The Construction of Alfonso XI as an Epic Hero in the Poema de Alfonso Onceno: the Case of the Murder of don Juan el Tuerto

Abstract

My aim is to study how the Poema de Alfonso XI avoids the literary device of fabulous excess in the construction of the hero and the heroic deeds, and proceeds instead to make use of the biased notation of historical truth, which equally sunders the poetic account from the historical fact, even though it appears to court verisimilitude. To do so I will analyze the writing of a particular historical event in the Poema de Alfonso XI. I will take as main corpus of analysis the episode that narrates the murder of don Juan el Tuerto, and as contrasting corpus to determine how this episode is rewritten I will resort to the Gran Crónica de Alfonso XI, which coincides almost exactly with the Crónica de Alfonso XI in the account of this fact. This will enable us to see what specific elements appear or not in the Poema, or differ from those in the Crónica, and how these details, reformulations or displacements contribute to the construction of the epic hero.