Galician Portuguese medieval poetry and the Iberian interliterary system

Abstract

In his article "Galician Portuguese Medieval Poetry and the Iberian Interliterary System" Santiago Gutiérrez García explores the notion that the possibility of carrying out a comparative study of Iberian literatures is determined by its interliterary system. Gutiérrez García postulates that the said interliterary system comprises a series of peripheral literatures which seek their self-affirmation through opposition to the hegemonic center, namely Castilian literature. He uses the example of Galician Portuguese medieval poetry and illustrates the problematic nature of his approach elaborating that despite the fact that this medieval poetic tradition is shared by both Galician and Portuguese literatures, as literary subsystems they carry out diverse strategies of symbolic appropriation in which a confrontation arises between two national literatures in asymmetric relation: the hegemonic Portuguese literature and the emergent Galician literature.