Berceo, Gonzalo de

The following article is from The Great Soviet Encyclopedia (1979). It might be outdated or ideologically biased.

Berceo, Gonzalo de

 

Born in the late 12th century in Berceo, province of Rioja; died there after 1246. Spanish poet and priest.

Berceo was educated in a monastery. The first representative of “erudite poetry” in Spain, he wrote the collection Miracles of Our Lady, consisting of 25 stories in verse, the poems In Praise of Our Lady and The Sufferings of the Virgin, several lives of saints, and religious poems. An antiascetic element and a folkloric treatment of religious subjects are characteristic of Berceo’s work. Written in unaffected and colloquial language, Berceo’s work is close to folk poetry.

WORKS

Poetas espanñoles: Berceo. Selected, transcribed, and with a prologue by E. Nadal. Barcelona, 1940.

REFERENCES

Corro del Rosario, P. Gonzalo de Berceo: Estúdio crítico literario. Sāo Paulo [1933].
Guerrieri Crocetti, C. Gonzalo de Berceo. Brescia, 1947.

The Great Soviet Encyclopedia, 3rd Edition (1970-1979). © 2010 The Gale Group, Inc. All rights reserved.