models

Abstract

Lazarraga took the spanish literature as a model when writing some poems of his manuscript: this is the case of the poem Aitac ezcondu ezpanagui. Comparing this poem and five others (four in Spanish, one in Portuguese) by analyzing similarities and differences among them all, it leads us to the main goal of this paper: the sources and models Lazarraga could have used when writing his poem. Our principal subjects of investigation are: the main topic of the poem (a young girl longing for getting married) and its spread in Western European literature, the metre of the poem (a refrain poem: Spanish villancico), the close relation between the Spanish poems and proverbs, and the erotic —almost obscene— content of the poem. As we develop all these subjects, we specially understand how the poem relates to the Spanish literature of the 16th century, but also to European literature, and we also identify some common features with Basque literature.