An errant leaf and a divided poem: the Lay of Juan de Torres in SA7

Abstract

Few extant manuscript cancioneros are original compilations. Most are fair copies, sometimes copies of copies, of single lost exemplars. An original compilation is, of course, also based on lost exemplars, but the difference is that its exemplars are, by definition, multiple and heterogeneous. The Cancionero de Palacio (Salamanca University Library MS 2653), better known as SA7, is one of these valuable exceptions, valuable because their physical composition contains a wealth of clues to the sources that lie behind them. In the words of Barry Ife, discussing another such volume, the erstwhile Cancionero of the British Museum, or Rennert (LB1), ‘A great deal of evidence about the process of compilation can be gleaned from a close examination of the physical characteristics of the manuscript’ (2002: 64). Unlike the mere copy (Baena, Herberay, or Stuniga, for example), which throws up a screen of varying penetrability between the textual critic and the trail of transmission, the original compilation offers a relatively accessible array of clues about its sources, such as changes to the mise-en-page, false starts, and duplicate texts. Fundamental to this sort of analysis are the internal divisions of a collection, the way the texts are organized, and the sequences in which they are copied. In this respect SA7 is a disaster: the manuscript has come down to us in a state of apparently intractable disorganization. Sixty years on we can only endorse the verdict of its first editor, Francisca Vendrell: ‘Multiples y dificiles de resolver en este manuscrito son los problemas relativos a lagunas de texto y a transposiciones de folios’ (1945: 10). SA7 is a folio volume of 178 numbered leaves, containing

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